Blackboard Monster

This beast was a group creation. A bunch of young people and myself dreamed it up in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, earlier this year.

The Deinotherium

The Deinotherium (dy-noh-THEER-ee-um) was a relative of the elephant. They could grow to be 4.5 metres tall. This creature had the misfortune to become extinct about two million years ago, leaving the elephant and the extinct-yet-familiar mammoth to dictate what members of the Elephantidae family ought to look like. Here I'm talking especially about the tusks.

Deinotherium's tusks point back and downwards, not up and forwards like the elephant's. Writing about its bones, people have called this tusk arrangement 'curious,' 'freaky,' even 'comical.' Poor old Deinotherium is stuck being the weird one.



Let's not forget that it need not have been so. If Deinotherium had got a bit luckier, if continents had drifted this way instead of that, if the timings of ice ages had been different, then this creature might have survived into our age. Instead the elephant could well have taken the hit and become extinct. Then we'd be going to zoos or circuses to see the delightful Deinotherium. And in the prehistoric displays of museums, it would be the tusks of the elephant that would make us say, 'weird.' 'Those tusks pointing up and forwards,' we'd say, 'they just look wrong.'

Minding the Baby

Kid's writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak died recently. His book Where the Wild Things Are has stoked up millions of imaginations since it was first published in 1963. There are a lot of monsters in that book but they are a jolly lot, fond of a good loud rumpus. For the SCARY Sendak you could look at his illustrations for another book, Outside Over There.



Here's a picture that leaves a chill. Hooded goblins are stealing away a baby girl while her big sister is practicing the french horn. I don't think it's the goblins that are the scary thing about this image. It's not even the expression of terror on the face of the baby. The ice replica the goblins have left in place of the child is spooky but I don't think it's the scariest thing here either.

The most chilling part of the picture is the distant look on the face of the older girl, utterly absorbed in her music practice and failing to notice what is happening behind her back. Her blank expression feels like a warning. Terrible things can happen just through inattention or distraction. It's a frightening thing to realise becuase we all get distracted sometimes. We will probably never meet evil hooded goblins, but we might forget to look out for those we care about at some vital moment. This picture is a stern warning; take care, mind the baby.

Serious Jellyfish

This photograph is doing the rounds on the internet lately. The floating creature is a Lion's Mane Jellyfish, a real creature but this photo is a fake. The diver has been photoshopped in to make the jellyfish seem huge.

Fake

Real

This manipulation makes me mad. It seems to suggest that nature is not amazing enough by itself, it needs to be meddled with. But nature is plenty amazing enough already. The Lion's Mane Jellyfish can get to be nearly 8 feet in diameter. This ought to be enough for anyone, and with their streaming stingers they can be up to 120 feet long.

Mystery Creature

Can any reader identify this creature by its skull? This is a beast that is still alive in the world today. No other clues, not for a while anyway. Give it your best shot in the comments section below. Thank you.


Do you recognise this real beast?

Paper Monster

Top this. An origami kraken made from a single piece of paper 25 inches across. No cuts, just folds. The creator remarks (and I quote because I love the specialist terminology,) that the “sails are formed using trapezoid molecules.”


Kraken attacks!


The crease pattern shows where all the folds are.

You can see more of Brian Chan’s origami work at this link.

Sensitive Cyclops

If you’re doodling a monster there is one quick way to ensure the viewer knows it’s a genuine out-of-the-subconscious monstrous creation and not just a badly drawn crocodile. Give your creature only one eye. Much of the animal life on earth tends towards symmetry in the arrangement of sense organs. A one-eyed life form seems to contradict some fundamental principle, causing unease. The viewer knows this beast is built to a completely different design than the rest of us. An entirely different form of life that sees the world in a wholly different manner. It is an alien. It is a monster.


Ray Harryhausen’s Cyclops in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, 1958.

