Just a little addendum to the happy end from the last strip, confirming that the Professorian will manage to enter the lore and legend of his strange, new world. As we would have expected of him, naturally.

And it almost counts as a happy end in its own right – not for any of the characters, but for that Robert E. Howard quote I’ve been using (and misusing) so much in the course of this chapter. Here, finally, it gets a chance to appear in full, and fulfill it’s proper purpose: to introduce a legendary barbarian, rather than just some forest or other, over and over again…

I still like the part about the oceans drinking Atlantis the best, and I’m really not down too much with the idea of spread-out, blue mantles making for particularly attractive visuals. But I tried to illustrate it as faithfully as possible. The guy probably knew what he was doing, he was a master of evocative language… >_>

The rest of the quote required only slight adaptations, regarding things like hair color and such. I decided to leave the ‘sullen-eyed’ part in – the Professorian might not feel too sullen right at the moment, but sooner or later he will. At the latest when he hits puberty. Again. (Assuming it’s as bad the second time you go through it as the first…hard to say, actually…)

And when it came to footwear, I decided to adapt the character’s equipment to the quote, rather than the other way around. I’ve never been entirely convinced by those furry boots the Barbessor has been wearing the whole time, on grounds of aesthetics, practicality and hygiene. Sandals suit him much better, and are lots more practical. Unless you happen to stumble over a bejeweled throne, half-buried in the ground. And that probably won’t happen all that often, even in a world where kingdoms are spread out like mantles. ._.

More on Thursday.