Ashes in our Mouth
Added 2025-03-06 05:32:00 +0000 UTCThis story is inspired by a number of true events that have been knocking around my skull: in particular, that a solar flare really did nearly cause a nuclear war in 1967. And the second was that in the sixties, nuclear winter was an unknown potential consequence of nuclear war - was in fact science fiction, from their point of view. Something about that tickled my fancy, particularly as it gave me the opportunity to explore one of my favourite themes - Soviet space history. I also wanted to use the opportunity of being able to create Patreon-only comics, to try something a bit longer, and a little bit looser.
Let me know what you think.
Comments
God, this one is a bit nihilistic isn’t it? 🤣 I’m not sure if this one will be in the book. Because there’s so many stories, we’re putting out two volumes - and currently we’re just working on volume 1, for release this year. If this one makes the cut, it will be in volume 2, sometime in 2026.
Scott Base
2025-03-30 17:37:10 +0000 UTCreminds me of those 80's scifi movies with doom endings, like logans run or gattaca (I know neither came out in the 80's but bear with me lol), I sort of love the nihilism thing you got going on. will this one be in the book?
mistralwolf
2025-03-30 17:09:03 +0000 UTCSo true Crystle. And i think that is so central to what drives many of my stories - the tension between the promise of what I like to imagine we could be - often using that metaphor of space exploration- versus the compromised world we live in. Hope is so central to my reason for getting out of bed in the morning! But shades of disappointment in our ongoing failure to reach for our promise - and how bad things are getting - keeps creeping into my stories!
Scott Base
2025-03-21 05:58:32 +0000 UTCI think it's the cosmonaut's fantasy--of space travel showing humanity how they can truly be--that's at the heart of so many individuals struggling to push space exploration forward. We name our robots Pioneer, Opportunity, Curiosity, Spirit, Perserverence... We give them the names of our best traits that push humanity forward, even when there are two steps back. The underlying optimism, the hope in it is obviously the real horror of the comic, but also just... so TRUE of humans. Things became bleak and bleaker, we enter the dead of night, but we always believe in the dawn.
Crystle Swinford
2025-03-19 08:55:10 +0000 UTCThank you! Yeah it was a strange story to write - a bleak side history about something I have wondered about many times. There was so many near misses and outright brinkmanship during the cold war it’s a wonder that we did make it through that period. On the other hand, things feel so awful at the moment, sometimes it feels a bit like all we did was put off one disaster for another. *Deep breath* But we did make it through the cold war, so maybe theres a lesson there. Never give up! Never surrender!
Scott Base
2025-03-13 19:15:34 +0000 UTCThanks Mike. It was a bit of a slog getting it into shape but I’m glad i did it.
Scott Base
2025-03-13 19:05:05 +0000 UTCIncredible work as always. I love the longer format. There's something strangely comforting about your vision of a darker alternative history that didn't happen. Sort of the inverse of the sadness that I felt reading "Empires of Light" for the first time and longing for a brighter present that never was.
T
2025-03-13 02:02:29 +0000 UTCA real kick in the gut, this one. I feel it.
Mike Dillion
2025-03-09 01:08:11 +0000 UTCOoof. That took me a while to get right too!
Scott Base
2025-03-06 19:47:26 +0000 UTC🙏🥹🥹
Scott Base
2025-03-06 19:47:02 +0000 UTCThanks Eunice. I do love some alt history. The important vibe for me here was that he imagines an alternative future - that at first glance appears to be our own. But in reality, we never lived up to the promise of our own potential either. So he’s in an alternate history imagining another alternative history. Yeech! 🤣
Scott Base
2025-03-06 19:46:49 +0000 UTCSorry dude. I am a monster and im still coming to terms with that. 😅😬
Scott Base
2025-03-06 19:42:31 +0000 UTCTotally - i read all about the controversy while researching this story, it was fascinating. I love the back and forth of science. However nuclear winter does appear to remain a viable, if controversial theory - i even had a kurzgesagt video pop up on my feed about it a while ago. And to be fair a lot of my comics utilise scientific theories that are a bit shaky. For me science fiction is very much about exploring the possibilities that scientific ideas suggest, proven or not. Thats what makes this so much fun for me 😅
Scott Base
2025-03-06 19:41:01 +0000 UTCGreat work as always, thank you for sharing your talent and passion with us!
