15 December 2009

Inside Godzilla

A Japanese illustrator has offered this suggestion on how Godzilla’s anatomy might work.



The illustration reveals huge lungs so the monster can hold its breath an extremely long time as it walks the ocean floor. Serious leg bones and muscles support its 20,000 tonne weight. It has a sophisticated system, featuring a uranium sack and a nuclear reaction sack, to produce radioactive fire-breath. However do not expect any sophisticated opinions from Godzilla. It has a very small brain.

08 December 2009

Ugly Beastie

Pity the Blobfish, who has almost no muscle and is frequently called “the ugliest thing alive.”



They live deep deep down in the waters around Australia. The female of the species is unusual among fish in that after laying eggs she sits on them until hatched. Then again, it might just be lazyness. Blobfish don’t move much anytime. They only eat when something edible happens to float by.

21 November 2009

In the Hall of Bones

As a place to visit in Paris, the Natural History Museum beats them all.


The ground floor of the Natural History Museum, Paris.

As soon as you walk in you can do nothing but stare. Staring right back at you is a chorus of skeletons, the bare bones of the animal kingdom. Whoever set up this display had a keen scene of the theatrical. Most of the skeletons are facing the same direction, at you, and there isn’t a single preserved skin or display panel to break the march of boniness. The iron ribs in the roof have been painted suitable colours to compliment the skeletons. Colour-wise, the whole huge room and all its contents fall into a small range of creams and browns. There are giraffes, walruses, horses and whales. There are deer, rhino, snakes and turtles. Many have been there for over a hundred years and it seems, as you walk in, that they have been waiting for you.


Skull of a two-headed calf, Veau Iniodyme.

At the back of the room are some strange cases. They are the kind of freak show that museums would not put on display nowadays but have been allowed to remain in this old museum. There are skeletons of human babies, set up in creepy standing positions. There is a cyclops pig preserved in a jar and the skull of a two-headed calf.


A Green Turtle, Tortue Verte.

Many natural history museums have stuffed animals on display. Taxidermy has been used to preserve the impression of life in the corpse. In those museums we are able to examine the skin of the creature, look into its artificial eye. Perhaps a stuffed animal is better at making us understand how the creature looked in the wild but, for me, something vital has been lost in the process. It might be dignity. In this museum in Paris we see the bleached bones, the raw structure of life, and our imaginations flesh them out. Strange but true; these skeletons suggest the grandeur of life much more a room of stuffed skins would.

28 October 2009

What Fright Looks Like

The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch lived from 1864 to 1944. Walking in Oslo one evening as the sun was setting he was struck by a vision. He wrote, "looking out across flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the deep blue fjord and city [ … ] I felt a great, infinite scream pass through nature."


The Scream, 1893, oil on cardboard, 36 x 29 inches, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.

The Scream was Munch's record of his experience that evening. Now the painting has become an icon of anxiety. This is largely down to the powerful simplicity of the face. The face is framed by the palms pressed to its hallow cheeks and contains almost nothing but mouth and eyes, wide-open and aghast. Here is a primary image of fear. It was a primary image of fear before Munch even painted it.

The Scream is world famous image and has gone on to be reproduced, copied, messed-with and recast in countless ways. The pop artist Andy Warhol had a go, as did The Simpsons. The murderous lunatic in the Wes Craven’s Scream movies wears a mask based on the face in the painting. The same mask is always a big seller at this time of year, Halloween. So, independently of the original painting, The Scream lives.

The painting also had a pre-life. Munch heard an “infinite scream pass through nature” but how did he find a face for it? He went to the museum. During his time in Paris an Inca mummy went on display there, Munch went to see it. The body had come from Peru. It had been bound and buried in a jar.


The mummy is still in Paris, in the Musée de l'Homme.

It can be imagined that, when Munch looked upon the mummy, he had found what fright might look like. He painted its portrait and he sent it out into the world. It is still with us today.

08 October 2009

The Girl With Many Eyes

Tim Burton is the director of Ed Wood, Planet of the Apes and the 1989 version of Batman. My favourite of his movies is probably Edward Scissorhands. It’s the standard 'boy meets girl' kind of story, but instead of hands this boy has scissors on the end of each arm. These unusual appendages come between him and his beloved.

Edward Scissorhands is typical of Burton’s work, he is interested in outcasts, oddballs and teenage freaks. Apart from making movies he has also written and illustrated a book of poems featuring a wide range of strange youths, all struggling to belong. It is called The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories and it is a very funny collection of rhythms. Here’s an example:



The Girl With Many Eyes

One day in the park
I had quite a surprise
I met a girl
who had many eyes.

She was really quite pretty
(and also quite shocking!)
and I noticed she had a mouth,
so we ended up talking.

We talked about flowers,
her poetry classes
and the problems she’d have
if she ever wore glasses.

