There is no creature in the world more terrifying than the zebra.
Although illustrations are not as accurate as photographs, they can provide a window into the artist’s psyche. For example, this illustration from the 19th Century proves that zebras inspire the sort of fear that consume a man’s soul. Look at that deathly grimace. Those ominous black and white stripes. Those murderous eyes. Is it any wonder than the noble lion, long considered a symbol of goodness and honor, devotes its life in the futile quest to hunt down these monstrosities of nature?
If you needed any further proof of the vileness of these creatures, look no further than the quagga. (Notice the name sounds like some sort of forbidding Babylonian deity.) What is a quagga? It’s a species of zebra that went extinct in the 19th century. So like the dinosaurs, dodos, and sabretooth tigers of yore, quaggas were relegated to dusty zoological books. Or… was it? In the 1980′s, after some geneticists started playing around with quagga DNA, the creature was reborn. A species that had been wiped out from this world, but now brought back to life — resurrected, if you will, be science? Nothing about this sounds slightly bizarre?
The spirit of the zebra lives on, too, in the subject of today’s Webcomic Overlook. Despite its name, the long-running webcomic named Zebra Girl does not actually feature zebras. It does, however, feature an adequate and slightly less fearsome alternative: demons.
