So, yeah – as far as putting strengths against weaknesses is concerned, this one was quite obvious…and kinda anti-climactic, even.
But that’s kind of inevitable, if you pit science against magic. That’ll always be a short fight with an unambiguous outcome – in our world, science will always win hands down. In a fantasy setting, however, the same goes for magic, instead. You see, magic is an extremely powerful force, what with being able to transcend the laws of nature, and all. So, in the places where it actually exists, there’s not much that can stand against it. Save, of course, more magic…or a thief hiding in the shadows, or an Elven archer the magic-user overlooked, or a raging berzerker oblivious to his surroundings, or…you catch my drift. There are things that can stand against magic, even in a fantasy setting, but science isn’t one of them. You could even suspect that that’s one of the main motivators for creating such a setting in the first place…
The evil!Professor makes that realization, but too late to do anything about it…though, once he fathoms the depths of woo that make up the reality he’s been transplanted to, he no longer really minds dying all that much. Would you want to live in a world where all of that superstitious nonsense and magical thinking is actually real? Yeah, and that goes doubly or more for the Professor, who’s spent more about a century being a man of science. And, despite the superiority of magic over science in this setting, he at least gets the satisfaction that his opponent doesn’t escape the encounter unharmed, either…although it’s self-inflicted damage. That old issue with a fireball spell in an enclosed space. >_>
Final score of the second round: Team Good 5 / Team Evil 0. As it has to be.
More on Monday.
I sincerely thought at panel 3 the strategy was to give the evil!Professor a heart-attack and that we’d be treated to two more wordless copy/pastes of panel 3 followed by a panel of the evil!Professor suddenly clutching his chest and then fall backwards with a frozen-in-terror-rigor mortis frontal shot of him while on the ground (as is the way of all death-induced surprise heart-attacks).
Having typed that up, I now realize that while comedic, there’d be no logical reason for the Professor (either version) to have a delayed reaction and it’d be even MORE anti-climatic than this scene was.
Oh, I think that would have worked as well and made just as much sense as what I wrote. And made for better visuals, even. Too bad I didn’t think about it. XD And it’s not like it would have been much of a plothole…after all, at the Professor’s canonical age, it shouldn’t take a lot to push him over the cliff. The Barbessor/Professorian might rightly lament his loss of intellectual capacity, but in terms of remaining life expectancy, he definitely made a pretty good trade.
That looked like Prof exploded from realization that he was gonna lose 😀
Well, I guess that explanation would work just as well as the thing with Gregory casting a fireball spell…let’s simply leave it open, and everyone can make up their own minds about it. XD