This isn’t the first comic about a Mars-based reality TV premise. Nor is the concept so strange to me anymore. But the difference between MArs-500 and its predecessor is that the former was a real experiment—a series of experiments, in fact. The production crews are probably going through the footage as we speak. While only [...]
Today’s comic seems a bit out of place in the scheme of things when looking at Part 1 and Part 2 of the series. Mostly because Part 2 was unplanned and reactionary to the recent AGU press conference, and originally the lonely martian was going to usher in today’s strip. I was also in a weird [...]
View Part 1 Here Yesterday at a press conference at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting, members of the SAM* team reported on their initial findings. This is the moment we had all been waiting for. The verdict? The instruments work, and the dirt on Mars is very similar to other dirt on Mars. Good night, [...]
Two years ago today I sat down and drew a comic strip about NASA’s arsenic life press conference in December of 2010. I had decided before then that drawing comics about science was the way for me to cure the artistic malaise that was gripping me at the time, and the epic un-nnouncement was the perfect moment. It [...]
I’m not usually one to gloat, but I told you so. Last week’s big announcement that the Mars Curiosity Rover had found something incredible on Mars was a big misunderstanding. Turns out that when NASA said they had made an “earth-shattering” discovery—”one for the history books”—they were talking about the whole Curiosity mission. Which sounds [...]
I’m already way late on the martian blueberry game when I decided to sit down and draw this continuation of the Martian Chronicles*, which references last month’s unceremonious upstaging of the Curiosity rover by its older brother (8 1/2 years now!) Opportunity. The short story, years ago, when Opportunity first landed, it found the ground [...]
Photographs of the surface of Mars are beginning to trickle in from the newly deployed Curiosity rover—as well as photos of its descent. Judging by the most recent, first color photograph, it looks like the protective lens caps are still on, so don’t mind the fuzziness. Lens caps or not, Curiosity won’t be seeing any [...]
The Martians are back! If you recall, their first appearance was in a flash-forward comic—a fever dream of what manned explorations of Mars could become. So today there are more of them, but their grasp of English is a bit flawed (Or is it, held-up-mirror-to-popular-culture?). I know there are many questions, plot holes, inconsistencies, and [...]
A Vision of the End I apologize in advance for the stream-of-consciousness/surrealism of today’s comic. Given the source material, it actually makes perfect sense, and I already cut out a whole section involving theoretical physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft windsurfing in Oakley’s and nobel prize bling—which would have only confused things further. Instead I chose to give [...]