This scene is an absolute must for any B-movie involving any sort of commando raid/ military enterprise: the briefing-style run down of all of the characters involved, giving their name, rank (where applicable) and combat specialization/function within the team. You should best imagine this scene with some rousing marching music in the background, leaning heavily towards the percussion section.

Generally, this is an advantage that war and spy movies enjoy - you can have a briefing sequence, and a briefing sequence allows you to get done with vast amounts of ‘natural’ exposition. Inevitably, B-movies abuse that privilege by forgetting that ‘natural’, blatant exposition is still blatant exposition - or ignoring the fact that a briefing situation stops being ‘natural’ when it concerns information that all of the participants should be reasonably expected to already possess. (The funny thing being that audiences will often perceive useless briefings on redundant information as ‘unnatural’ - despite the fact that such pointless exercises happen on a daily basis in real-life armed forces.)

So let’s just accept, for the moment, that Professor Dr. chartered Zorba’s boat and brought a whole bunch of people aboard without introducing them to him until hours or days later. And that Zorba has problems recalling who he is and needs regular re-introduction to himself. The upside of it all is that the whole team has been introduced now, and that also saves me the effort to have a dedicated cast page. =P (Not that I ever got around to do on for the last chapter, anyway.) The Professor, Mopey, Snuka and Zorba had already been introduced, newly introduced are Biff and Sephy. Biff hasn’t changed a lot since the last chapter, but I’ve decided to give him a more jock-ish (not to be confused with jock-itch) hairdo. Sephy has tagged along with his gf Mopey, and when the going gets tough it’s always nice to have somebody who can throw flaming asteroids at people, anyway. Plus, having a expedition artist and poet along is an old tradition on archeological expeditions to Greece.

The scene in the last panel is an absolute must, not for war movies but for movies about Greece. For all Hollywood knows about Greece, people there always start dancing Sirtaki at the slightest provocation, much like people in musical-land start dancing and singing randomly. (The line of lyrics is from the “The Guns of Navarone” theme - which a lot of people seem to enjoy more without the lyrics, but I kinda like them.)

More on Monday.