All the one-eyed creatures of today are probably descended from the Cyclops, one of the cast of the ancient Greek myths. It is a lumbering giant that is outwitted by Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. This image of the Cyclops as brutal, dumb and fond of violence has been its stereotype ever since. The Cyclops in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad could not even speak, it just lurched about and roared. I can think of only one exception to this sort of Cyclops in art, this painting by Odilon Redon.


The Cyclops. Oil on cardboard mounted on panel, 64 × 51 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Holland. Painted sometime between 1898 and 1900.

What kind of Cyclops is this? Peeking shyly at a sleeping figure in what feels like a misty Garden of Eden. One does not feel the sleeping figure is in any danger. This Cyclops just wants a friend. A constant problem for those attempting to depict the Cyclops is what to do with its nose? The artist sometimes plants the eye in the middle of the forehead, retaining a normal human nose with two weird patches of skin either side. Or they forcefully squash the nose down, like in the movie version above. Redon avoids the problem by simply withholding the nose. He makes his Cyclops a smooth faced creature, not some warped aberration. This helps make it seem childlike, innocent as a lamb. Painting the creature without a nose sidesteps blunt questions of anatomy. Such questions would ruin the soft magic of the image. This Cyclops is made seem even more harmless by the absence of its right shoulder. Where does the far shoulder go? It is just about feasible that it is curved out of view. It matters little, the effect is to make this Cyclops seem dainty and meek. This is Odilon Redon's vision of the Cyclops, at home in a dreamscape.

Monster Monks

It has been a while since we’ve had a Japanese monster, so here’s one now. David Maybury of Children’s Books Ireland drew my attention to this modern take on an ancient spectre, it is the first image below. The beast is the Umibōzu. Or if you prefer 海坊主, a name that combines the character for sea with the character for Buddhist monk.


The illustrator is Shigeru Mizuki and the image is from the Yōkai Jiten, an encyclopaedia of traditional monsters published in 1981.

These spirits live in the sea and if you happen to come close to one your best defence is to look away and pretend not to see it. The Umibōzu are peaceable enough if you don’t hassle them. The worst thing you can do is try and chat with one. That will result in it sinking you and your vessel.

Some say the Umibōzu are drowned holy men, they have the shaven heads of a monk and when seen at sea they often appear to be praying. I read that they are sometimes described as having serpentine limbs like tentacles. These limbs, their big eyes and smooth heads make me wonder if the idea of the Umibōzu may be based on sightings of the Giant Squid. Such squid are rarely seen near the surface but this rarity might have made their appearances all the more frightening.


I got this image of a Giant Squid from here.


This well-known 19th century image of the Umibōzu was created by the wood block artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

Dead or Alive

Newfoundland is in North-East Canada. I have a friend from there and he recently sent me a copy of this poster. It could be found pinned up in Newfoundland towns in the 1980s.


Wanted! Big squid.

It was a serious attempt by a biologist called Frederick Aldrich to gather samples of the giant squid, Architeuthis dux. The chances of a live squid trashing around a coastline like in this picture are pretty slim, although it does make for an exciting poster. It was more likely that Newfoundlanders would find giant squid corpses or parts of corpses washed up on shore. A while ago on this blog I wrote about a different kind of big squid, the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis Hamiltoni. We knew about that creature for decades before one was seen alive or even in one piece. That was because parts of its distinctive tentacles were occasionally washed up on beaches, biologists looked at them and knew that there had to be an undiscovered species out there.

Newfoundland has a long history with the giant squid. In 1873 the first complete specimen of a giant squid ever seen came ashore there and was photographed in the bathtub of the local reverend.


Giant squid found in Newfoundland in 1873, hung above the bathtub.

In the 1870’s many giant squid washed up on the shores of Newfoundland. No one knows why those years were a particularly busy time for strandings but many scientists believe that they happen in regular cycles and are therefore predictable. The length of time between mass strandings is not known, but Frederick Aldrich suggested it might be 90 years. Aldrich correctly predicted another group of strandings that occurred in the 1960s.

