Six months passed between Chapter Nineteen and Chapter Twenty of the Victorian story. Either I had a creative block, or, more likely, I was just lazy. The Victorian installments took a long time to do, by my standards.

“The Dead and Living Meet” is the title of a chapter in H. Rider Haggard’s She, about a terrifying and powerful queen who rules over an African tribe. I thought it was appropriate for the reveal in this chapter. It’s Chapter 21 in She, so if I’d timed things just a little better, I could’ve paired it with the appropriate chapter number. Oh well.

Italian on this page:

She knows that.

Of course you aren’t, Your Majesty.

I think I mentioned the Twin Mountains as a reference to Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, in which Allan Quatermain and his party of adventurers pass through a pair of mountains known as “Sheba’s Breasts.” The geography in King Solomon’s Mines is kind of raunchy.

I don’t like the way Dave-in-the-Hapax-Legomenon’s poses came out in some of these panels, but at least Pim-in-Dave looks good. Pim-in-Dave is consistently kind of adorable. I guess it’s the hat.

“Jupiter’s thunder!” is a line spoken by David Cross in a “Mr. Show” sketch. If I could have fit more lines from “Mr. Show” into Narbonic, I would have done so without shame.

It’s possible that I put off drawing this chapter for six months because I was cowed by the prospect of drawing a 200-foot-tall granite statue of Dr. Narbon, but in the end it came out okay. So I had nothing to worry about after all!