Kimberly Hanning
2025-03-06 17:50:21 +0000 UTCWhat a sad story. Has alternative history, ‘Man in the High Castle’ vibes. Love the longer form. Excellent work on the facial expressions.
Eunice
2025-03-06 12:46:50 +0000 UTCLove the longer form and the story itself is excellent as usual! The panel where the cosmonaut sees the nuclear detonations is epic
Ian Pillay
2025-03-06 12:20:59 +0000 UTCGreat comics reminding of the good old sci fi stories like There Will Come Soft Rains. Splendid work and thank you. If I may add something to your afterwords — there’s no solid scientific evidence that the concept of the nuclear winter is a real thing, it’s very much propaganda created by the Carl Sagan and loosely based on the fact that we observed global temperature drop after the super volcano eruption (and it’s absolutely unclear that such drop is a systematic thing as well as it’s unlikely that nuclear war of any scale will produce the amount of ash that will constantly hinder the sun). More here for example https://www.quora.com/Why-is-nuclear-winter-a-myth-What-is-the-scientific-evidence-that-it-could-really-happen
Леонид Сиротин
2025-03-06 10:27:19 +0000 UTCIt's 8.30 am here and you hit me with this? I wasn't ready. I think I might cry into my cereal for a bit.
Benjamin Schmauss
2025-03-06 08:44:05 +0000 UTCThat's heart breaking. I live that the cosmonaut had a glimpse of satisfaction in his idea for the possible future. But to have it be so obviously proven unattainable is devastating
SSC
2025-03-06 08:23:54 +0000 UTCAnother little masterpiece. Love the longer length. That eighth panel is something else. Definitely judos to you!
Kelly Sheehan
2025-03-06 07:25:37 +0000 UTCThanks Matt! I’m relieved to hear that. Trying out new approaches always freaks me out a bit 🤣😅
Scott Base
2025-03-06 07:15:02 +0000 UTCThanks Rafael! Doing new stuff scares the hell out of me, so I appreciate that.
Scott Base
2025-03-06 07:12:23 +0000 UTCThey had also developed a “first strike plan”, that in our reality, thank god, they decided not to implement. But I wanted to imagine how that would look, if in the extremely unlikely event it had been “successful.”
Scott Base
2025-03-06 07:11:31 +0000 UTCThat was the day of the solar flare in 1967, indeed! It was also one month after the failure of Soyuz 1. So I pushed back the launch of Soyuz, to fix the parachutes, and gave the cosmonaut Komarov a different - though equally awful - ending. This was also in the wake of the US fretting about an imaginary “missile gap” - whipping themselves into a frenzy believing (wrongly) that the USSR had more nuclear missiles than them.
Scott Base
2025-03-06 07:08:42 +0000 UTCThanks Andrew. I find nuclear war quite terrifying- I’m of the generation that grew up with it as an existential threat. And I thought the distance of all these years might make it a little easier to write about. But as it turned out, actually, no. I still found it faintly traumatising 😅
Scott Base
2025-03-06 07:03:09 +0000 UTCBravo - superbly sad.
Andrew Leon Hudson
2025-03-06 06:52:07 +0000 UTCThat is SO good! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Wonderful compositions here. I love that we experience the war from outside the planet - that's a very interesting idea. Reminds me a wittle bit of "Last Man on Earth". You always have a wonderful twist on things. Judos to you good sir! 👏🏻👏🏻🙌🏻🌟 Now I *really* look forward to reading something long-form from you 😄 (By the way, just out of curiosity - did you pick May 23 specifically because something happened on that day? Was that the day of the solar flare back then?)
Amit Ungar
2025-03-06 06:49:43 +0000 UTCThis is fantastic!
Matt
2025-03-06 06:28:34 +0000 UTCIt was nice to do something a bit longer. Basically stretching exercises for my full length comic. 🤣
Scott Base
2025-03-06 06:27:53 +0000 UTCWhew! Thanks Micky 😅
Scott Base
2025-03-06 06:26:55 +0000 UTCAbsolutely cinematic.
mockmj
2025-03-06 06:06:38 +0000 UTCAbsolutely amazing.
Mickey
2025-03-06 06:03:00 +0000 UTCLove this one!
Rafael Beckel
2025-03-06 05:52:30 +0000 UTC
