The-painting

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the-painting

Title text: That stick figure diagram is the most joy I've had making an illustration in years.

Votey

Explanation

This explanation is either missing or incomplete.

After Zach asked for help on Mastodon, a photo containing the painting was found: https://web.archive.org/web/20220227014023/https://www.sciencehistory.org/sites/default/files/styles/rte_full_width/public/rte/anatoly_berezovoi_valentin_lebedev_and_svetlana_savitskaya.jpeg

Transcript

[Narration panel]

"The painting"

A weird space story, courtesy early buyers of A City on Mars

by

Kelly & Zach Weinersmith (lick for more info)

[Kelly reading "Diary of a Cosmonaut: 211 Days in Space"]

Caption: As part of our research for A City on Mars, we read a ton of memoirs. Most english-language space-memoirs are written by americans, so we were especially interested in other perspectives.

[Drawing of Valentin Lebedev]

Caption: Valentin Lebedev is known for his record-breaking 211 days in orbit in 1982 aboard Salyut-7 space station, and the brutally honest diary he kept about the experience.

[Valentin Lebedev writing on a sheet of paper, alone in a space station]

Caption: The first half is pretty interesting, even poetic. He talks about difficulty getting along with one other person in a tiny space. He gets fairly depressed at one point.

[Two photos of the book' text]

Caption: But as the book wears on you can tell his heart is no longer in it. He starts skipping days or putting in single-sentence entries. He's bored. You're bored.

November 16

Today has ben burdensome. We woke up early. We've been photographing the sun and I burned my eyeballs again. When I blink my eyes they feel like they're full of sand.

November 17

Last night I woke up twice because the shut-off alarm on the Korund was signaling and I had to restart it. In the morning the FCC checked the telemetry data and announced that a crystal had been successfully grown despite the problems.

We were give none hour of scheduled time to load all our return items

November 18:

Today we launched a student satellite Iskra-3, a repeater station for amateur short wave radio enthusiasts.

November 22:

We've already captured the longest record for days continuously spent living in space by ten percent.

[Text panel]

Caption: …until november 28th, his 200th day in space, when you read the weirdest paragraph ever printed in any space memoir:

By the way, we have a very nice picture hanging on the wall of our station. It was painted by the fellows who built the station. I feel it reflects our life on board perfectly. It shows a lonesome cowboy tied to a cross, with a gun mounted above, toward him. There is a string tied from the trigger of the gun to an unmentionable spot. In front of the cowboy sways a beautiful naked woman, torturing him with a teasing look. In the background stands the cowboy’s stallion with sympathetic tears dripping from his eyes, because he understands his master’s dilemma. In some ways I think we live the same way on the station, unable to indulge.

[Crude illustration of the above description, with arrows pointing to mentioned objects]

Caption: In case that's hard to visualize, here's a diagram using stick figures.

[Kelly looking intensely at a book, while Zach is watching discreetly with only his head visible through a doorway]

Caption: So. While we were not writing a book about outer space visual erotica featuring horses… And didn't really have time for extraneous research…

Kelly: I… Must… Know… More.

[Panel showing Armenian cognac and an "Emmanuelle" VHS]

Caption: On the one hand, the story was somewhat believable. Russian space stations were considerably more permissive than today's international space station - space station Mir reportedly had liquor and softcore porn videos, both taken in moderation.

[Kelly shouting at a computer screen]

Caption: However, this was the era of "socialist realism" as the acceptable art form. Also… just… you would think that if ever a space station harbored a painting of a naked woman and a cowboy with a pistol tied to his dong, someone on the internet would've said something about it.

Kelly: All these naked cowboy pictures, but none of them are the exact one I want!

[Valentin Lebedev reading from a sheet of paper]

Caption: In fact, we found only one other mention of the painting: from a somewhat cryptic earlier entry in Lebedev's Diary. He transcribes from a letter delivered via a resupply ship.

“Sveta told me about your painting of a cowboy. She said she liked the horse better.”

[Drawing of Svetlana Savitskaya, second woman in space, first woman in a space station]

Caption: “Sveta” is almost certaintly Svetlana Savitskaya who could've seen the painting when she spent a week aboard Salyut-7.

[Zach looks over Kelly, angry at her computer screen]

Caption: This suggests at least that the painting wasn't a one-time fever dream. But, two mentions from the same guy isn't a lot to go on. We decided to press forward in pursuit of the mystery.

Zach: Aren't you supposed to be researching international space law?

Kelly: I have many interests!

[Drawing of Dr. Justin Walsh, Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Chapman (asked us not to draw him like Indiana Jones)]

Caption: We reached out to space archaeologist, Dr. Justin Walsh.

Justin Walsh: Wait, your're putting me in a comic about what now?

[Pictures of Korolev, Lenin, Gagarin, and a question mark labeled "Cowboys in Distress?"]

Caption: He and his collaborators collect and analyze media from space stations. During the Salyut era, as they showed us, there were lots of pictures on the space station.

[Kelly, angry, reading her computer screen]

Caption: Justin shared tons of pictures with us by email, but none were even close to what Lebedev described.

"…the painting you are asking about was not in any photos we have seen. It sounds like a wild one!"

[Zach and Kelly arguing]

Caption: A tweet request for more info produced 18,000 impressions but zero leads.

Zach: You're researching space finance in here, right? You're in here reading those space-industry analyses, right?

Kelly: Nay-y-y-y!

[Zach and Kelly's argument got more intense]

Caption: Finally, through channels we will say nothing more about, we got one degree away from Lebedev himself.

Zach: You're not gonna get all the way to him and ask about the horse painting are you?

Kelly: This is my white whale!

[Kelly on a phone call]

Caption: It went poorly.

Kelly: Здравствуйте! What do I want to ask cosmonaut Lebedev? Well - I'd like to know what ahppened to that painting, the one with a naked woman, and there's a gun tied to a man's, you know, area, oh and he's a cowboy and there's a horse who… Hello? …Hello? Здравствуйте?

(It was actually an email, but this is how it felt.)

[Kelly talking to the reader]

Kelly: So, what was the fate of this masterpiece? We may never know.

[Lebedev looking intensely at a sheet of paper]

Caption: Lebedev could've taken it home after his 211 days…

Valentin Lebedev: We must preserve you for the motherland.

[A space station orbiting earth]

Caption: or someone else could have taken it when later cosmonauts visited Salyut-7 to salvage equipment for the Mir station…

Voice from the station: Bring back only what is priceless!

[View from earth of space debris burning up in the atmosphere]

Caption: or perhaps it remained in orbit, burning up in the atmosphere when Salyut-7 deorbited in 1991, spreading its equestrian beauty over the earth for all time.

[Kelly talking to the audience]

Kelly: We don't know. But, if you want to learn all about space settlement and hear some equally weird space stories, including one for instance involving Barry Goldwater and bull semen*, you can…

[Zach holding A City on Mars in front of him, Kelly shouting]

Zach: Buy our book-

Kelly: And if you know anything about the painting you have got to email me. Now!

click for info!

*Lest you get the wrong impression, most of the book is space science, space law, and space politics, not, you know, this sort of thing.

Votey Transcript

[Text-only panel]

We can do this, space-pals! We can solve this erotic equine mystery!

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