Cold Equation / Comic Books

Cold Equations run in Comic Books.

• Echoed and possibly referenced by Mark Verheiden and Mark A. Nelson's follow-on graphic novel set ten years after Aliens. Hicks smuggles Newt aboard a weight-critical ("gravity-balanced") ship on its way to the alien homeworld. The situation is averted on this occasion, as he took pains to dump stores equivalent to her weight before takeoff.
• It is alleged that Godwin (author of The Cold Equations) essentially took the story from a story published in EC Comics' Weird Science #13, May-June 1952, called "A Weighty Decision," scripted by Al Feldstein. In that story there are three astronauts who are intended to be on the flight, not one, and the additional passenger, a girl that one of the astronauts has fallen in love with, is trapped aboard by a mistake rather than stowing away. As in The Cold Equations, various measures are proposed but the only one which will not lead to worse disaster is for the unwitting passenger to be jettisoned. Other sources note that the theme of Feldstein's story is itself strikingly similarly to the story "Precedent", published by E.C. Tubb in 1949; in that story, as in the others, a stowaway must be ejected from a spaceship because the fuel aboard is only enough for the planned passengers. These sources argue that neither Feldstein nor Godwin intentionally "swiped" from the stories that came before, but merely produced similar variations on an ancient theme, that of an individual being sacrificed so that the rest may survive.
• Rick Random: Space Detective, a comic of the 1950's. In "Kidnappers from Mars!" Space Pirates get caught in a space tide and realise the only means of escape is the two-man space shuttle. The Big Bad and his Femme Fatale girlfriend hide until all the other pirates have killed each other fighting over the shuttle, then take off in it.
• Robin (1993): When Tim Drake is stuck in the back of an armored truck that's been buried in cement with the Cluemaster one of his first thoughts is that he'd live longer if he killed Brown to prevent him from using up any more of their limited oxygen. He's immediately ashamed he was thinking about it and feels Bruce would be disappointed in him. Luckily Spoiler saves them before it becomes too much of an issue.
• Star-Lord once blew up a moon inhabited by 35,000 people in order to generate enough energy to defeat the Fallen One, a former herald of Galactus who had been serially destroying planets. He promptly turned himself over to the Nova Corps and stopped using the title of Star-Lord for a time.
• Star Wars: Doctor Aphra: Early in the Remastered arc, Triple Zero puts Dr Aphra in this position just to Kick the Dog. He hires one too many mercenaries for her mission so her spacecraft is too heavy to take off, then lets her choose who gets to stay behind and get killed by the Imperial stormtroopers he's tipped off about their presence. He's not the last person she ends up sacrificing on that mission either, which Triple Zero also knew would happen.
• In the Tintin comic album Explorers on the Moon, when Thompson and Thomson turn up as accidental stowaways on the Moon-Rocket, Calculus worries that, since oxygen supplies were assessed for only four people, there might not be enough for six, and decides to shorten the trip from fourteen to ten days. It gets worse when Colonel Jorgen is revealed to have smuggled himself on board, with the help of The Mole. He intends to maroon Tintin and his companions on the surface of the Moon, pointing out that they don't have enough oxygen to bring prisoners back to Earth. Later when the villains are overpowered, Tintin refuses to leave them behind despite having exactly the same problem. After Jorgen is killed in a Gun Struggle, Wolff decides to atone for his actions by stepping out the airlock. Even so Tintin and his companions almost don't make it back to Earth.
• Twisted for a Xxxenophile story. The bomb shelter will only hold two, and the female character tells her two male companions that if she has to repopulate the Earth she wants to enjoy herself doing it, so "auditions" are now in order. World War III did not just break out, she said it had as an excuse for threesome sex.