Bad Day on the Moon

“Bad Day on the Moon”
Based on the completely obscure French farce, "Garçon, une omelette et deux bifteks"
	; The front cover of Bad Day on the Moon.
Year	1992
# of pages	15
First appearance	Sam & Max: Freelance Police #1
Published by	Epic Comics
Comics
"The Damned Don't Dance"	"Beast from the Cereal Aisle"

From Sam & Max Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

This page is about the comic. For the animated series episode with the same name, see Bad Day on the Moon (Cartoon episode).

Bad Day on the Moon is a 15-page Sam & Max comic first published in 1992 with Dirt Magazine.

[edit] Synopsis

After dealing with a gang of rats extorting an ice cream salesman, Sam & Max get to the office in time to answer The Commissioner's call. He sends them the details on a postcard, and once they get it they set out to journey to the moon --by stuffing the muffler of the Desoto with hundreds of matches.

They use paper bags to breathe on the moon, but after Max picks some moon dirt out of his eye they notice it actually has a breathable atmosphere. On the way to a nearby city they hitch a moon buggy ride with what seem to be a Gorilla and "Donkey Man", who mistake them for someone else. After Sam's insightful deduction that zebras do not have hands and so cannot drive moon buggies, he advises Max to stay cool until they find out more about the unusual individuals. They stop at a convenience store and the two pull out guns to hold it up. Finding that the situation is in need of their Freelance Policing, Sam and Max quickly take down the hoodlums off-screen. The shopkeeper, still with his arms in the air and in shock, is grateful for the strangers' intervention and insists that they meet the Mayor.

The Mayor, a giant disembodied rat head, asks them to resolve a "pest problem" they've been having. The man-sized rat-populated city is troubled by abductions emanating from the nearby dark side of the moon. The dark side turns out to be populated by giant (50ft) cockroaches, who walk on their hind legs and have a surprisingly human-like civilization. As it turns out, these cockroaches are using the rats as artificial sweeteners for their coffee. Sam & Max get spotted and they dash a retreat back to Moontown. As Sam is sighing with relief that he managed to barely escape before the roach turned on an electric fence, he realizes that Max was too slow and is now nothing more than a gooey scalp with ears. Sam pulls out his spare paper bag from his inside coat pocket and puts Max's remains inside.

Wondering what to do now, Sam suddenly hears Max's voice calling him. He looks around but doesn't see him until Max explains that he is inside Sam somehow. Uncomfortable with just talking to his hand, Sam places the scalp and draws eyes and a mouth on his hand to make it look more like Max. He makes his way to the Mayor, who directs them to his Minister of Science. The Minister hooks them up to a machine, with Max into a tank and Sam wearing a helmet. As the rat makes all the preparations of regeneration, Sam starts up an conversation with Max about an idea that dawned on him while he was "hauling [Max's] remains around in that oily paper bag".

Later on, Sam and Max make it back to Earth. The Moon Roaches and Earth have made an agreement that the Roaches are able to eat as much garbage the Earth has, presumably in exchange for leaving the Moon Rats alone. Sam watches the parade from the top of their apartment's rooftop as Max, uninterested in the celebration on The Street, chases around a pigeon in his brand-new body. It seems like a happy ending until Sam and Max go back to their office. Waiting in the darkness, an "itty-bitty earth roach" lies in wait to shoot them when they walk through the door. Sam tries to talk to the roach, but it is too discontent with the unfairness that foreigners get benefits first before the citizens. Max, clearly not listening or caring about the Roach's spiel, steps on it. Sam is a bit disappointed with Max's solution to their problem, but drops the subject when he notices Max isn't paying attention to him either. Sam unwinds at his desk by pulling out his banjo and singing about their adventure on the Moon, and Max pipes in with a bagpipe solo.