I am not freaking out I am Just angry / changing the laws of physics

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Doubtland Issue 1 Month - Doubtland is my redrawn and re-envisioned version of Jim Sternako's Outland - and I even got to hear from Jim himself!

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“I am not freaking out, I am Just angry” Is Woodrow Decker’s own conclusion as to his own behaviour on this next completed page of 2001:-

Last week Woodrow made his debut by throwing what is described here by his colleague, Mason as “priceless artefacts”

And on this page Woodrow seems to not display much of what has been described as “The Right Stuff”, which is essentially courage and level headed thinking in the most desperate and dire situations, something which many military personal have to be able to achieve to a certain level before they would ever be put in harm’s way.

NASA possibly had more emphasis on needing “the right stuff” than even the military; I mean can you imagine being thousands of miles from anyone, in outer space, in a tiny metal capsule and running out of oxygen like what happened to Apollo 13?

That would be no place to put a drama queen for sure as that could mean the difference between life and death, so on has to wonder precisely what kind of vetting was done on the expedition to allow Woodrow Decker to be in this situation.

Woodrow himself seems almost on the edge of hysteria declaring the situation to be "some kind of cosmic joke", while Mason seeming to be much more level headed accuses Woodrow of letting his nerves do the thinking

Woodrow retorts he is just angry “at hitting the jackpot” (finding proof of intelligent alien life) “at his own funeral”

At which point the two have a literal face off, with Mason taking the role of the optimist to Woodrow’s pessimist as to their chances of survival

At which point the reader is forced to make a reassessment, as Decker seems to be in the right with the space ship destroying itself in flames…

Hang on a minute – in flames??

This is a zero oxygen environment right? Both people are clearly wearing a full space suit, so how can the ship be burning?

Well, what do you know I was not the only person who wondered that, so we return to the letters page of issue 4 2001 and again hear from Gary Sanger (in the same letter he addressed the “New Orleans’s faux pas”)

"The Asteroid sequence also has it's problems.  There cannot be fire in space.  The Oxygen in the ship must have dissipated almost instantly into the vacuum of space when the ship crashed, and without oxygen even the most flammable of materials will not burn."

And Marvels response was:-

"We must take issue with the seeming error of the flaming spacecraft, however.  Like many such craft, the ship carried a goodly supply of liquid oxygen.  And when said stores of the liquified gas ruptured, the resulting release was enough to provide for the otherwise impossible fire"

So apologies to Chief Montgomery Scott, chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise, but apparently you can change the laws of physics!

Just in case one was wondering, as the movie of Apollo 13 mission showed, oxygen leaking actually turns into a loose cloud of liquid which separates and dissipates in no particular direction – both the absolute zero temperature, lack of gravity and no other atmosphere combine to make this possible, so there is no way that oxygen leaking would help a fire happen!

And even if you overlooked all this the fire itself would not look like it was drawn, the flames would not be going in any direction, it takes wind and a atmosphere to make that happen!

So, all the guy at Marvel answering the letter had to was to say that the ship burning was included for dramatic effect and that would be fine.

I mean it’s fairly clear this story isn’t meant to be taken that seriously as it abounds in inaccuracies, one could almost say it revels in them and possibly keeps including them making the point absolutely clear, this story isn’t real

This is the complete anti thesis of the 2001 movie, where Kubrick went out of his way to ensure that as much as possible everything was real and defined within the laws of known physics, and any pure and obvious fantasy element like the monolith was completely abstract and purposely not defined at all and outside of any physical laws

So for example there certainly would not been a fire on the moon or anywhere else with zero atmosphere

Anyway laws of physics to one side for now will Flight Control be able to help Woodrow and Mason?

The bigger question is based on their actions / reactions so far – which one of these is the multi grandchild of “he who hunts alone”?

Find out … as the story progresses next week

Images Degrading Weekly 21
This week we continue with my look at Frank Millers and Klaus Janson's Daredevil with "You scratch my back and I will scratch yours" In which Daredevil already knows the New Stilt mans Achilles heel and the all new essay "considering design from every angle" concludes.

As ever Images Degrading Weekly is  FREE digital publication, just send me a email to robin.barnard@ymail.com and I will send you back the issue, it could not be simpler!

That is it for this week!