I drew the original pencil sketch for this illustration sometime last year. I’d seen the blog Terrible Yellow Eyes too late to contribute but I was inspired to sketch up a couple of the Wild Things. Earlier this month I was organizing my drawing area and I decide to ink the sketch. Once inked it was easy enough to add color and here it is.
Warren Ellis is no longer the master of the Whitechapel Forums but some traditions remain. This is my contribution to the recent Remake/Remodel challenge – the Crimson Clown. I’d hoped to make a more detailed contribution but time and other projects make me keep it simple. Now that my internship is finished I’m intending to contribute more regularly. It’s good practice to execute an idea as quickly and simply as possible.
Finally, here’s Detritus. Over the years I’ve imagined different names for him but none of them have stuck yet. Perhaps, if I ever do another series with him as a character, I’ll find one that does.
It felt good to draw the gang again. It’s always fun to hang out with old friends.
Public Domain Rewrite Challenge – The Monster Men
Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote The Monster Men in 1913. The basic plot is “Scientist, trying to create a mate for his daughter, creates 13 monsters instead. The 13th monster, fortunately, looks like a handsome, giant man. Pirates attack and kidnap the daughter. Number 13 rallies the other monsters to rescue her. Much running around in the jungle ensues.”
With a plot like that you might expect the story to be all kinds of awesome, right?
Not so much. Burroughs wrote a LOT of stories. This is one that could have used another draft. Or two.
Public Domain Rewrite Challenge – The Call of Cthulhu
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with redoing a favorite story if you can bring something new to it. Shakespeare? The Greatest Writer in the English Language? None of his stories are original. They are all based on previous works or historic events. I’m not a great fan of his writing, in large part because the version of English in which he wrote is not the language that I speak, but even his admirers wouldn’t try to pass him off as an original plotter.
I think most of HP Lovecraft’s writings are fine as they are. A rewrite or a modernization is unlikely to improve on them. I think Call of Cthulhu, however, has more potential than most of his other stories. The narrator isn’t actually involved in any of the events of the story. He’s the guy who puts all the pieces together but he didn’t witness any of the incidents. Cthulhu’s cult is a world wide organization (kinda sorta). The rising of R’Lyeh has world wide repercussions. So there’s potential for a few different accounts of the same events.
And yes, I know that Lovecraft’s stories have sparked their own sub-genre of horror and fantasy. I’ve read and enjoyed quite a bit of it. I’ve read revisions and sequels to a lot of his other stories but Call is one that I’ve seen any new versions of.
Werewolf Apocalypse
We’ve seen plenty of Zombie Apocalypses and even a few Vampire Apocalypses. With the exception of a few stories set on the Moon I don’t think we’ve had an account of a Werewolf Apocalypse. Depending on the type of werewolf plague that gets unleashed I’d find that scarier than either Zombies or Vampires. Zombies, even the fast kind, aren’t very bright and aren’t terribly strong. Vampires are worse than Zombies but I’ve less disturbed by something that kills me by sucking my blood than I am by something that will eat me alive.
Werewolves? Even the full moon only variety are:
Fast.
Relatively smart.
Superstrong.
And they eat you alive.
My first sketch of Moe (it’s somewhere in one of my late ’80s sketchbooks) established his appearance pretty clearly. The glasses, the dreads and the overcoat. Out of all the Misspent Youths characters he’s the one my hands know how to draw without a lot of warm up. I know my anatomy better now than when I first drew him but otherwise sketching him is like playing an old familiar song. Assuming I could sing or play an instrument 🙂
Lili Veracruz got the other Misspent Youths fan letter. I did get more than two but I only remember the one for K.Z. and the one I got about Lili. The writer wanted me to show that Lili was a fascist and (if I remember correctly) a not good person. He said that as I portrayed her in the first issue she was just a fanboy fantasy.
Hmmm.
Okay.
Given that the same issue featured a sewer monster, a couple of casual hookups in a crowded club and ended in a shoot-out I think the whole thing was a bit of a fantasy. So I don’t quite understand the complaint.
KILLER STARFISH.
I did say I’d be posting some really dumb ideas didn’t I?
Just about every member of the animal kingdom has been featured as the KILLER in some story or other. The Birds. Frogs. Grizzly (to pick one). Willard (and his rats). Worms (Squirm). Slugs. Crabs. Piranha. All sorts of killer bees in movies and books. Lots of killer spiders.
10 years after a housing development is abandoned in midbuild, a mailman finds himself picking up & delivering mail to the empty(?) homes.
You know what I find creepier than old abandoned houses? New abandoned houses. That is, houses that were mostly built and then never finished. Old houses tend to be singular things that have come to the end of their lives. The new houses that come up as part of a housing development represent dreams stillborn.
I know, I know. Maybe someone just wanted to build them because they thought they’d make a lot of money and they paid as little as possible and the construction is shoddy and anyone living in them would have been miserable. Maybe. I’m one of those sentimentalists who feels bad when someones dream fails, even if it’s just the dream of making some extra dough.
I’m also a bit of an animist so, to me, places have spirits. And a place that was meant to be a home, yet never became one, seems like a very sad place indeed.
