- When he who is the chosen one
Shall tread upon this ancient path
And battle there to overcome
The forces of the dark
Than shall the seven be restored
And evil banished from this world
A now-out-of-print fantasy series in 52 issues (split between two separate stories) created by author Frank Graves in the early Nineties, The Ancestral Trail narrates the story of The Chosen One Richard, a young heterochromic boy who suddently finds himself whisked off to another dimension called The Ancestral World, where he learns of the task that only he can accomplish - to free that world from the oppressive yoke of the Evil One's forces and recover the seven Life Force Pods which will restore balance. Aided by the veteran warrior Orkan and the old scribe Melek, Richard sets off to a perilous adventure, meeting new allies along the way and rescuing the Guardians of the Life Force...
After the first series' 26 issues, a second series follows, set in the desolate Cyber Dimension, where Richard is forced to confront even greater threats, until a climactic showdown with the Evil One himself...
This series provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Kika. Okay, she's a wasp-girl... but she's still the only prominent female character in the story on the side of good.
- All of the Other Reindeer: As a kid, Richard was often made fun of because of his oddly-colored eyes. Subverted in that he never really took offense at that.
- Animal Mecha: Robot dinosaurs show up in issue 42.
- Avenging the Villain: Continuuma did not take her cousin Holotron's defeat well...
- Bears Are Bad News: Most slaves in Enlil's Volcano were bear-men.
- Brainwashed: Most of the inhabitants of the Ancestral World.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Orkan, under the influence of Dragora's amulet.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe:
- Holotron is not completely real — it's his victim's mind that allows him to exist. If the victim actually manages to disbelieve, he's toast..
- This explicitly allows Melek's rope to stretch.
- Deadpan Snarker: Kika has some traces of this. Later on, Richard picks this up a little.
- Death World: The Cyber Dimension is not a nice place. Plasma storms, oceans of quicksilver, barren landscapes, you name it.
- Duality Motif: Richard has one green eye and one grey eye. The former sees the good, the latter the evil.
- Easter Egg: All over the place. The back of each issue challenged the reader to find them all.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: The Cyber Dimension in general, probably because anything that doesn't is dead already.
- Exotic Weapon Supremacy: Kika sure likes her blowgun, doesn't she?
- Genre Shift: The series goes from fantasy to science fiction exactly halfway through.
- Ghost Ship: There's on in the service of Nemis.
- Giant Spider: Baal. And a pretty damn smart one at that, too!
- Gladiator Games: Malachit runs some.
- Gone Horribly Right: The Evil One's plan for dragging Richard in the Cyber World was to gradually siphon the boy's human qualities and transfer them into himself, so that he would become human and be able to enter Earth and conquer it. This worked all too well: by turning human, the Evil One became mortal like one, and was killed when Richard ran him through with Juroot's sword.
- Hive Mind: The petromites and their leader Cronid.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Zock and the corrupted dwarves.
- Karma Houdini: Hulkan, the evil giant mole who attacked Richard, Orkan and Melek in issue 14, never gets his comeuppance.
- Logic Bomb: In the Cyber Dimension saga, Richard defeats the Keeper in issue 33 by forcing it into one of these.
- Mechanical Lifeform: Plenty of these in the Cyber Dimension.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Kronis, and a fair chunk of the Mythical Beasts.
- Mook Maker: Klaw can create skeletons by simply dropping bones onto the ground. Hulkan, on the other hand, creates his own mooks from mud.
- Mouthful of Pi: Richard uses this to defeat Mandelbiot.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: Nemis is pretty hideous.
- Our Orcs Are Different: Cozards are rather more intelligent and disciplined than most orcs.
- The Power of Friendship" Allows Robo to rewrite his own evil programming in issue 50.
- Plot Coupon: Pods and Guardians in the first half, Omni Pieces in the second.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Shoomi & Shoobi, Teeza and the Wigmat in the Cyber Dimension.
- Robot Buddy: Robo in the Cyber Dimension saga.
- Sacrificial Lion: Almost literally. The jaguar-man warrior Merkat stays around for one whole issue and proves his skills quite well before he gets offed by Baal.
- She's a Man in Japan: The Italian translation has Kika as a male.
- Silicon-Based Life: Wigmats, probably. They can touch Omni pieces without dying.
- Threatening Shark: Time Queen Continuuma morphs into a shark when attempting to finish off Richard.
- Turned to Stone: Mirra can turn creatures into stone by hitting them with her sickle. Richard uses her sickle to turn her and Baal into statues.
- War Is Hell: The illustrations, especially in issue 26, openly show how war is a horrible thing never to be glorified.
- Wicked Witch: There are two such witches in the Evil One's army. Mirra has the typical look of a decrepit hag, while Zibella is more of an Hot Witch. Or maybe not, considering she's the witch of illusions, and what Richard and his friends see is just a very advanced illusion masking her true hideous aspect.