It’s great to know a girl
who has so many eyes,
but you really get wet
when she breaks down and cries.

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories is published by Faber and Faber.

You can watch the trailer for Edward Scissorhands here.

05 September 2009

Goya's Witches

Francisco Goya was a Spanish painter who lived between 1746 and 1828. He knew about monsters and witches.


Section of The Spell 1797-98. Oil on canvas, 44 x 32cm. Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.

In The Spell a coven are ganging up a terrified man. What a line-up of witchy wickedness they are! One is sticking a pin into a voodoo doll. Another is carrying a basket of dead babies. In this painting, from around 1798, you can see how old the typical image of a witch is. They could be trick-or-treaters dressed in today’s Halloween masks and costumes. All they lack are pointed hats and broomsticks.

That is the problem with the painting. These are nasty witches certainly, but are they really scary? Don’t they look like they are trying too hard? I think this painting has lost its power because it is now an old-fashioned idea of what witches look like.

Goya could do better witches than them …


Witches in the Air 1797-98. Oil on canvas, 43.5 x 30.5 cm. Musea Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

Witches in the Air still rates high on the fright-o-meter. These witches wear pointed hats but are unusual in most other ways. They fly but need no broomsticks, they are young and, most importantly, they are male. I don’t know where the idea of witching being a purely female pursuit came from, it is by now the common idea, but it was not accepted in Goya’s time that only girls could grow to be witches.

In the painting a few witches have flown down and have scooped a man away from his friends. One survivor is making a run for it with a sheet over his head. He has his thumbs stuck out between the index and second fingers of each hand. This gesture is called the figa and it is to ward away evil.

This painting is not only scary because it features different kinds of witches from those we are used to. It is the way it is painted. It seems the victim has been picked-on at random. The picture feels like the snapshoot of a crime-in-progress. The witnesses and the inclusion of a commonplace donkey make it seem like a rural scene that has gone suddenly wrong. The witches are not frail wispy things cackling in the shadows. They are painted brightly. They are healthy, they look like they work-out. This coven is solidly real. The have man-handled their victim into the air. He is kicking and screaming. The witches are leaning in and —the horror— they are eating him.

18 August 2009

They came from the Deep

Have a look at this fella. It’s Teuthowenia pellucida or, perhaps more catchy, a Googly-Eyed Glass Squid. It lives in the ocean. When alarmed by a predator, or a photographer, it inflates its body up with water until it has become a semi-transparent sphere. If its extra size doesn’t discourage the predator then the squid fills its water-balloon body with ink. In this way it’s camouflaged in the darkness of its surroundings. What if it’s threatened during daylight hours? That’s not a problem. This squid lives deep down, beyond the reach of the sun.


The Googly-Eyed Glass Squid. You'd probably look weird to it. Copyright; www.deepseaphotography.com

But not as deep as the seafloor. The Googly-Eyed Glass Squid lives in the zone called 'midwater.' It floats between the sea surface and the bottom and keeps away from shores, those are all places fatally dangerous to this delicate creature. It's kind of spooky when you think about it, it lives in a world without walls, without edges and without ground. It just hovers in an endless void. Everywhere is the same. It is always exposed. This is why it has to be able to hide while still in view. There is nothing to hide behind.


Shy, but with a good sense of humour, the Dumbo Octopus.

This Pokémon-looking critter does live on the ocean floor, even when it's as deep 5000 metres. You and I would be squashed flat as pancakes at that depth. It is called Grimpoteuthis or the Dumbo Octopus. According to a book called The Deep, where I have been finding out about these and other creatures, the Dumbo Octopus is something of a mystery. “They are often observed resting on the bottom, with their mantle spread around them,” the writer says. “What are they doing there, sitting so quietly in the dark? Nobody knows.”

Thank you to Claire Nouvian who wrote The Deep and the lovely Ms. S who give me a copy of it for my birthday.

Something is coming ...

The Badness of Ballydog will be published by Simon and Schuster next February. It will be followed by Lost Dogs later in the year. There will also be a third, I am still thinking about the title for that. I already have one I like but the publisher thinks it is too long. We will see.

The cover illustrator is Jonny Duddle. Looking at his portfolio I see that he is fond of pirates so The Badness of Ballydog, which contains no pirates but does have plenty of boats and high waves, probably suited him. He can also draw a leatherback turtle excellently, but you’ll have to wait to see that. It’s on the back.

Ballydog is a bad town on the road to nowhere. It's also home to Andrew, the boss of a school gang; May, an outcast for her strange ways and ability to understand animals; and Ewan, a newcomer, hiding out in Ballydog under the witness protection scheme. Now these three teenagers are under threat as a vast ancient creature marches along the seabed towards their town, intent on destroying it. Can they save Ballydog? Is it worth saving?