Mars Needs Women - and We Need Phones

I was sitting at the Girl Genius booth at Emerald City Comic-con, during a lull in traffic; Noodling in one of my many sketchbooks when I first had the idea for this "Mars Needs Women" poster. Taking the title from an old b-movie from the 60's, but stripping out the misogyny and racial panic subtext and turning it into a cool space exploration recruitment poster. 

There it sat in my sketchbook for about two years while I decided the best use for it. I made several approaches at the idea as a t-shirt design. But I was never really happy with the final flat color versions. 

Then about two weeks ago my wife informed me that her beloved Nextbit Robin phone that we had bought for her two years back was beginning to act strangely. Shutting down at half power, taking forever to charge, and eventually refusing to even boot up. Forever caught in a cycle of booting-crashing-and rebooting. 

I had seen this before with my old Nexus 7 tablet (now a paperweight). The battery was dying, but we then realized that replacing it was going to be a major pain. No OEM batteries are available from reputable sources; and the maker of the phone itself has been bought by a new company who only deals with support issues for phones bought in the last six months. 

At the same time my own phone (a Samsung Note 4 from 2014) is beginning to show the signs of it's own onset obsolescence. Four years is a lot to ask of a phone these days - and I've kept mine working with a regular application of backup batteries ( the Note 4 was I believe the last Samsung device that allowed users to swap batteries ) but the simple weight of time and archaic processors has slowed my device to a crawl. Nowadays I can regularly hit the call button and expect it to take a full minute before it actually respondes.

So, with the impending deadline of a total communication blackout I got back to work on getting a new art print done to headline a fundraising push - along with a big sale on all my stuff - for the next 4 weeks on my webshop the code MARSNEEDSWOMEN2018 will get you 20% off all orders.

If we can move 20 posters over the next few weeks it should benough to get at least one new phone. That will let the wife and me be able to stay in touch when she is doing her volunteer work at the local elementary school or out taking care of the stuff that would otherwise pull me away from my freelance gigs, coloring comics, and making kick-ass videos for other peoples 100k+ Kickstarter campaigns.  If we can move twice that. Well then we could be in some kind of magical future world when the sale ends on SEPTEMBER 19 (Talk Like a Pirate Day and... as you my know... my birthday)

Spread the Word!  - Chey