The Four Color Media Monitor

Collect Space announced there's a comic book that's been prepared about the history of Vulcan rockets, drawn by employees of United Launch Alliance:

Vulcan, United Launch Alliance's (ULA) new heavy-lift rocket, was not the result of having to flee an exploding planet, being exposed to gamma rays or even surviving the bite of a radioactive spider, but it does have an origin story compelling enough to warrant it having its own comic book.

Or so struck Cory Wood, ULA's senior graphic designer, who led the creation of "Ignition! The Origin Story of the Vulcan Centaur Rocket," the first (and perhaps only) issue of the aerospace company's new celebratory graphic novel.

"I'm sort of a big nerd. And so in thinking about it, how do you tell the story of something that has taken this much time, this much effort and all of these people's intelligence and background to make it successful?" said Wood in an interview with collectSPACE. "It just felt like that superhero moment that needed its origin story told. And a comic book, that's how you tell a superhero's origin story, right?"

ULA's CEO Tory Bruno, who is depicted in "Ignition!", revealed the comic book's existence on social media on Friday (April 5), three days before its physical debut at Space Foundation's Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. Attendees will be able to pick up a copy while ULA finalizes its plans for making the comic book available to the general public. (A digital version can be found on ULA's website.)

This could, with the cards played right, make for an ideal focus on astronomy in comicdom.

Labels: history, science, technology