618: Asteroid

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Asteroid
My Deep Impact/Little Prince crossover fanfic has been poorly received by the community.
[Click comic to enlarge]
Title text: My Deep Impact/Little Prince crossover fanfic has been poorly received by the community.

Explanation

The end of the world has been envisioned in many ways. One of the most common is with a really big rock hitting Earth. There is an online calculator for asteroid impacts, but don't worry any rock that does hit Earth isn't likely to kill everyone. And, as seen in a what-if article, speed counts too.

The joke here, though, is that, after sending up a robot to blow the asteroid to smithereens, said rock is actually the home of the Little Prince from the wildly famous tale by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. To save our world, we must destroy his. And probably the prince along with it. If the only way to save our species is by killing off another species, is the act still ethical? In none of the world-destroying asteroid stories were said rocks actually home to intelligent life. Or any life, for that matter. Also, in said movies the "heroic" mission always involves humans in some way imperiling themselves to save humanity, rather than, say, staying safely at home and using a robotic rover to do all the dangerous stuff.

The title text is a reference to the first asteroid movie linked to in "really". Fanfic is short for Fan Fiction,e.g. a fictional story written by someone who loves a particular story/series/idea so much they wanted to write their own tale about it (or one who hated said story so much they felt compelled to fix it).

Transcript

News-anchor woman reporting a breaking news bulletin.
Anchorwoman:Astronomers have confirmed that the asteroid is headed for Earth.
Anchorwoman: NASA has launched a heroic mission to land a rover on the asteroid, drill into it, and destroy it with nuclear bombs.
Comic switches to the mission control center for the rover
Controller-Technician: The rover has landed successfully and planted the nukes! we're saved!
Second Controller: Hooray!
Off-Panel Controller: We're Heroes!
On the asteroid the rover counts down, while a little ways a way a small human figure stares in confusion.
Rover: 0:05...0:04...0:03