Category Archives: king roach

Grandmother Hydra

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In The Shadow Over Innsmouth H.P. Lovecraft introduced the deep ones; immortal ocean dwelling amphibians that traffic with humanity for dark, evil purposes. Over the years other authors expanded on Lovecraft’s mythology and the deep ones have shown up in numerous stories, games and even a film or two.

Grandmother Hydra here was inspired by the idea that deep ones don’t stop growing as they get older. I added the idea that old deep one sorcerers could mutate themselves by adding aspects of other sea creatures and then started sketching. Hydra seemed like she’d make a good adversary for King Roach.

The Gardeners

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In the movie The Thing from Another World the alien invader turns out to be a mobile plant that feeds on blood. While playing with a redesign of the creature I started to wonder what sort of civilization a mobile plant would come up with. Frankly, I was stumped. A plant civilization is going to have a whole different set of wants from an animal one.

After a bit of thinking it occurred to me that just because the Thing was a plant didn’t necessarily mean that it came from a civilization of plants. It could have been the equivalent of a guard dog or a helper monkey. The ship it arrived in is destroyed. The Thing can’t (or won’t) communicate. The men who find it only assume it is the ship’s pilot.

So then I started thinking about what sort of culture would create plants to act as soldiers and servants. And I wondered what other sorts of plant creatures might they create? (And which b-movie monsters could I reimagine as plant monsters?.)

Human

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The world that this version of Mara lives in is one with multiple human species. None of the species represent humanity at its best. Neither is one species an avatar of human evil. Even angels and demons are more complicated than that.

Mara and the Angry Red Batratspidercrab

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At the top of the page is the most memorable of the menaces from the movie Angry Red Planet. I haven’t tried to “improve” the creature. How could I?

The bottom of the page is devoted to Mara Winikat. She’s supposed to be skinny and gawky and awkwardly adolescent. The drawing on the bottom right takes those qualities a bit far. I know that lots of artists exaggerate proportions in their illustrations but, honestly, most of the time I’m trying to draw realistically. If a character is nine heads tall then they’re probably a freak or an alien.

The Forest Brothers – The Good Brother

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Of the kaiju I considered “borrowing” for King Roach the Gargantuas are the only ones I thought of a King Roach specific story for. In their movie they were brothers (sort of). One was brown and “good” (he just hung out in the forest by himself) and the other was green and “bad” (he came to the city and ate people).

This is the good brother. If he were in color he would be brown.

Kinda Sorta Varan

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I have not seen Varan. I think it’s available on DVD but I really only spend 5 or 6 hours a week watching movies and then it’s almost always with Nizzibet. She fails to appreciate the glory of giant monsters stomping on tiny cities. When I did this drawing in 2003 Youtube didn’t exist either. These days if I need to see a monster in action I can usually locate some footage there. So this is a version of Varan for the King Roach series that, like the version of Anguirus earlier this month, I’d likely never actually use in the King Mantis series.