Strip 623 -- First Seen: 2011-01-26
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

One Dollar Sale Continues!

Hard to believe it, but Big Head Press published it's first novel, over 20 years ago. To commemorate our stubborn longevity, we continue to stubbornly offer each of our non serialized graphic novel stories for just one mere American dollar (plus shipping). Start your holiday shopping early and light up some body's mind with one or more of these titles.

Offer only available in the United States.

Kickstarter Success!

The Not-Safe-Space 2 Kickstarter Campaign has ended successfully. Thanks to all who pledged!

Now we get to wait 2 weeks while Kickstarter transmits the funds, and Scott can order the books, and send surveys to backers to get current e-mail addresses for the .PDF versions and mailing addresses for the physical books.

All of this should show up in June.

The Transcript For This Page

Panel 1
A Skyhook crawler-flier is in flight mode. We see it from behind, approaching Ares City, a jumble of domes and towers covering a 200-square-km section along the northern RIM of the massive Ius Chasma region of Valles Marineris. The Gassend Elevator Ground Station is at the far end of the city, , with the 1.5-km tall Red Planet Needle just the other side of the Station. Just north of the city, farther from the Chasm, we can see a 5-km-long landing strip that is part of Ares City Aerospaceport. Domed farming areas fan outward from the city east, west and north.
Some elevator tubes run from the buildings at the rim of the chasm down the steep slope towards the chasm floor, where there are some industrial buildings.

Caption: The trip down to the end of the Skyhook and subsequent flight to the Ares City Aerospaceport was spectacular, but otherwise uneventful.
Panel 2
Large panel. We see Babbette and Reggie from behind, taking in the splendor of above-ground
Ares City. Gleaming, round-sided towers rise underneath a series of massive, interconnected domes. Some larger towers can be seen rising through the domes and hundreds of meters into the sky above. Tallest of all is the Red Planet Needle.
Babbette: Before Carlos, the boys and I got to the belt, we spent a few days waiting for passage from Mars.
Babbette: It wasn't much more than a frontier settlement – primitive, inflated structures and men walking around in bulky, dirty environment suits.
Babbette: Now, it's something out of the Wizard of Oz.