N is for Ningen

My apologies to Nisse, Nisses, and their fans. From the beginning I’d been intending to do “N is for Nisse,” but it just didn’t work out. The overlap with Elf was considerable, and there really wasn’t much else I could have done with E. Also, I discovered the Ningen.

The Ningen is a badass monster. Sort of. It’s awesome in that it’s a mysterious mishmash of whale and man, sighted breaching in ice-choked Antarctic waters by Japanese whalers. It’s less awesome in that it’s pretty much just an internet legend. The disappointing thing about this beast is that there aren’t so much reports of it as there are reports of reports. This is the cryptid that all other cryptids must resent, as he’s generated a lot of buzz without doing any real work. There’s no Surgeon’s photo or Patterson-Gimlin film of this guy, just a bunch of artists’ renderings. And none of those are more than a few years old. It seems like this Ningen thing is strictly a 21st century phenomenon. Not that it really matters. Monsters, of whatever vintage, are pretty much all made up. But with monsters, as with religions, the older ones just seem to have more credibility, more cachet. There’s a momentum and a cultural significance that accrues to a legend as it ages. The Ningen doesn’t have that yet.

So, why did I add my artist’s rendering to the growing Ningen pile? Because this is such a cool monster conceptually. How could you not draw a whale man? also, the myth is so psychologically compelling. I want there to be something to this thing, even if I have to make it up.  Whale man is a great foil for regular man. In some ways whales are so like us (they have names…maybe), but, cosmetically, they’re about as different as you get without having to deal with bugs. Whale man is relatable, but remote. Also, man and whale man could have any number of interesting dynamics between them. The Ningen could so easily be our victim, a symbol of, and a silent witness to, our wanton cruelty to the natural world. On the other hand, he could be our monstrous tormentor, a “White Whale” of gargantuan size and strength, punishing man for his sins against the sea. Also, the myth is impossible to disprove. For all we know, there could be giant whale people in Antarctica, if only in the way that there could be a million dollars under your floorboards. Anyway, this Ningen’s got everything a good beast needs to succeed: A cool look, an ability to generate pathos and fear, and a giant, unexplored territory in which to purportedly hang its hat. This myth’s gonna be big, and I’m excited to get in on the ground floor.

In other news, I’m inching ever closer to the completion of my monster book. All the art is now done (minus a few revisions) and so is about half the writing. Here’s hoping I can get through the rest in a week!

B is for Bigfoot

This is not my best Theodore Roosevelt. The colors on the face should contrast a little more and he’s probably a bit too thin. I’ve always loved the presidents and have been doodling the iconic ones — Washington, Lincoln, TR, and Nixon   — since I was a kid. I also do a decent W. Drawing Teddy here really makes me want to rework my old comic “The Jaws of Defeat,” which was all about giant, reanimated presidents wreaking havoc on a fractured future USA. Also, the presidents are naked. It was a story I did for an anthology last year and started posting here but never finished. It’s tiny, black and white, and poorly lettered, though, so I’d rather redo it than just put it up as is. Maybe this summer I’ll get around to it.

As far as this picture goes, I think it came out OK. I’d been putting it off because Bigfoot kind of bores me. There’s such a consensus on what he looks like that I just didn’t feel free to take too many liberties in designing him. Copying other peoples’ designs is boring. Also, to me at least, drawing apes/ape-like creatures is kind of boring. I don’t know how to vary them. Having already drawn the Humanzee and the Yeti, I felt like I was pretty much out of ape ideas. It wasn’t until I thought of the TR concept that the piece got interesting. Once it did, it came together in a night. Teddy’s definitely the most interesting simian in the picture.

Z is for Zombie

Oh, man, y’all. I am so close to being finished with these drawings. Just two to do and, if time permits, two to redo. It seems like they’re taking longer and longer, though. This one took forever, I can tell you that. Also, I messed up big time and had to start this one over last night after having colored half of the picture with anti-aliasing on.

I think this page was worth the time, though. It captures a moment in time pretty well. I’m also proud of my little zombie kids. I especially like the little boy’s giraffe spoon.

I don’t know why the main course at Zombie Thanksgiving looks so much like John Krasinski, but I like that he does. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I feel like there’s definitely a Jim Halpert thing going on there.

The only thing I’m not thrilled with is how the zombies on the left side of the page disappear below their chests. It just got too crowded when I tried to flesh out their torsos, but they look weird without them too (especially the old jawless guy brandishing the ladle).

