Ian Starshine makes it difficult for Roy to secure his freedom from Tarquin.
Cast[]
- Roy Greenhilt ◀ ▶
- Belkar Bitterleaf ◀ ▶
- Tarquin ◀ ▶
- Kilkil ◀ ▶
- Ian Starshine ◀ ▶
- Geoff ◀ ▶
- The Brontosaurus Express ▶
- Three Empire of Blood Soldiers
Transcript[]
- Panel 1
Out in the desert; a howdah mounted on a Brontasaurus.
Tarquin: Gentlemen, welcome to the Brontosaurus Express!
Tarquin: Beats walking back to town, huh?
- Panel 2
Roy: Isn’t a “brontosaurus” really just an apatosaurus with the head of a different dinosaur?
Tarquin: And a hippogriff is really just a horse with the head and wings of a bird, but I’ve still got eight squadrons mounted on the damn things.
Roy: Hmm, Fair enough.
Kilkil: General, here are the two prisoners that are being released.
Ian Starshine: Tarquin, you venomous snake in the sand! I should have known you’d—
- Panel 3
Roy (whispering): Calm down! You’re going to ruin everything! Look, you said they always manage to catch you somehow.
Roy: Well, I got us an official pardon, so now they won’t be looking for you at all. But ONLY if you play it cool.
- Panel 4
Tarquin: Huh. You know, you do look oddly familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?
Ian: Maybe you saw me in the arena, General. I did a lot of dodging there when I was first jailed.
- Panel 5
Ian: Oh, I know! Maybe you looked down and saw me when you were riding roughshod over my civil rights!
Tarquin: Perhaps. Or maybe I remember you from when you were biting the hand that was feeding you.
- Panel 6
Ian: Or maybe you saw me when I was throwing off the yoke of tyranny.
Tarquin: Or were you in the crowd cheering when I forged order and stability out of anarchy.
- Panel 7
Roy: Your definition of “playing it cool” substantially differs from mine.
Ian: Anarchy?? Try “freedom!”
Tarquin: Same concept.
Ian: This land doesn’t need your kind of stability!
Tarquin: Everyone needs my kind of stability.
- Panel 8
Ian: You facist[sic]—
Roy: OK, well. I’m sure the General would rather not be subjected to your troglodytic stench, so let’s just—
Tarquin: No…no, now I’m positive I know that man. Kilkil, let me see the prison files on this—
- Panel 9
Belkar, who had been sitting on the railing, falls off and bumps into Kilkil, "WHUMP!", causing the prison files on Ian and Geoff to go flying.
Belkar: Whoopsie daisy!
- Panel 10
The papers blow in the wind, scattered around the desert.
- Panel 11
Belkar: Physical comedy! HA!
Belkar: What else would you expect from a bumbling sidekick?
Trivia[]
- The title is the refrain of the historic 1963 Bob Dylan protest song, Blowin' in the wind.
- At the time that this comic was published, it was the long held belief within paleontology that the Brontosaurus was not its own species, with the type species being, as Roy notes in panel 2, an apatosaurus misidentified as a different species. Recent research has proposed that it is in fact a distinct genus with three separate species of Brontosaurus.
- This is the first appearance of the Brontosaurus.