A Boy, a Dog, a Nuke, and What They Influenced

Watching A Boy and His Dog brought up several things to mind: the fact that people in the future would look for women for carnal and culinary reasons, people underground would fake happiness with clown makeup and dogs would be smarter than humans by not pressing the red button. I also could not help but make comparisons to a comic and a video game series that features a man and man's best friend.

Post Nuke - Set in a land where nuclear winter has befallen Earth, the comic follows the adventures of survivor Christopher Manic and his (non-talking) dog Aries as they survive post-nuke raiders, zombies and a dystopian empire's control on Earth. The artwork by Andreas Duller is simply incredible, with a heavy amount of details going into textures in vivid black and white. Duller's style is both enthralling and harrowing and the story of Chris' journey and its plot will keep readers interested.

Post Nuke was originally to be a film project, but because of budget constraints, comic creater Duller decided to make an online graphic novel instead. You can look at the blog and artwork for Post Nuke and other creations here.

Fallout - In my graphic novel class, we read comics that depicted the creation and the atrocious consequences of using a nuclear weapon. The comic was Fallout, a scientific graphic nonfiction book I covered on my comics blog, The Graphic Maelstrom. Coincidentially, there is a game series called Fallout (Which I have not played yet) that depicts a man and his dog. The game is a role playing game where players walk around a post nuclear landscape in an alternate timeline. Below is the trailer for the latest entry of the series, Fallout 3. The trailer has a 1950s "nuclear war" spoof (Which serves as part of the backstory for the game). This is an Mature Rated game, so expect post nuclear carnage in form of hot lead, energy and missles to take place.

So what's with the "male human and his dog" complex? Did Duller borrow the concept from A Boy and His Dog? Duller commented that he had never played the Fallout games, so the possibility of him playing the game and borrowing the game's influences can be ruled out as a possibility. I have no idea if he ever saw A Boy and His Dog, but if he didn't, then it can be said the "boy and his dog" concept in a post-nuclear adventure would be as iconic as the warrior with his sword fighting ogres and dragons in swords and sorcery fantasy or spaceships being iconic with the realm of science fiction.

Yes, A Boy and His Dog was science fiction, and so is Post Nuke and Fallout. So where are the spaceships? Where are the aliens? Where are the ray guns? Well, it depends on what kind of science fiction you are looking into.

- Kristopher