zombie

Once again, Blackstar is engaged in the delicate art of negotiating for allies against the Overlord. This time, his quest has brought him, Mara and several of the Trobbits to the city of Gondar. The rulers, Prince Dal and Princess Lowena, are divided over whether or not to join the rebellion. Lowena feels it's only a matter of time before their city is oppressed by the Overlord, while Dal hesitates and wants time to think the matter over.

The original storyboard design for Dal and Lowena called for a more elaborate costume than what was finally animated. Dal in the storyboard sketch (lower left) has a moustache, while the sketch of Lowena (lower right) gives her a high-necked gown and mortarboard hairpiece. The final animation, however, leaves Dal clean-shaven, and Lowena in a brief, bathrobe-type outfit that, as we will see, sometimes reveals more than it ought.

Lowena is what Mara might look like without her headdress. Something to ponder.

What follows next sets a pattern for the episode in that Blackstar manages to pull off more acrobatics in twenty minutes than the whole men's U.S. Olympics gymnastics team put together. On the way down, he grabs a conveniently placed vertical pole and flips himself around. Not only does he stick the landing, he catches Poulo, too! But because Our Hero has only two hands, Mara has to save the rest of the cast from a messy landing with one of her levitating magic spells.

As we soon learn, even solid ground doesn't provide security. Large cracks open up in the street as Marakand passes overhead, and debris is falling all over the place. Our heroes make a run for it, but are trapped in a dead end of fallen masonry. The floating city looms overhead, then the vortex hits. Mara, Lowena, Gossamer and Poulo are immediately sucked up into the vacuum. Blackstar, who we should remember been in this situation before, knows it's better not to find out what's on the other side of the vortex and grabs hold of yet another conveniently placed trellis and catches Dal before he, too, is pulled up. Dal grabs hold of Balkar and Rif, and together the four of them ride out the vortex.

Marakand passes off into the distance, leaving behind a ruined city. Dal is despondent over the loss of Lowena and his people, and Blackstar certainly isn't going to take any of this crap lying down. He's all for going up to the floating citadel and rescuing the girls. The problem is, there's no way to get up to Marakand.

At this point, you may ask yourself: where's Warlock in all of this? Things would be so much simpler if Blackstar could simply take that stock animation vault onto the dragon's back and fly up to Marakand with the hyperactive main theme blaring in the background. No such luck. Our heroes are stuck on the trellis.

But it just so happens that Dal is a bit of a wizard himself. He waves his hand, the trellis breaks off from the building it's attached to and goes flying toward Marakand with our heroes on board. The only problem is that Dal, like Mara, can't keep his spells up for very long. He manages to get as far as the base of the city, but from that point on everyone's going to have to climb. What a hell of a week for Warlock to go on vacation.

Meanwhile, in the city's palace, located in the Temple of the Labyrinth, Mara, Lowena and the two Trobbits are brought before Shaldemar, the ruler of Marakand (pictured, right). Now Shaldemar is one nasty couch potato of a villain who laughs a lot and lovingly caresses the orb sitting on his lap. He is delighted with the importance of his prisoners and tells Mara and the others that he will drain their energies personally, after which they will become zombie slaves of the Overlord. Obviously the idea doesn't sit too well with Mara. She fires away with her magic, which is absorbed by the orb and then by Shaldemar himself. A tasty treat, he tells her, that leaves him hungry for more.

Gossamer escapes from the temple and, as he hovers over the rooftops, he can see clear across to the horizon. And what he sees is a pretty awful sight to a Trobbit. Marakand is headed straight for the Sagar Tree. Yep, it seems that old Shaldemar is in the market for some real estate that features tacky rainbows and flying geese. In any event, Gossamer panics and goes looking for Blackstar, whom he assumes must be in the city. After all, what else would Our Hero be doing on such a fine day, right?

Well, Blackstar's got some problems of his own, in the form of a city of zombies that want to do the Night of the Living Dead thing with him. Dal is depressed, convinced he'll never find Lowena in this maze of a city, and it's up to Our Hero to inject a little optimism back into the situation.

After a while, you'll probably notice that Dal isn't exactly the most optimistic character in the Blackstar universe. He constantly complains that they'll never find Mara and Lowena, they'll never locate Shaldemar and never be able to defeat him once they do. At some point, you may find youself wishing Blackstar would simply bitchslap the guy a few times.