I keep breaking the rules I set for myself with this book, so I think I’m finishing up right as I’m getting ready to go on to bigger, better things. The Elf drawing was my first one-color picture and this one is essentially my first three-color piece (the Vampire and the Thunderbird used three colors too, but more subtly and sparingly). All the other drawings are two-color. Also, I came as close as I ever do to using perspective here, as I’m kind of running out of flat compositions.

Anyway, stay tuned, y’all. We’re almost home.

E is for Elf

This is the most monochromatic of all my monster drawings so far, but  I like the effect. I knew from the beginning that I wanted the Northern Lights to play a part in this drawing, given its North Pole setting. The specific color scheme and lighting dynamics, though, I stole from a great sequence in Christophe Blain’s “Isaac the Pirate.”* In that book, the Aurora Borealis casts everything it illuminates in a pervasive green glow. That stuck with me and I thought of  it when coloring this piece.

I’m really happy with the way I captured the ice here. Its color and texture are surprisingly easy to reproduce with flat digital color. The same holds for submarines, which I’m excited to draw more of. It’d be fun to do a submarine comic where I’m always jumping back and forth between all-green exterior views and red-lit interiors. That would be some really fun lighting to work out.

The only things I’d like to change about this picture are the sky and the elves. The former could be a bit more exciting and the latter could bear a little less resemblance to those Grateful Dead bears. I think it’s just the short, pudgy bodies and the Kermit collars (is there a name for those?), but those things go a long way.

*Although the drawings were done by Blain, the fantastic coloring job is the work, I think, of the mononymous colorist Walter.

F is for Fairy

I’m getting down to the cryptozoological dregs here — all the monsters that I’m not that into or don’t have a good concept for. Still, I think I managed to come up with a pretty decent conceit here. Hopefully the whole butterflies-in-a-specimen-box thing is reading clearly. I also hope the fake Latin is clear (or so impenetrable that no one can even tell what I sought and failed to do with it). I wanted the name plates to basically say “Tooth Fairy” and “Barrie’s Fairy” (Barrie’s the author of Peter Pan). I don’t really know anything about Latin or binomial nomenclature, though, and it was really hard to learn about either thing at 4 am, on the internet, while listening to Marc Maron.  If there are any Classics majors out there willing to help a fellow unemployable out, I’d love to know how those plates should read.

So anyway, I’m decently pleased with the concept for this picture, but the composition is a little boring. Also, the values seem kind of homogeneous. A lot of the elements seem pale and liable to melt into each other. This may be the first time that my new no-outlines style may have actually ended up seeming less appropriate to me than a more conventional one.

With this drawing, I have officially entered the final four! Only B, E, N, and Z remain to be drawn. Also, time permitting, I’m going to redesign “A is for Alien” and “C is for Chupacabras” (I’ve already made smaller-scale corrections to most of the other pages). Then it’s onto a flurry of writing and production. Hopefully I’ll have these books available for sale in April!

Y is for Yeti

This page might be my favorite so far. I like the color scheme and think that it, taken with the mountain scenery, suggest an old Art Deco travel poster. I’ve always loved those.

I’m also pretty proud of my mountaineer. If you scrutinize the climber, though, you’ll see that his pose is a little weird. To dress him, I looked at photos of Sir Edmund Hillary and tried to copy his clothes and gear. Surprisingly, he wasn’t wearing a hat. That seems pretty crazy to me, but it was easier to not draw a hat than draw one, so he stays bareheaded. The wind-blown hair is more dramatic anyway.

W is for Werewolf

I’m not sure how I feel about the “Barbie’s Dream House” color scheme I went with here. I’m also a little disappointed by the way parts of this page get hard to read when they intersect with the horizon line. On the other hand, I think my city-from-above is pretty cool. That design was a nice convergance of elegance and ease. I’m also proud to add a poodle skirt to the list of things that I’ve drawn. Mostly, though, I’m glad to be nearing the end of this project. Not that it hasn’t been a lot of fun to do. It has. It’ll just be a huge relief to know that I’ll have something finished for the thesis committee (and, fingers crossed, for MoCCA). Anyway, 20 down, six to go!

X is for Xolotl

I don’t know a whole lot about Xolotl, but I appreciate his getting me out of a jam. I had no idea that there was a cryptid/monster whose name started with an “X,” let alone such a cool one. Luckily, Nisse knew (thanks, Uptown Cheetah), so here we are.

Apparently, Xolotl was a Mesoamerican deity, the twin brother of Quetzalcoatl. Typically, he was represented as a skeleton, a dog-headed man, or a strange creature with backwards hands and feet (which I drew reluctantly, figuring everyone would think I screwed them up). That all sounded monstrous enough for my purposes, so I worked out something combining those last couple options.

