Here is another of the original illustrations I did to build up my gallery at Epilogue.net. This one is a new interpretation of the alien from The Thing from Another World. Since the creature is a mobile sentient vegetable I wanted him (it) to look, well, look like a sentient mobile vegetable. As I wrote elsewhere at the time –
My reworking here was fairly easy. The original monster looks a lot like the Universal Frankenstein monster and it’s supposed to be a kind of ambulatory plant. The biggest thing I had to think about was why a plant would wear clothes. And what would they be made of?
Alien spider silk. With the spiders still in residence. They even repair the outfit when it tears – take a look at the group working on The Thing’s right arm.
And it wears the silk to retain moisture during its travels.
I’m a fan of both versions of The Thing. I don’t really consider the 1980s version a remake. It’s actually a more faithful adaptation of John Campbell’s original story Who Goes There?. Both films use the story’s idea of a thawed alien menacing an isolated base but the 1950’s version chances the nature of the alien and therefore the nature of the story. The final illustration can be found here.