As our heroes climb up to the top of a pyramid for a better look around, Balkar makes the unfortunate mistake of going ahead of Rif. He smells the smoke before he feels the pain and realizes his shorts are cooking. Although Blackstar does his best to stifle Balkar's howls by slapping a hand over the Trobbit's mouth, it's already too late. A bunch of zombies have already sniffed them out. In this case, the zombies are a vampire man from "The Air Whales of Anchar" and a pair of amphibian Aquarians from "Kingdom of Neptul." The Starsword has absolutely zero effect on these guys, and Blackstar ends up doing some more of his Olympic gymnastics to keep from getting tackled. A quick grab from behind and the vampire zombie goes flying off the pyramid steps and into the mud. As we'll see later, there's a lot of mud in Marakand.

Somehow in all this confusion, Gossamer manages to break free of his guards and fly out through an open skylight in search of Blackstar. A very irritated Shaldemar tells the group that no more of them will escape, then lifts the orb to make certain of it. The Sphere of Souls begins to glow; the rays that emanate from it pull the life-force from Mara, Lowena and Poulo, leaving them with a bad greyish complexion and sunken eyes, really nothing that some good foundation couldn't fix. Alas, they are now zombies, doomed to trudge along and speak in a dreary monotone and their spirits are trapped inside the sphere.

The great thing about this battle is that Mara is even more powerful as a zombie than she was before. We saw it with Klone and the evil Blackstar in "Tree of Evil:" the Dark Side just seems to amp up our heroes and make them even cooler than before. Why do you think the Overlord is so darn cool? Because he's evil, of course!

Blackstar does his best to block Mara's magic with the Starsword, long enough for Dal and the Trobbits to escape, but by now we all know how effective the Starsword is in these types of situations. Plus, Mara's pretty feisty and starts laying the magic on thick; zombie or not, we think she's probably pissed over all those floozys Blackstar decided to date in other episodes. She packs a whallop, and it isn't long before he has to duck out of the way. One powerful beam blows up the background statue, whose shield miraculously survives unscathed.

Dal and the Trobbits find themselves cornered by a pack of zombies. Dal's magic holds them back for a time, but as before, his powers begin to give out. One of the zombies nails him with a bolo, and the Trobbits look on with horror as the zombies slowly close in to the sound of heavy breathing. Blackstar notices, and with Mara still blasting away at him, dives for the shield (pictured, above right). The metal surface reflects her magic onto the zombies, imprisoning them in a bubble of light; he then reflects her spell back on her. She falls back, stunned, and retreats into the temple with Lowena.

We just love the logic of scenes like this, where an evil spell hits a mirrored surface and rebounds on the person who cast it. Apparently the Starsword doesn't have a reflective surface, and even that barely withstood the spell; Blackstar is visibly straining against her power. Mara's magic was obviously powerful enough to rip the statue apart, so logically it should have done the same thing to the shield that was part of the statue.

Before Blackstar and Dal can follow the women into the temple, Gossamer blurts out the news that Marakand is on a path toward the Sagar Tree. Not to worry, though, because Balkar knows a spell that just might save the Tree. Gossamer flies Balkar back to the Sagar Tree, leaving our heroes to stop Shaldemar and save the girls.

Klone actually makes an appearance at this point, flying in through the laboratory window with that hard-to-find ingredient Balkar needs for his spell: the feather of a firebat. As we've already pointed out in "Kingdom of Neptul," why is it that Balkar never manages to stash any of the stuff he really needs. You know, just in case? At any rate, it's always nice to see the writers making good use of Klone, who is his typical whimsical self with regard to the little adventure he's just been on. Apparently the firebat wasn't too pleased about being plucked.

The feather goes into the beaker. The solution bubbles ominously, explodes and returns to normal. Now it must be poured into the underground river that feeds the roots of the Sagar Tree.

Following some zombies into the Temple of the Labyrinth, Blackstar and Dal are confronted by a fork in the road: a pair of matching doorways. While Dal and Rif take the door on the left, and are quickly confronted by the zombie Lowena and Poulo, Blackstar decides to take the door on the right. He finds himself in a series of corridors worthy of an Indiana Jones movie. The first corridor drops him down a trapdoor, where yet another conveniently placed wooden beam (pictured, left) is all that saves his grapes from the monster that's waiting for him at the bottom of the shaft. The problem is, the beam can't take his weight; as it starts to crack, he swings himself up and out of the shaft with yet another Olympic-worthy flip.

