The commute gets rougher every year.
Tag Archives: hollow earth
The Girl in the Middle – Color
The woman standing behind Nurri Kala is a Silurian. In the pulp serial, Morgo the Mighty, the Silurians are described as scaled men not man-like lizards or lizard-like men so I’ve assumed that they are a type of human and therefore mammals.
This illustration is the last piece from the batch I sketched up in late 2015. Every sketch from that batch (along with a number of others that I sketched up during 2016) has now been inked and colored. I think some of them turned out really well. I learned something even from the ones that I was … less than satisfied with. There are more illustrations coming. I’m continuing the black and white to color project until the end of this year.
I’m hoping to have a themed illustration project ready for 2018 but, at the moment, I can’t promise that I will succeed. One day at time.
The Girl in the Middle – Black and White
Nurri Kala, the heroine of the pulp serial Morgo the Mighty, has a dilemma.She is desired by three men: Zorimi, the evil despot who raised her from childhood; Jerry McRory, the dashing pilot from the upper world; and Morgo, the mighty young cave warrior. Who will she choose?
Not Zorimi. He’s evil.
McRory? He offers her a return to a world that she has forgotten.
Morgo? He is a fellow cavern dweller.
Choices, choices.
Mighty Morgo versus the Chicken Fiend – Color
Morgo the Mighty was clearly inspired by both Tarzan and At the Earth’s Core. It features a feral white man who is the master of his jungle environment and that jungle environment is located in caverns beneath the earth. There are monstrous creatures that he must battle to survive.
Contrary to online descriptions of the novel (and illustrations that accompanied it when it was serialized in The Popular Magazine) there are no dinosaurs or other prehistoric creatures in Surrilana. The beasts in the caverns are evolved (and often gigantic) rodents, bats, insects and birds. It’s a more realistic scenario than a land somehow populated by dinosaurs. I’m not saying it’s a better scenario. I love dinosaurs.
Birds are the descendants of the dinosaurs. So, perhaps, the chicken fiends of Surrilana can be considered dinosaur stand-ins.
Mighty Morgo versus the Chicken Fiend – Black and White
In Chapter 15 of the pulp serial Morgo the Mighty, Morgo and Nurri Kala must face .. the Chicken Fiends! “The Chicken Fiends” is, in fact, the title of the chapter. Apparently chickens were considered to be more fearful beasts back in 1930. The creatures rule over one of the cavern environments in Surrilana, an underground realm beneath the Himalayas. I know a giant flesh eating chicken would actually be pretty terrifying but, as a city boy here in the 21st century, it’s hard for me to summon up any nervous emotions about chickens.
Morgo kills them dead.
Zorimi’s Winged Terrors – Color
And who are the arch enemies of the giant manfaced bats? Giant bat men of course! A depiction of one of those (on the cover of The Popular Magazine) can be found here.
Zorimi’s Winged Terrors – Black and White
Surrilana, the vast system of caverns beneath the Himalayas (as described in the pulp serial Morgo the Mighty), is home to a variety of weird creatures. The first such species that McRory and company run into (literally, with their airplane) is the giant manfaced bat. This creature is huge – about the size of a human being, and somewhat intelligent – enough to follow the orders of the masked tyrant Zorimi,
Black as the Pit, From Pole to Pole – Color
I reread the story after I’d inked the image. Sigh. If I were to draw the piece now, the Monster would be wielding a cutlass and a blunderbuss. Oh well.
Black as the Pit, From Pole to Pole – Black and White
One of my favorite Frankenstein sequels is the short story “Black as the Pit, From Pole to Pole” by Howard Waldrop and Steve Utley. It picks up where the novel left off with Frankenstein’s Monster wandering across the polar ice cap. He has discovered that Frankenstein made him too well – the ice and cold won’t kill him. He doesn’t want to try drowning himself – it might not work. So he keeps walking – right into the northern opening to the hollow earth.
He makes his way through the Earth encountering all manner of monsters, beasts and weirder things, conquers kingdoms, finds love, and sows fear and destruction in his path. Eventually he comes out at the South Pole. I liked the story so much that I bought the book Custer’s Last Jump just so that I wouldn’t have to check it out of the library the next time I wanted to read it. One of these days I’ll have to get around to reading the other stories that keep it company.
A Man of the Caverns – Color
Morgo was a boy, traveling with his family in the Himalayas, when they were killed. He became trapped in the caverns of Surrilana. Because he was a white man (in a pulp novel written by a white American male in 1930) he grew up strong and powerful and a ruler of the other beings in the caverns.
