The more mouths the merrier!

This strip came about after having been on a month-long trip to my wife's native India (the vacation that was the reason for the three deputy strips a while back). At some point during that trip the thought came to me – what would an ”India” in Bernard's world look like?

Just to be clear: I have friends and relatives by marriage who are practicing Hindus, and the goddess is not meant to be Kali ji even if they share some superficial similarities. Think of her as a trope character.  She later appeared in a bonus scene in his compilation book:

She was evil before, and then morning sickness set in.

The words ”beer”, ”scream wail iih” in the 1st panel is mostly made up of actual Hindi and Sanskrit letters but, except for the ’R’, they don't correspond to similar-looking Latin letters. To an Indian it just looks like random gibberish.

The priestwala calls Bernard an ’ullukapatha’ (”owl butt”), a real Indian insult. It sounds so funny I just had to use it.

The black temple in the first panel has a portal at the entrance with long spikes and a big skull. I thought it looked pretty neat and was quite pleased with it. And then made it so dark in the coloring that it more or less disappeared. It's somewhat visible onscreen but printed in Fenix it just turned into a dark blob.

Fenix no. 3, 2005