In both the 1870s and the 1960s most of the beached squid were dead by the time they were discovered. There was one massive exception. One giant squid was struggling in the shallows when fishermen came across it in 1878. I assume this discovery is the scene illustrated in the poster. They managed to hook the dying beast with a grapnel and stopped it from washing back out to sea. They measured it at seven metres or about twenty feet long. It might have been the biggest giant squid ever captured. We don’t know for sure because then, unfortunately, the fishermen chopped the creature up. They used it for dog food. Frederick Aldrich may have been worrying about this possibility when he offered a reward.

Sea Creatures from Queens

Hello to everyone I got to meet during my events in a couple of Queens libraries this month. Some drawing was done and I include a selection of the creations below.


The Hydra Tooth.


Bell Jelly Monster.


Red Rose Rooted Monster.


I didn't catch any name for this, the stringy shark maybe?


The Monster of the Broken Heart.


Broomfish.


After this beast has eaten its fill it stores spare meat for later consumption. It stores it by sticking in onto one of those black hooks along its rear section.


The Hell Spike Fish.


I like the delicacy of this one. Didn't catch its name though.


The Red-Handed Looker has many eyes. It catches you red-handed, hence the name.


The Many-Mouthed Beast.


The Hand-Feet Beast maybe?

Physical Curiosities

Physica Curiosa was a reference book of bizarre animals and nightmarish humanoid creatures that, in 1662, were thought to be living out there somewhere in the world. Not too nearby luckily. Its creator was a priest called Gaspar Schott. It is believed that he did not do much fieldwork but relied on the reports of other people.


Left: "Monstrum biceps cum altero capite in ventre,” two-headed monster with another head in its belly. Right: "Monstrum septiceps,” seven headed monster.

The original book is in University of Iowa’s digital collection. You can look at it at this link. I first read about Gaspar Schott’s monster collection at the brilliant blog Res Obscura.

Monster Minds

Hello to all the kids of Belfast’s Lower Ormeau who I meet with recently. They were all taken out for the morning to Queen’s University and shown around its hallowed corridors. It’s just like Hogwarts, was the general consensus. In the university’s Great Hall I gave them a presentation on … what else? Monsters.


Thanks to Paul Maddern for this photograph and the next two below. This is me, being asked a tough question.

In the week leading up to their visit two staff members had been leading creative writing and drawing classes with them. The theme was monsters and they created whole books of brilliant drawings. It was great to see them.


One example from the student’s own monster book.


Another example. A monster with a pet monster. What a good idea! I may have to steal it. It is a quick, scrawled, drawing but I think that makes the creatures seem even scarier. Maybe the kid who drew was so frightened by their own creation that they just couldn’t colour it.

On the internet, an artist called Dave Devries has started a website called Monster Engine. The galleries there began with this one simple question. “What would a child’s drawing look like if it were painted realistically?” Below are some results.


Boo! Example one.


Another strange beast.


A dangerous ninja, with what looks like a vicious side-kick in a box. Or is she a prisoner?


Dave Devries's version. Not a prisoner, she kicks her way out.

Click here to visit Monster Engine.

Reading and Workshop

Last night I put down the final word of book three. However it might change, as might many of the words that came before it. It is still untitled.


Downpatrick, getting attacked by a zombie worm, the real ones aren’t so big.

On 7 August I will be doing an author visit and workshop in Downpatrick. It will be part of their Imagine Festival. Come along if you can. It will be fun and a tiny bit educational. There will be some drawing, some writing and some monsters, many of them real sea creatures you may enjoy learning about. Fact is stranger than fiction, they say, and it’s true. Did you know that at the bottom of the sea there lives a creature called a Bone-Eating Zombie Snot-Worm? Imagine. Come along and I'll introduce you.

Please click here for the Down Arts Centre page.

