Karkus Khronicle Part Two: Enter the Rani (Briefly)

I needed a script - but how to set up our hero on his adventures?

An origin story was (and still is) out. Not necessary, too proprietory, and a bit presumptive. My inspiration breifly came from one of the Karkus' 'dads' - that is to say, someone else's character who is in my version's DNA.

Thrud the Barbarian was created by Carl Critchlow - also for a fanzine, as it happens, but more famously appearing in White Dwarf back when it was a genuine rolaplaying game magazine. Anatomically-impossible, Thrud's pea-head on a vast body of brawn was probably the strip's most immediate and most succesful aspect. That ratio of brain to bulk I based my silhouette of The Karkus on  - although I deliberately kept things simple in the art department for reasons of economy and also because, unlike Critchlow,  I never went to art school and had Bryan Talbot as a tutor.

In 'The Three Tasks of Thrud', Critchlow's barbarian hero is shanghaied by the necromancer To-Me-Ku-Pa into retrieving some componennts for a spell. As White Dwarf was only available to me if I made the trip to Dunedin and bought it, my teenaged self only had the first part of that miniseries - in other words, the set-up. Good enough.

The temporary result was another borrowing from the cradle of Critchlow, and a rough outline for an experimental opening strip was written down... somewhere... I'm sure I've seen it in the last twenty or so years... never mind.

Going by memory, and based on my style of the time, here's probably the most polished version of that abandoned story you're ever likely to see. New! Exclusive! Previously Unseen! Et cetera.

Pretty much before I finished that outline I decided I would have no Time Lords in my comic strip, and that's a rule I've (roughly) stuck to.

Next: A proper beginning!