(At this point, there is a deleted storyboard scene involving a second booby trap. Click here to check it out)

In the caverns beneath the Sagar Tree, Balkar and Klone pour the solution into the underground river.

By this time, Our Hero has finally made that amazing leap of logic and figured out that the Temple of the Labyrinth is one giant booby trap. He decides to do what he ought to have done in the first place: use the Starsword to create a shortcut. And wouldn't you know that he just happens to blow a hole in the wall of Shaldemar's throne room? Shaldemar is already waiting for him, and orders him to surrender to the Sphere of Souls.

Marakand is now almost directly over the Sagar Tree.

As Balkar's solution hits the water, bubbles of energy rise up to the surface, traveling up the roots and then the branches until the entire Tree is enclosed in a force field. Marakand shudders against the impact; the vibration is felt as far down as the Temple of the Labyrinth, where an angry Shaldemar raises the Sphere of Souls to take Blackstar's soul.

The energy field is a terrific device, and shows you just how powerful Balkar can be when he gets his shit together. It's just too bad we never see him work a spell like this in any other episode.

The blast from the Sphere strikes the Starsword. Already tired from a very busy day of gymnastics and wrestling with walls, Blackstar strains against the energy, finally repelling it and firing his own blast. The Sphere cracks and begins to shake as the souls imprisoned inside escape. Mara's soul returns to her; other souls fly out of the Temple and into the city where they are reunited with their bodies. We see Lowena and Poulo restored, to the delight of the nearby Dal and Rif, who are by now precariously dangling from the edge of a rooftop.

One more spirit emerges from the Sphere of Souls. It wraps itself around Shaldemar, who turns to smoke and then into a ghost that vanishes through the ceiling.

Now at rest on a lush mountaintop, Marakand becomes the property of Dal and Lowena. They decide to rename it Gondar, after the city that was destroyed, and Dal's all for joining the rebellion.

Ever get the feeling that this was a wasted effort on the Overlord's part? Look at it this way, Dal was hedging already; if Marakand hadn't come along, blown the city of Gondar to bits and enslaved the people, Dal would have talked his wife out of joining the rebellion and everything would have been fine. But no, the Overlord just had to make a point and in so doing all but pushed Gondar over to the other side.

Of course, no episode would be complete without some inane joke from Blackstar or ridiculous antic by one of the Trobbits. In "The Air Whales of Anchar," we got Gossamer and the Warhoun Express. Here, we're mercifully spared the tacky one-liner, but we do get Poulo in zombie makeup, scaring the shit out of a hapless Rif.

The Zombie Master

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Color still images courtesy of NightStone Unlimited. Storyboard images courtesy of Sunday Funnies, LLC.

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Dal wants time to consider the matter. Time, however, is something none of them have, because no sooner does Dal voice his hesitation than does an ominous shape appear on the horizon over Gondar. A floating citadel that destroys everything in its path and sucks up the debris, people included, Marakand is the legendary city of the zombies, and it's headed right for our heroes.

The destruction of Gondar is a terrific piece of animation, with the city's spires collapsing and being drawn up into the vortex created by Marakand. Watching from a balcony, Dal and Lowena are horrified by the chaos, and by the terrified cries of their people. They don't remain observers for long. Cracks appear in the balcony, and the two rulers, followed by Blackstar, Mara and the Trobbits, fall toward the street.

In one of those slip-ups by the animation department (lower right), we see more of Lowena's lower half than we really should. It's good to know that at least Dal has underwear.

Well, the zombies are apparently even dumber than Our Hero, and everything goes according to plan until Lowena and Mara appear. Even zombified, these two chicks know a truly bad make-up job when they see one and order the other zombies to douse the muddy heroes with water. As their disguises melt away, Mara opens fire on Blackstar.

Our heroes escape into the streets, with the two amphibian zombies close on their heels. They duck around a corner and let the zombies go past. Once again, however, that mud comes into play as Rif and Balkar get splashed by the passing amphibians (pictured, lower left).

And here's where Blackstar gets the brainstorm that's got to be the absolute corniest moment of the episode. Noticing that the mud matches the zombies' skin tone, he gets the brilliant idea that, hey, if they all coat themselves in mud and shuffle along like zombies, nobody will ever know the difference. Umm, yeah. If you say so, John.