Pump my ride – Chap. 5, Act 4, Strip 6

I’m growing increasingly suspicious of Biff, here – does he even still have got what it takes to fulfill his role in the team? Or rather, does he still lack what it takes? For even if he thinks he doesn’t know what being smart would feel like, just asking himself that question is pushing him into that direction. Add to this that he correctly predicted the next step in the pattern (assault on the hideout), and the team would really have to think about letting him go from his position as dimwitted strongman, if it wasn’t for the fact that his perception stops just barely short of fully grasping that armor/inflatable discrepancy.

And no, I have no idea how that’s supposed to work, either. ._.

But at least it’s really not too much of an anachronism. Predecessors of the armored car were around in 1899, and the first armored car proper, the British Simm’s Motor War Car, was actually ordered for use in the Boer War, although it was finished too late to take part. Our Professors, however, decided to go for a slightly more evolved model, the Austro Daimler of 1905…let’s just say they’ve both had experience with British cars over the course of their lifes…

For his war cry, the Professor has been going for an alternative to the traditional “Geronimo”. Geronimo was still alive in 1899, aged 69, and as far as history records seems to have tried to stay out of the Boer War – if the Professor would have been overheard shouting his name, decades before parachutes became common, it might have caused a confused footnote or two in history. Prussian cavalry general von Ziethen, dead for 200 years at that time, seemed a safer choice – and it’ll also save the Professor any complaints about cultural appropriation, since he’s probably got some Prussians somewhere in his ancestry.

More on Thursday.

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