Wilber and Dai are the best of unlikely friends.

Wilber Crooktail has the conservative nature of a lone wolf. No, not a lone wolf who is heroic or a staunch individual, but more like that of a lone wolf who is an outcast because he is not as large or strong or outgoing as the average young wolf his age is expected to be. Thus, avoided as the ‘class geek’ or ‘class runt’, Wilber is shy, bookish and rather cerebral. As a result of this, Wilber also bears the shame of having most parents of his school mates point him out as a sterling example to their own kids of what “a well-behaved youngster who is going somewhere with his life” should be like.

Dai Blackclaw, on the other paw, is the student most of those same parents advise their children to stay away from. He’s the stereotypical ‘poor bad kid heading for eventual trouble.’ Dai’s only problem supporting this belief is that he tends to act before he thinks. He was born with one of those bodies that develops naturally in the way that most other people can only have by a hundred or so hours of groaning exercise in a gym.

So, all set up for lots of activity from birth, Dai’s body has priority over his brain when it comes to decision-making. At sixteen, Dai has a list of experiences that anyone in his early 20’s would be boasting about to anyone except his parents. To his classmates, who generally like Dai (at a safe distance), he is characterized as reckless, fun to be around, and very physical – in a phrase, the one least likely to graduate.

It’s that last bit that eventually brings Dai and Wilber together in circumstances that are too lengthy to go into in any detail at this point. Just understand there’s an reclusive genius uncle-scientist who works at a secret government installation in Nevada, an experimental time machine in the uncle’s basement lab, a dare, a *ZAPP!* and the boys suddenly find themselves two thousand years back in Time mixed up with the horde of Melvin the Barbarian.

I’ve given a somewhat cartoonized comic book cover of the story here that is best viewed while listening to the soundtrack from “Conan the Barbarian”. :)