Xolotl lends his name to a breed of dog: the Xoloitzcuintle, or Mexican Hairless. This is a pretty crazy looking dog. It has glossy black skin that looks blue when the light hits it right, just like black hair does in “Rex Morgan MD” and other inscrutable, unfunny newspaper cartoons about square jawed professionals. It’s also got crazy crenellation on its ears. I guess they also come Zebra-style. Not to mix mythologies, but this dog is totally what I imagine Anubis looking like. Also, funnily, this dog is often mistaken for Chupacabras in Texas and other US states, where it is very rare.* Anyway, I based my design pretty heavily on this dog.

In my drawing, Xolotl is dragging the sun below the water for the night. This was supposed to be one of his duties, and I thought it was a pretty poetic (and logical) premodern assumption about where the sun goes at night. Also, it let me have some fun with designing gradients and light effects, which I love to do. I don’t really like “real” gradients, but I do like my chunky, “hand-made” ones.

I figured, as long as I was setting this in a Mexican lake, I would have to include Axoltols, one of my favorite animals. These guys have to get their name from Xolotl too, but I haven’t ever read that anywhere. Axolotls are a type of neotenic salamander. Basically “neotenic” means immature/unable to mature or transform. Virtually all Axoltols have a thyroid condition that prevents them from developing lungs and becoming semi-terrestrial. As a result, they stay larva-like for their whole lives. What this means, though, is that they stay really plastic. They don’t scar and they can regrow lost or damaged tails and limbs very quickly and can even sprout extra ones! They can also regrow vital organs, including structures in the brain. They also take transplants really readily, totally assimilating new eyes, hearts, and again, even brain parts. Also, they’re kind of cute and definitely interesting looking. You can see that I based one of the creatures in my header on one.

How has no one based a science fiction story on these guys? There should so be a story where some mad scientist combines human and Axolotl DNA to make super-resilient soldiers or something and the world has to deal with the consequences. Maybe, in a dystopian future, the rich take “Axoltol injections” to stay young forever while the poor are relegated to brief lives of ceaseless toil. A stylized Axoltol would make a great logo for a sinister bio-medical corporation. Also, the Axoltol could be a great super villain — he’s scrawny he lives in a cave, but he heals really quickly etc. This is someone the Mockingbird will fight whenever he gets around to fighting. I guess I’ll put this on the list of projects that take seconds to conceive and years to develop (if they ever do). The neotenic projects, I guess.

*For more on this, see me.

R is for Rat King

I’m not sure how happy I am with this one. I like the diversity of kings I was able to represent, but I’m just not thrilled with the piece’s overall design. These rats just aren’t tied tightly enough together. It seems like they’re going to get a lot of mingling done before they realize their tales are intertwined.

A “real” rat king, by the way, is a term for a cluster of rats who live in such close quarters that their tails get tangled up together. I think a quorum of seven is needed for a proper rat king. Anything else is a mere rat prince or regent or something. No one is sure if rat kings ever actually develop in the “wild.” There are museums around the world displaying big rings of desiccated rats, but the exhibitors (or the people who brought the rats to the museum) might have tied those tails together themselves. In any case, this all makes “the Nutcracker” a lot creepier.

Q is for Quetzalcoatl

This piece is, in style and substance, kind of out of place in this set. It’s the only page so far with no background at all. Also, it’s more design-y than my other monsters, less representational. It shows a little more outside influence (traditional Aztec patterns, etc.) than most of my other pieces do. Substantially, it stands apart, too. Quetzalcoatl isn’t really a cryptid. No one believes that there are, or ever were, feathered serpents winging their way around Central America (though they do, weirdly, believe that Jesus or one of his apostles might have passed through)*. He’s not a monster out of folklore either. In fact, he’s a full-fledged god. Still, I though that this picture was too cool to compromise. Also, the pickings for Q were pretty slim.

I have been fascinated by Quetzcoatl ever since I listened to an “X-Files” book on tape about him during a childhood road trip to Florida. I’d love to give him the write-up he deserves, but I’m in such a rush to turn work out that I can’t sit still long enough to blog. Looming deadlines, conventions, and the demands of outside projects are driving me to do as much as I can in these next few months. Still, maybe in a quieter moment I’ll come back and write something about the feathered serpent.

* Legend has it that, in his human form, Quetzcoatl was a White man with a beard. This fact, along, I guess, with his promise of a repeat appearance at some unspecified future date, has lead some people (Mormons, particularly) to believe that Quetzlcoatl was actually Christ or one of his disciples. The two may have also had similar philosophies, I’m not sure. I’m also not sure how white Jesus and co. would have really been. However, after what would have been a pretty epic sea voyage, they would have been plenty bearded.