Today’s strip is number 199.  This is the strip that explains how the Aardvark ended up in Twilight Valley, a land full of sheep, with no memories. 

So let’s recap everything. 

If you were to follow the story in a chronological order, you would start with this strip and read up to today’s strip, then you would jump back to this strip.  Today’s strip marks the end of the Aardvark’s memories.  Tomorrow’s strip continues from where we left off back in march in this strip.

This is the story of Dr Sheep and the Aardvark:

In the forest surrounding Sunrise City, an Aardvark finds a spell book.  In his excitement he casts a spell on his friend Hyrax, a spell which turns him into a booze-snaffling drinker.  Alarmed by this, he seeks help from someone with knowledge of magic.

His search leads him to a nymphling called Solace.  He learns that nymphlings are young versions of nymphs.  While nymphs can fly and cast spells, nymphlings cannot.  He also learns that the only way a nymphling can grow into a nymph is to fall in love. 

Solace has her own problems, however.  An evil nymph called Curses bullies and teases her, and when the Aardvark shows up, Curses dislikes him intensely.  The Aardvark uses his magical powers to temporarily turn her into a frog. 

Curses seeks revenge, and creates a minion (Bonsai) to help her defeat the Aardvark, take his powerful spell book and take over the town of Sunrise city.

Curses and Bonsai threaten the life of Solace, take the spell book with force and send the Aardvark to his death.  As Solace watches her friend die, she realises that she loves him.  As is the way with nymphlings, this transforms her from a nymphling into  nymph, giving her magical powers.  She attempts to cast a spell to bring the Aardvark back to life, but is interrupted half way through it, having only got as far as stopping him going to Aardvark Heaven, but not getting far enough to return him to life.

The Aardvark’s spirit, meanwhile, is in limbo.  His memories are taken away from him so that he doesn’t miss his friends and spend eternity bummed out that he is dead.  His memories are stored in a large egg-shaped memory pod.  Just before he is taken to Aardvark Heaven, Solace casts her spell, and the Aardvark is blocked from entering Aardvark Heaven.  Instead he is sent to Sheep Heaven.

This is the point at which the story began.  The Aardvark arrives in Twilight Valley, a town full of sheep, without any memories.  He befriends the local doctor, Dr Sheep, who decides to help him get his memories back. 

The Aardvark finds his memory pod and, believing it is a large egg, decides to look after it and hatch it.  The Aardvark attempts to leave Twilight Valley twice (once by walking across the desert surrounding the town and once by hot air balloon) but both times mysteriously ends up back in Twilight Valley.

After six months, a sheep dressed as a Police Officer and calling himself Inspector Ramsbottom appears in Twilight Valley.  He is hunting down the Aardvark.  He tries to convince the sheep that the Aardvark is a dangerous criminal and wants to take him away from Twilight Valley.  Eventually he discovers that the Aardvark’s egg is unbroken (meaning that his memories are still trapped in the egg).  After interviewing a lot of different sheep and showing them pictures of the Aardvark, he interviews Dr Sheep.  Dr Sheep identifies the Aardvark as an Aardvark (which none of the other sheep were able to do) and Ramsbottom decides to do some undercover surveillence on Dr Sheep.  This leads him to discover the Aardvark’s egg, which he takes away.

Dr Sheep learns that the egg contains the Aardvark’s memories, and our two heroes decide to take it back.  In a dramatic conclusion, Dr Sheep breaks the egg and does what he had promised to do: he restores his best friend’s memories.

The next strip (number 200) follows on from the point where the egg broke and memories were returned to the Aardvark. 

Since today’s strip (number 199) is such an big event in the story, you may be wondering why I didn’t just add another one-off strip into the story and make today’s strip number 200. 

There’s only one reason of course…

…in the 200th strip…

…the sheep is back.

Join the Aardvark and Dr Sheep on Wednesday, as we enter the final chapter of the story.  Fasten your seatbelt.

Spencey