©Dead Numbat Productions
Part One: "The Howling Void Sings Val Doonigan"
Story/Art: Trudy Cooper
Story/Script: Danny Murphy
Story/Stuff: Doug Bayne
Man with a Mobile Phone: Roger Beames

One of our most bizarre images was provided by Col. G. L. Sicherman of Lucent Technologies, who found this lanthanum joke in issue #4 of the Australian independent comic Platinum Grit. The dialog plays with the origin of the name lanthanum, which comes from the Greek verb lanthanein, to lie hidden. The plot of the story from which the dialog is taken is perhaps best summarized by this e-mail exchange with Col. Sicherman, who admits, "it's a strange comic book."

JPS: Is it any less confusing IN context, my sweaty-flanked okapi?

CS: Not a bit. An Australian comics web site gives plot summaries of all the issues of Platinum Grit, and the overall plot looks unfathomable. I don't know how Jeremy and Nilson ended up in space and I don't know what the aliens are after them for—knowledge, presumably. The "restaurant" is aboard the alien spaceship.

JPS: Is the restaurant mentioned on that page?

CS: Jeremy is sitting across from Nils in the restaurant that the aliens have constructed for the experiment. The alien leader is making Jeremy say things that Jeremy would never say under his own control. In a panel on page 22 a sign reads

Tolken Backburner's Bar 'n' Grill
Please Wait to be Seated

This may be an obscure Aussie allusion or just a pointless whimsy. It's not a case for scientific analysis....