Another Short Post, Because It’s Friday and the Fever Hasn’t Subsided

Posted on by eidolon

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re stranded on Mars. 

You do have shelter, but are faced with rapidly dwindling supplies of air, water, and food.  You’re just barely able to contact Earth, but he spacefaring nations of the world can’t help you—they’ll never get supplies to you in time.   So you appeal to less conventional means of survival.

But at this point you’re faced with a difficult choice, because all but two of the world’s superheroes are busy.  (Also, most of them have a grudge against you, which is why they don’t care when they hear about your situation.)

So: to whom do you appeal for help?  Aquaman, or The Atom?

I’m pretty confident that the correct answer here must be The Atom.

The way I figure it, all you’d need to do is convince him to become really, really large.  Then, assuming you could find a way to kill him, his flesh and blood would provide plenty of sustenance (conveniently preserved by the Martian environment).  And, done right, you could siphon off the oxygen in his enormous lungs.

That’s Stage 1 (survival).  Stage 2 (rescue) happens as a consequence, when the other supers eventually notice The Atom never came back from Mars.  Once they realize what you did, they send a rescue mission.  Not because they like you (they still don’t), but they hated The Atom even more.  Why?  His hobby was keying peoples’ cars.  The jerk. 

Aquaman is the wrong choice.  There are no oceans on Mars.

10 thoughts on “Another Short Post, Because It’s Friday and the Fever Hasn’t Subsided”

  2. A more interesting challenge might be imagining a scenario in which Aquaman is the right choice. I’m hoping he gets an actual superpower in the reboot just so future comic book readers don’t sit around wondering what the hell he was good for. Like I do, for so, so many hours.

  3. I’m with you on the sushi. I wonder how long it’s been since Mars has seen a really good sushi place? Since before the oceans disappeared, I suppose…

  4. A more interesting challenge might be imagining a scenario in which Aquaman is the right choice.

    That is SO OBVIOUS.

    1) Call Aquaman to Mars.
    2) Steal his spaceship.

    Look at me. I’m a closer.

    Here’s another:

    1) Call Aquaman to Mars.
    2) Build a time machine from Martian rocks.
    3) Travel into the distant past, when Mars had oceans.
    4) Aquaman uses his Fish Telepathy to convince the Mars Whales to send a distress call.
    5) Get rescued by the alien spaceship from Star Trek IV.

    Have I mentiond I’m a closer?

  5. I’ll give you Scenario #1, but only half of it. You could just as easily steal The Atom’s spaceship. But Scenario #2 is a nonstarter, and you know and I know that you can’t close something that never started. If you can build a time machine of Martian rocks, you’re already infinitely more useful/resourceful/super than Aquaman. Just also build a spaceship while you’re at it. Where’s my coffee?

    Also, Mars Whales are called callowhales. You should read Ventriloquism.

  7. You could just as easily steal The Atom’s spaceship.

    What good what that do you when the spaceship is the size of an atom?!? Unless you share The Atom’s superpower, I don’t think so. He prefers to travel when he’s super small. He reduces his own mass when he does it, thereby saving on fuel.

    If you can build a time machine of Martian rocks, you’re already infinitely more useful/resourceful/super than Aquaman. Just also build a spaceship while you’re at it.

    Build a spaceship out of rocks? Bwah-hahaahaha-hahaha-ha. That’s a good one. Seriously, though, how would you do that? They’re rocks. They’re not rocket parts. That’s why you have to start with the time machine. Hey, I don’t make the rules, okay? This is science.

  8. Pretty cool stuff. I hope it holds up to further scrutiny. Kind of amazing to think there might be (transient) patches of liquid water on the surface of Mars even today.

    Though I think Aquaman might need more to work with.

  10. I haven’t run out of things to do. Not nearly.

    But I did run out of good blog post topics months ago.

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