Prof. Dr. shouldn’t really feel stupid for giving his ultimate weapon away without need, that’s also just some time-honored b-movie mechanism, common especially in serials. Flash Gordon seems to be unnaturally fond of it, for one: Episode xx1 Flash faces some monster, armed only with his bare hands, they struggle: cliffhanger. Episode xx2: struggle continues, Flash finds a laser rifle on the ground and kills the monster. The rifle drops to the ground faster than Snuka’s moral standards in a candy shop, then Flash walks around the corner…and faces some monster, armed only with his bare hands. If he just would learn to hang on to his tools, Flash could dispose of ten episodes’ worth of opponents in 20 minutes…
Today also marks Prof. LaFebrezé’s final appearance in the strip (as far as it’s been scripted yet), and he quotes an argument often fielded to defend the idea of Ancient civilizations’ superiority: their avowed mathematical precision. In reality, it runs a bit like this:
“I found a wooden peg in the ruins, and when I measured it, it was precisely 22,3469343239 centimeters long, and not even 0,000000000001 centimeters longer or shorter! How could they achieve such precision without modern technology? Another proof of Alien involvement in the birth of Egyptian civilization!”