Two Hells

Gustave Doré was born in 1832 and taught himself to draw as a child. He went on to become a famous illustrator. He had a particularly good eye for monsters.

Perhaps the most famous etchings he produced were illustrations for the Inferno, the first part of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. This long poem describes a tour of hell and was written late in the 13th century. People have continued to read Dante’s Inferno to this day, there are many modern translations to choose from. Far more people read the Inferno than the Paradiso, a tour of heaven that Dante also wrote. This is because badness is more interesting than goodness.


Gustave Doré’s Geryon, 1857.

In part 17 of Dante’s Inferno the visitors to hell meet a monster called Geryon. This creature is a symbol of lies and deceit. It has the face of an honest man but (beware!) the tail of a scorpion. However Geryon helps the visitors on their way, carrying them down to the next level of hell. It flies with them on its back, drops them off and quickly flaps away. A 1843 translation describes the scene like so:

Thus, grounding in the bottom of that pit,
To foot o’ the ragged cliff did Geryon bring
Our human freight, and, of his burden quit,
Sped off, like notch of arrow from the string.

A 2004 translation of Dante’s Inferno modernises it, setting the story in a collapsed and tortured American city. The same part of the story is told like so:

… Greyon finally set us down at the bottom of that rocky cliff. As soon as we climbed down from his back, he was off again like a bullet.

Very 21st century but perhaps not as rich. It is odd that the translator changed the name of the monster, Geryon to Greyon. Why do that? But I love Sandow Birk’s illustrations to this 2004 version. He has modernised Gustave Doré’s work, showing that not only words are open to translation. He has reset the illustrations in the dangerous city, where arrows have become bullets, and portrayed it as a sprawl of parking lots and fast-food joints. One of the most striking illustrations is his retelling of the monster of deceit. It has been transformed into a military helicopter.


The new flying montser.


The Minotaur: “Who when he saw us, as with cankerous rage. Inly consuming, his own flesh ‘gan tear.” John Dayman, 1843.


The Minotaur: “When he saw us, he freaked out by biting himself, growling at us and going psycho.” Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders, 2004.

In other illustrations Birk has kept much of Doré’s original composition. Elements are arranged in the same way although with a twist or two. In part 12 the visitors meet the half-man-half-bull that is the Minotaur. It has been sent to the seventh circle of hell because of its violent life. Doré drew the Minotaur in a way befitting an artist embedded in the classical tradition. Birk lives in California and his Minotaur is a brash logo. It is spot lit and standing on top of a food stall next door to a petrol station. In the background skyscrapers loom where Doré had drawn mountains.

In all these pictures Sandow Birk captures what people mean by the term ‘urban hell'.

Dreadful Dragon Dreamed

If you were paying attention in class you’ll know that alliteration is the repetition of sounds at the beginning of words, often just the first letter or two. I go in for a bit of alliteration myself, hence the title The Badness of Ballydog and phrases in it, “Borrowed barrels” and “a rock rolling” for example. I like to put a bit of music in my writing.


King Arthur and Merlin watching dragons fight.

The Alliterative Morte Arthure took the style to the extreme, using alliteration at almost every opportunity. It is a poem of over 4000 lines written in Middle English. It is about the life of the legendary King Arthur. Nobody knows when it was first written down but it seems likely that it was during the 14th century when using alliteration was very popular. Reading Middle English is hard work so it is good to know that, at the moment, the English poet Simon Armitage is working on a modern version. What he produces will flow better to today’s readers and we will be able to enjoy it next year.

I’m sure Mr Armitage is doing a better job but in the meantime here’s my version of one small section, where King Arthur has a vision of a dragon. Describing a dragon as a shrimp is odd to today’s ears but I kept that in from the original. I tried to stay true to plentiful alliteration, changing whatever else was necessary to do so. It is probably more fun if you read it out loud.

