El antídoto ("The Antidote") is a 1973 comic from the Spanish series Mortadelo y Filemón, and the nineteenth long adventure in the series.
The Super suffers from a crippling headache, for which Bacterio gives him (i.e. forces him to ingest) a tablet of his own invention, claiming the headache will disappear. The pill takes effect - and transforms the Super's head into a pig's head.
Bacterio can provide an antidote to restore the Super's normal head, but the main ingredient is the "Hierbajus Apestosus Repelentus", which only grows in one place in the world, the Republic of Bestiolandia (Beastland), a place feared all over the world because anyone that goes in never leaves alive.
Of course, he immediately tasks Mortadelo and Filemon with going to Bestiolandia and retrieve enough samples to craft the antidote. To aid in their mission, Bacterio grants them the "chameleonic mimetizier", a device that allows a person to become a copy of the nearest object for several minutes. Between Mortadelo's disguises and the mimetizier, the duo will go to Bestiolandia and attempt to remain uncaptured.
This comic provides examples of:
- All for Nothing:
- Several times, Mortadelo and Filemon appear to find a way to achieve their objective earlier, only for it to be something else entirely.
- The duo find a farm that cultivates "hierbajus" and attempt to sneak in to steal some of it - but then find boatloads of it nearby for free.
- Mortadelo and Filemon finally arrive with the "hierbajus"' leaves and they immediately meet a recovered Super, who tells them he took an aspirin the day after they left on their mission and his head returned to normal. Needless to say, the duo is not happy.
- Dunce Cap: After the fiasco with the tablet, the Super forces Bacterio to wear one... full of wasps.
- Forced Transformation: The story kickstarts when one of Bacterio's tablets transforms the Super's head into a pig's.
- Meaningful Name: Overlaps with Punny Name and Canis Latinicus. The herb Mortadelo and Filemon want is called "Hierbajus Apestosus Repelentus" ("Stinkus Disgustingus Weedus"), whose main feature is that it has a horrible smell. So much that, when the duo reaches the border to leave, the border guard can easily tell they are approaching due to the smell.
- People's Republic of Tyranny: The Republic of Bestiolandia appears to be almost North Korea-like in how it keeps people from escaping.
- Poor Communication Kills: Mortadelo and Filemon could have saved themselves the risky mission if the Super had tried to contact them to cancel the mission.
- Take That!: In what is a staple of the series, the Spanish tobacco brand "Celtas" (a popular brand that belonged to the tobacco monopoly during the Francoist dictatorship) gets a hit, with the "hierbajus" being supposedly used to make them.
- Tempting Fate: When Mortadelo and Filemon finally manage to get the "hierbajus"' leaves, Mortadelo comments that, for all the fame the country has, no one's actually attacked them on the way. Cue a policeman shooting the tree Mortadelo's leaning on.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: When Mortadelo and Filemon arrive to the Super's office for their mission, they do not comment on the man's new head. It isn't until the Super explicitly mentions the problem that they even notice it.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Filemon uses the mimetizier to transform into different objects, with variable (mostly poor) levels of success.
