Rahan
A Franco-Belgian School comic, it follows the adventures of Rahan, a prehistoric caveman who wanders the earth, encountering a wide variety of tribes and challenges on his way.
Wherever he goes, Rahan carries his trademark ivory cutlass, and his collar - one comprising five claws, each one representing a virtue he tries to live up to: courage, loyalty, generosity, resilience, and wisdom. Nearly Once an Episode, Rahan figures out a new primitive technology to deal with with this issue's challenge.
Tropes used in Rahan include:
- Abhorrent Admirer: At one point Rahan is kidnapped by a tribe of hyena-women (really, really ugly women). He saves himself for the hideous fate of sleeping with all of them.
- Animated Adaptation: Done in France in 1987, lasted one season.
- Badass Normal: Rahan, while still only human, is pretty much at the top of his game, being smarter and a better fighter, tracker, hunter, runner, swimmer and all-around human being than most of the people he encounters.
- Bamboo Technology: Often literally. Including a phone network.
- Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: Most animals are called by their physical characteristics, such as fourhands for monkeys and longteeth for saber-toothed cats.
- Doing In the Wizard : Rahan often debunks superstitious beliefs he comes across, be they merely misinterpretations of natural events or the acts of manipulative shamans.
- Doomed Hometown : By a volcano no less.
- The Hero : Rahan himself, very much so.
- Loin Cloth
- Mighty Whitey: Rahan is the only pale-skinned blond man.
- Rousseau Was Right
- Science Hero : Windmills, bridges, rafts, and so many more...Rahan seems determined to single-handedly get humanity out of the stone age.
- Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying: Rahan regularly encounters dinosaurs. It's made even weirder by the fact that he also comes across regular paleolithic fauna such as mammoths and cave bears.
- The writers try to Hand Wave the dinosaurs by repeatedly stating that they're leftovers from a bygone age, but iy really just comes across as Did Not Do the Research and Rule of Cool.
- Thou Shall Not Kill : Rahan himself takes pride in never having killed a human being. In one issue, he suffers a Heroic BSOD when he believes he broke his own code.
- Walking the Earth: Rahan is the prehistoric analog of The Drifter, wandering from place to place and righting wrongs.