He dreamed of a dragon, dreadful to behold
Come driving over deep to drown his people
Driven directly from the west, a wanderer unworthy
Covered completely in silver scales
This shrimp was enamelled in shinning shards
Its womb and its wings were wondrous colours
In this marvellous mail it mounted the sky
Whoever it lashed was lost forever
Its feet were flourished in fine fur
Such fierce flame flowed from its lips
The sea itself seemed seared with fire

Here’s the original I worked from, I got it from this online resource. The notes on the website helped me too, as you can see many of the words are no longer used and I needed the translation the site provided.

Him dremed of a dragon - dredful to behold,
Come drivand over the deep - to drenchen his pople,
Even walkand - out the West landes,
Wanderand unworthyly - over the wale ythes
Both his hed and his hals - were holly all over
Ounded of azure, - enamelled full fair
His shoulders were shaled - all in clene silver
Shredde over all the shrimp - with shrinkand pointes;
His womb and his winges - of wonderful hewes,
In marvelous mailes - he mounted full high.
Whom that he touched - he was tint forever!
His feet were flourished - all in fine sable
And such a venomous flaire - flow from his lippes
The flood of the flawes - all on fire seemed!

The description of the dragon starts at line 760 of the Alliterative Morte Arthure. It is followed by the description of a giant bear charging from the east. The two beasts do battle. It's like a 15th century King Kong. These days we have talented animators and special effects to bring monsters to life. In the 14th century writers were using alliteration to make their monsters live and flow, sweeping the audience away.

Mesonychoteuthis Hamiltoni

Recently I discovered something called the Home University Roscommon Leitrim. HURL events consist of members of the public giving a lecture on anything they know about. You get ten minutes to talk about the subject of your enthusiasm. The basic idea is that people come together for some relaxed learning. “Soft knowledge” one member called it. Last week in Cootehall village, Co. Roscommon they had an event. I was one of the speakers and I think my show went down well. There were a few laughs even though we were discussing a real monster.


The Colossal Squid, copyright; www.deepseaphotography.com

Mesonychoteuthis Hamiltoni, or the Colossal Squid, is a creature we knew about for fifty years before one was caught or even seen by humans. We knew they existed because parts of tentacles were occasionally washed up on shore or found in the stomachs of dead whales. The Colossal Squid’s tentacles are very distinctive, they bristle with weapons. Little teeth in the suckers and revolving hooks on the ends of its tentacles mean that once a Colossal Squid has grabbed you, you stay grabbed. The biggest Colossal Squid ever caught was 8 metres long but it is reckoned they can grow to twice that.



This is hard for us landlubbers to grasp just how alien this life-forms is. Its brain is the shape of a donut. Its throat passes through the hole in the middle. Anything it eats has to be broken into small pieces before they swallow it, otherwise it can give itself brain damage. It mouth is a beak, like a parrot’s beak. Its blood is not red, its blood is blue. It has three hearts.

The Colossal Squid’s eyes can be the size of beach balls. These are the biggest eyes in the world and possibly the biggest eyes that ever evolved on this planet. About 80% of its brain is dedicated to its optics. That goes to show how important vision is to the Colossal Squid. Most species of squid have their eyes on the sides of their heads so they can watch all around them. This proves a certain wariness, most squid watch their backs. But the Colossal Squid’s eyes are positioned forwards on its head. Having eyes to the front of the head is a characteristic of predators. In this way Colossal Squids are like wolves, like hawks, like humans. It is a hunter.



Many scientists and researchers agree that squid, of all types, are both getting physically bigger and getting bigger in numbers. Dr George Jackson of Tasmania's Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies thinks large squid are the new "big players of the ocean." Many of their natural competitors and enemies have been overfished, by us, and this has triggered a population explosion. Furthermore global warming has warmed the ocean to temperatures that suit them better. Squid are now growing and breeding quicker. "You just heat them up a little bit and everything just ticks over that much faster,” says Jackson.

