Yeah, I think the mountain shaped like a human skull is an absolute must for a “Lost World” adventure – I mean, the whole basic concept already stretches believability to the point of being thinner than the best Neapolitan pizza, so let’s at least stretch it with style. Same goes with the steaming jungle in the interior of an Aegean Island – a single surviving dinosaur is as implausible as a whole Jurassic ecosystem*, so let’s go with the more scenic choice.
As for overlooking that skull-shaped mountain…well, Sir Lostalot is a bit myopic (in his right eye), and since it didn’t exactly look like the ruins of some ancient civilization…
As for panel two, now that’s an absolute law of B-movies: Dinosaur footprints are always encountered ahead of actual dinosaurs. (In extreme cases, like “The Sound of Horror”, they are actually the only thing encountered.) By extension, it works for any kind of monster that leaves discernibly odd and preferably large footprints, but only for dinosaurs it’s obligatory. It works less well with conventional monsters – it might be a hint in Wolfman movies, a Frankenstein creature might leave prints that stick out for their size, but a vampire will at best leave a hint that he wears fashionable and expensive footwear. It nevers shows up in Ninja movies, since they don’t leave footprints to begin with. Aside from that, panel two depicts exactly what it would look like if a stingy prop guy like George Geekish tried to half-ass a cast of a dinosaur footprint over a human one: only convincing if the camera doesn’t linger on it for more than half a second.
The presence of the steaming jungle had another advantage: it supplied enough wood for Sir Lostalot’s team to erect a palisade around their camp. Anybody knows that a palisade is the simplest and most effective way to create an improvised defensive perimeter, right?
As far as Sir Lostalot’s “King of the Jungle” pedigree is concerned, it is certainly impressive. But, as amply demonstrated by the “Kings of Habsburg Spain”, even perfect royal pedigree isn’t necessarily a guarantee of overabundant kingliness. And aside from that, I’m not quite sure whether the result of combining a great white hunter and an apeman is more than the sum of its parts, or perhaps actually less.
And I just realized I made a mistake with Sir Lostalot’s lines – it shouldn’t be ‘the Lord Greystokes’, it should of course be ‘the Lords Greystoke’. Good thing none of his high-society friends overheard Sir making that little faux pas.
*Well, considering that reproduction requires a certain minimum population size, a single surviving dinosaur is actually even less plausible than a complete ecosystem surviving.
More on Thursday.