Case #1890: "Finger-Lickin' Good"

For tonight's strip, here's something a little different I wanna try: a cryptid moment in Walpurgis' history.

•  "Case #1890"- a little nod towards the year in which two cowboys in Arizona claimed to have killed a creature that matched the description of a pterodactyl. The idea in the story that they had taken the creature's body back home and sent in a photo to their local newspaper served some inspiration here, too.
• "a bird as big as a battleship"- if you ever seen or heard of the movie, "The Giant Claw" (1957), you'll get the joke. Coleman's first name, "Mitch", is a nod to Jeff Morrow's character in the movie.
• Coleman's last name pays tribute to Loren Coleman, a Bigfoot researcher and cryptozoology author who wrote about a series of thunderbird sightings in the 1940s.
• Another reference to the Rowling Woods. We'll definitely continue to hear and see more of this strange place; it's chock full of spooky activity.
• The roc of Arabic/Persian mythology and the thunderbird of Native American folklore are both giant birds of prey, so one could assume that despite differences in their habitats, they share a common ancestor or species.
• Garudas tonitrus - the faux Latin name for a thunderbird. The genus, "Garudas", refers to Garuda, a giant bird-like creature from Hindu and Buddhist mythology, and the species, "tonitrus", is actually a Latin word meaning, "thunder".  
• "Donut" was the name of a mutt we owned when I was a kid. The comic Donut here wasn't based on the appearance of the real Donut- only in name. The real Donut looked more like a scrawny mix between an Old English Sheepdog and a Pointer (I can't remember). A pretty generic design was given to this dog here (those eyes).
• Don't even begin to ask where a thunderbird, as big as they've been made out to be in folklore and eyewitness accounts, would stay in the Rowling Woods- I'm not even sure if the storytellers and the people who claimed to have seen one knew either. Let's just say this one had been on migration from Alaska or Canada for a change of scenery, and it happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Trucks- and lots of them. That's how they got that thing to Coleman's house- 'nuff said!
• At first, I hated the idea of altering the original drawing to make it look like an old photo, but for authenticity purposes to the time, it had to be done. Glancing at it a second time, I'm starting to like the sepia tone of it.
• Oh, GIMP- I've only begun to discover your full potential. Keep doin' your thing, baby.
• There's only so much barbeque sauce can do, folks, and it certainly can't make thunderbird meat taste any better.