The Book of the Living is finally delivered to Prof. Dr., but will it still be in time? And what happens if not?
And here our two separate story lines merge back into one again. Standard b-movie procedure would naturally require the decisive item to arrive in the nick of time, but once, just once, I would like to see it happen like that: After surmounting insurmountable odds, surviving unsurvivable dangers and…uhm, counting countless foes, the hero manages to deliver the pivotal artifact to the place of destination – 30 seconds after it has become useless. He will curse his weak bladder forever.
The airship picturesquely exploding in panel 1 is supposed be the air-battleship from strip 56 (–>link), of course, but it’s actually one of the infamous pictures of the Hindenburg disaster. That incident is often considered to be the first disaster of the media age, being covered live on radio and within hours in papers worldwide, and the few photographs made that fateful day are so well-traveled by now that I could design that panel layout without actually looking at that specific picture. I knew what it looked like, and I also knew that I would encounter no difficulty finding it somewhere. And I also knew what Sir Winston would have to say, of course.
And of top of it all, I got a typical b-movie effect out of it: the drawn foreground and photographed background look as ill-fitting as badly done double exposure or bluescreening.
As far as panel 4 is concerned: There’s a bit of mad scientist in every scientist! (And yes, he could have used the book if there still had been need. B-movies do not distinguish between scientists and wizards, they can all work miracles if they get the right book.)
And so, finally, Mussah ibn Omar al Extra can join his father and brothers in the big catering area in the sky, where all the spent extras go. I decided that ‘Gurk’ would be the proper sound effect for a heart attack, though it means ‘cucumber’ in German.
It is also time to say farewell to our friend Sir Winston, who will play no further role, at least not in this story arc. Men like Sir Winston never die (since they are fictional characters), so we might see him again some day.
A mummy bites the dust. He.
So what else remains for me to say but: Vote for me please, visit the forum if you like, and come back on Monday, if you wonder wherever Snuka got to. (Never forget that thieves can ‘hide in shadows’ as a class attribute.)