I have a fondness for swamp monsters – Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, the Glob, the Heap – things that walk like men but are now composed of plants and fungus rather than of flesh. They aren’t zombies exactly. They aren’t really alive, not like an animal is. This creature is my own unnamed take on the subject. It appears in some of my old sketchbooks, the ones old enough that I cringe when I look at the sketches in them. It was once a man. The man died (or perhaps was murdered) and his body sank into the swamp. His hatred lived. It lived to form a new body and to drive that mossy, slimy form to seek revenge on those who had wronged the man in life. Sometimes the monster was destroyed. Sometimes it killed all those the man had hated and, no longer having purpose, became still, grew roots and became one with the bog.

Another case of me getting out of the way of the drawing. I don’t know what this is, what it is praying to or whether it’s actually praying. The image came to mind and I let my hands go to work.

The finished version can be found in my Epilogue gallery.

You may have noticed that the future doesn’t look like anyone predicted. We’ve got an internet but no flying cars. Fashion looks like it always did except when it doesn’t. Take a snapshot of any culture and all you’ll get is a snapshot. It’s unlikely that you’ll know why the people in the picture are wearing those. You’ll only be able to guess at what they are discussing. The older I get the more I’m comfortable with not knowing, the more I’m okay with having an incomplete picture. I still love filling in the pieces, discovering what’s beyond the next bend, but the universe is vast and I am not.

Which is a long winded way of saying that even though I drew this sketch I can’t really tell you what’s going on with in it.