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Someone asked me to do a six page story for them and so I cranked out this untold tale of the Soviet Space Dog, Laika. Any thoughts? I'd really appreciate feedback. It can only be six pages but I'd like to know what people think. And please don't ask me why there are cavemen in it. I don't know how they got there.
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Page 1
6 panels
PANEL 1 - A hero's dinner in a plush, dark red and bright gold dining room deep inside Red Square in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Nikita Khrushchev, stuffed uncomfortably into his suit, looking like Don Rickles with Madonna's gap-toothed smile, is gripping the shoulder of a frail seated man, Sergei Korolev. We should be able to identify that it's the late 1950's by their clothes.
The captions are from two different speakers, which should be indicated with lettering or coloring.
KHRUSHCHEV - Sputnik's launch is the first decisive victory in our long, cold war against the forces of Western capitalism. We must consolidate our victory with a swift second launch.
CAPTION: What's that mutt doing in here?
CAPTION: A stray. No one knows how he got past the fence. But he's perfect isn't he?
PANEL 2 - Korolev looks up, nervous and eager to please the Soviet Premier.
KOROLEV: I have a science satellite ready to launch in December -
KHRUSHCHEV: Surely the Soviet Union can better commemorate the 40th Anniversary of our Bolshevik Revolution by launching a living creature into orbit.
KHRUSHCHEV: I'll consider your stunned silence to be a “yes”, Comrade Korolev.
CAPTION: She.
CAPTION: We launch in three weeks. Who's going to take care of her until then?
PANEL 3 - in an office in the Soviet Space Center in Star City, we see our caption talkers. They stand on either side of a super-cute mutt, sitting on the floor looking up at them: Laika, the space dog. One of the men is Sergei Korolev whom we just met. The other is his deputy, good-looking, enormous Boris Chertok, an uptight individual in a super-sharp suit who looks like he had an entire chimney hammered up his ass, brick by brick.
KOROLEV: You are. Don't worry. She's a good dog. Aren't you?
CHERTOK: I'm allergic to animals. She'll sleep outdoors on the terrace.
PANEL 4 - inside Chertok's bedroom where everything is neat, orderly and geometric. Chertok sits in front of the glass door to his terrace in a leather chair reading “Have Spacesuit Will Travel” by Robert Heinlein. Laika is curled up on his lap, dozing.
LAIKA: (caption) Good man. Keep Laika warm. Reads out loud for nice sound for Laika to hear. Reads about space. Row bots. A leans. Exciting hearing.
LAIKA: (caption) Laika is smart dog. Laika is good dog.
PANEL 5 - Chertov is at his desk in Star City, the room is a swarm of activity. He's dashing out sketches of transistors.
CHERTOV: (caption) With only three weeks, we had to work fast. Engineering built from our sketches as we finished them. Blueprints? No time. We improvised Sputnik 2 like jazz.
PANEL 6 - Chertov and Laika walking through the snow on a beautiful winter day. Chertov is bundled up in his sharp overcoat and hat with ear flaps, throwing a stick for an ecstatic Laika. This is not the same tight ass we saw just a few panels back. This is a man who loves his dog.
TITLE: The Completely True and Secret Story of Laika the Space Dog
PAGE 2
5 panels
PANEL 1 - Laika is bundled up inside Sputnik 2, a giant cradle of technology for one silly looking dog. She sits inside her techno kennel like a princess, but this isn't the kind of technology we think about when we think about high tech. Nothing gleams. No lights flash. This is old school tech: vacuum tubes and glass transistors, air hoses and puck-sized solenoids. Hard plastic buttons and telephone switches. In a nice touch of old world meets new, there's a chain running from Laika's leather harness to a bolt welded badly to the capsule wall.
CAPTION: November 3, 1957. Anniversary of the Great Bolshevik Revolution.
CHERTOV: (caption) Life support system: untested. Heat shielding: untested. Communications system: untested. I don't feel good about this. Poor Laika. The only thing they guaranteed would work is the poison.
LAIKA: Exciting. Everyone play. Watch Laika.
PANEL 2 - technicians are closing the heavy hatch door on Laika who is glowing with all the attention. Chertov reaches in to give her one last, furtive pat.
CHERTOV: Good dog. Good Laika.
LAIKA: (caption) Ha!
PANEL 3 - The enormous double-engined ICBM with the Sputnik 2 module in its nose-cone is vomiting a Hawaii-sized cloud of white smoke and fire over the launch pad almost totally obscuring the gantries and scaffold towers that surround it as it slowly, stupidly, lifts off.
PANEL 4 - inside Laika's living module. On the wall is a roll-over mission clock showing the time: 00:07:26. Laika is in zero gravity and doesn't look pleased about it. Her eyes are half-closed.
LAIKA: (caption) Hot! Too hot! Where is man? Where is man?!?
LAIKA: (caption) Laika sick.
PANEL 5 - Laika exhausted, vomit coming out of her mouth and floating away in the zero gravity. Mission clock reads: 00:07:54.
KOROLEV: (caption) Her pulse and blood pressure are too high. The temperature is off the charts. I'm sorry, Boris. Maybe it would be kinder if we fed her the poison now.
LAIKA: (caption) Laika sick. Bad man.
PAGE 3
6 panels
PANEL 1 - outside the Sputnik 2, in Earth orbit. The Sputnik 2 is a tiny cone floating in orbit with one booster rocket still attached. Swallowing it is an enormous alien space craft, sucking it into a landing bay. This thing is huge: it looks like Westminister Abbey grafted to Notre Dame with a couple of oil refineries stuck to the sides.
KOROLEV: (caption) Boris, she's suffered enough. Be reasonable. You knew we didn't have the technology to bring her back.
KOROLEV: (caption) She'll burn up during re-entry if we don't poison her. The poor dog doesn't stand a chance.
PANEL 2 - aliens surround Laika who is lying on a plush alien pillow on the ground. The look like knives with arms and legs, long and thing and covered with barbs. But they've got cute eyes.
ALIEN: Greeting to you, Earth Animal. We have arrived with eager to visit your planet. You are first Earth Animal we encounter.
PANEL 3 - close-up on Laika.
LAIKA: No. Bad planet. People bad. Laika only good animal on planet. Laika leaves planet because of badness.
PANEL 4 - The aliens consider this.
ALIEN: Brave guardian. Stay here with our blessing. Protect innocent travelers from setting psuedopod on this cursed earth.
ANOTHER ALIEN: (handing Laika a strange helmet) We gift you our greatest gift: the Time Hat. See past and future appear before your very eyes!
PANEL 5 - Laika is wearing the ridiculous Time Hat. It makes her head look like an enormous ping pong ball with a ray gun on top. It even has a little chin strap.
LAIKA: Laika will use it wisely.
LAIKA: (thought balloon) Laika will punish the bad men.
PANEL 6 - the enormous, cantilevered space ship is fading elegantly out of our time space, folding itself up into another dimension. The tiny Sputnik 2 floats in orbit as if nothing happened.
LAIKA: (caption) Bad men. Bad men will pay for hurting Laika.
PAGE 4
5 panels
PANEL 1 - a hole has been ripped open in the fabric of time right smack dab in the middle of Red Square. Out of the hole are pouring screaming Neanderthals with automatic weapons. They wear bandoliers of bullets over their hairy chests, screaming foul Neanderthal oaths. They fire indiscriminately into the crowd of sleepy Russians
CHERTOV: (caption) They came out of nowhere.
CHERTOV: (caption) Caveman Commandoes! From the dawn of time they came, armed with automatic weapons and with a flint axe to grind.
PANEL 2 - a Russian airbase. We're on the runway as pilots scramble to take their MIGs up to combat this caveman invasion. On the edge of the panel a few of the pilots are sticking their pistols in their mouths. Why? Because another rip in time has opened in the sky above and out of it are floating tiny, cute puppies with heads the size of weather balloons. They float, levitated by their super-sized craniums, shooting rays of mental energy out of their enormous brains, destroying planes and frying humans.
CHERTOV: (caption) The Evolvo Pups! Puppies of the future. So cute that soldiers killed themselves rather than shoot them. Yet their mind rays crippled our air force before we could fight back.
CHERTOV: (caption) And behind them all…
PANEL 3 - through the streets of Moscow it comes…a giant fighting robot! A suit of armor like something designed by the most twisted Japanese anime genius as he comes down off three solid days of smoking crystal meth. Missiles on the shoulders, massive clawed feet, multiple ripping arms. Planes try to take it down, to no avail. It tosses tanks with ease. Civillians run screaming, blind with panic. And in its cockpit we see who controls it: Laika.
CHERTOV: (caption) …LAIKA!!! THE SPACE DOG!
LAIKA: (with amplified voice) Bad man.
PANEL 4 - A fat, slovenly man with one eye, a scar down his cheek and an artificial hand sits in a command chair, belching quietly.
CHERTOV: (caption) It took them two days to reduce our cities to rubble. Cats committed mass suicide. So did people Our defenses were led by the oldest dog catcher in the Soviet Union.
DOG CATCHER: I eat puppies.
PANEL 5 - pitched battle. Caveman Commandoes clamber up the sides of smoking buildings. Evolvo Pups float high above the city, striking down hapless soldiers with their mind beams. Laika's giant kill-bot tears through the defenses. Mailmen, dripping pepper spray and full of rage, fight back. It's house to house combat: ugly, and grueling.
CHERTOV: (caption) A suicide brigade of mailmen soaked in pepper spray and blinded by decades of hate staged a last ditch defense of Leningrad.
MAILMAN: MORE BIGGER GUNS!!!
PAGE 5
6 panels
PANEL 1 - the battle rages, but it is clear the tide has turned. Evolvo pups are taken down by ground-to-air missiles. Caveman Commandoes are on the run. Soldiers blow ultrasonic dog whistles.
CHERTOV: (caption) We won, of course. After all, we were men and they were…
CHERTOV: (caption) …just dogs.
PANEL 2 - Laika's giant robot is still wreaking havoc. Even with the full might of the Soviet Army turned against it, Laika appears unstoppable.
CHERTOV: (caption) Only Laika refused to admit defeat.
PANEL 3 - Chertov is in an underground bunker with the Dog Catcher who is pointing to a diagram on the wall showing how a sniper will hide behind the curvature of the earth, fire a drill-tipped bullet through the planet, and kill Laika.
DOG CATCHER: Sniper hides behind curve of earth. Bullet drill-tipped. Goes through planet. Hits puppy. Kills puppy.
CHERTOV: And all I have to do is lure Laika out of her armour?
DOG CATCHER: Easy, no?
PANEL 4 - Chertov, tiny and vulnerable, stands in front of Laika's mighty battle armor on the killing ground. He holds out his arms to show he's weaponless.
CHERTOV: (caption) They parachuted me in. All I had to do was lure Laika to the exact spot targeted by the sniper. I was so scared I could hardly remember how to speak.
CHERTOV: Laika? It's me. I want to see you.
PANEL 5 - from Laika's point of view in the massive battle bot, looking down through the cockpit at the tiny man on the scorched earth.
CHERTOV: Please, Laika. You're a good dog.
PANEL 6 - the cockpit is open, Laika is leaping into Chertov's arms. After all, she is just a dog. All she wants is approval.
CHERTOV: I'm sorry, Laika. I shouldn't have let them take you.
CAPTION: Target acquired. We're taking the shot.
PAGE 6
6 panels
PANEL 1 - Chertov is throwing Laika out of his arms, leaping in front of the bullet that's coming for Laika. It strikes him in the back.
CHERTOV: Run, Laika!
PANEL 2 - Chertov lies dead on the ground. Laika nudges his face with her muzzle.
LAIKA: (caption) Good man.
PANEL 3 - back on the Sputnik 2. Laika's fur is matted. She's sweating profusely and her eyes are glassy and half-closed. She's almost dead. The mission clock on the wall reads the same time as before, just a few seconds later: 00:07:54.
LAIKA: (caption) Good man.
PANEL 4 - Chertov sits at his cluttered desk. There's activity all around him, but he just sits there staring straight ahead, a cooling cup of tea in his hand.
CHERTOV: (caption) I shouldn't have done it. We didn't learn anything. All we did was kill a good dog. My dog. I should have said something.
PANEL 5 - Chertov loading two dog carriers into his car.
CHERTOV: (caption) Albina and Mushka were Laika's back-ups for the flight. With no launch planned they were going to be put down. It cost a month's salary to get them out.
CHERTOV: (caption) It was worth it.
PANEL 6 - like the earlier panel of Chertov reading to Laika, except now Mushka and Albina lie at his feet. His book is closed in his lap. Outside, through the window, in the night sky you can see a shooting star: Sputnik 2 burning up during re-entry.
CHERTOV: (caption) I miss you, Laika.
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Thanks for your time. |
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