So the Colossal Squid is big, it is nasty and it is mysterious. Those things alone would qualify the creature for true monster of the deep status. But look at Jackson’s research and we can add another issue, they’re coming. As I told the audience at the HURL event, be afraid. They laughed at that, it was nervous laughter though.

Links:
HURL's blog.
More information on the Colossal Squid at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Elephant Versus Dragon Versus Wyvern

I have begun school visits and giving presentations at bookshops. I enjoy meeting readers and hearing their views. I am sometimes surprised by what attracts the attention of young people. In The Gutter Bookshop, Dublin, my audience were completely fascinated by the jobs I’d done in fish factories when I was a teenager. One girl wanted to know how much I was paid for writing a book. When her friends made it clear they thought that was an impolite question she became indignant. ‘I just want to make sure the man’s making a living,’ she said.


In the Gutter Bookshop, Dublin.


A Bestiary. c. 1255 - 1265. Harley MS 3244, f.39v.

During my presentation I talk about the history of monsters. I often show the young people this image. It is from a 13th century English manuscript called a Bestiary. It shows a dragon threatening an elephant. It is an interesting image because the person who drew it would never have seen either creature. It is hard to know which of the two beasts would have seemed more freakish.

Bestiary’s were a popular in those times. They were a kind of dictionary of nature. The fantastical monsters seemed more credible by being placed along side commonplace creatures, sheep for example. According to the book Monsters & Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts, by Alixe Bovey, Bestiaries can be seen as a foretaste of what grew, over creatures, into natural history. However Bestiaries seek moral drama in the creatures of the world and even an insight into the mind of God. In the story illustrated by the above image the elephant represents good and the dragon represents evil.

But is it a dragon? During my presentations several young people have told me that the creature is in fact a wyvern. ‘You can tell because it’s got two legs,’ I was assuredly told. The students of Wesley College were especially expert. It seemed the whole crowd, and there were over an hundred and fifty present, knew what a wyvern was and how to distinguish it from a dragon. It turns out that the Wesley has a wyvern of its own. It is on the school crest.


A section of the Wesley College crest. The wyvern's legs are to the front but the creature uses its tail to support its hindquarters.


In Wesley, I stuck this photo together from three different images.

Thank you to everyone who came along and made my shows possible. I hope you enjoyed the monsters.

True Monster of the Deep

200 million years ago much of the dry land on earth was gathered into a supercontinent called Pangaea. The waters surrounding it could be called a superocean. This vast body of water has been named Panthalassa. A big ocean deserves a big reptile and, sure enough, it was the home of the Ichthyosaur. Some of these creatures were vast bodies themselves. The bones of a giant ichthyosaur unearthed in Canada lately add up to the largest marine reptile ever found, like an articulated truck … with fins.


Note the scale of the person in the image. However not every species of Ichthyosaur reached the monstrous size of this example.

Big eyes indicate Ichthyosaurs were probably deep divers, used to being deep in the dark sea. They probably ate squid, shellfish and other reptiles and were at swim for around 150 million years. That is a long time by any standard, therefore we can say they must have had a wide-ranging diet. One sure way for a species to die off fast is to focus on only one type of food and refuse to eat anything else. If your source of food disappears then you are bound to follow. The Ichthyosaur was not fussy and the giant Ichthyosaur in particular was able to eat virtually anything it meet. Few of us would not like to meet one when going for a swim.

A set of fossils from the United States adds more to our vision of this awesome predator. In Nevada dozens of Ichthyosaurs were found fossilised together. They were all pointed in the same direction and this has lead some to suggest that the creatures went about in pods, like dolphins do today. Imagine a dozen of these giants swimming at you through the blue Panthalassa.

Know the Kappa

In Japan, parents warn their children about the Kappa. The Kappa is a water imp that smells of fish, eats cucumbers and has a head shaped like a bowl. Parents may have invented the creature in order to keep their children from wandering too close to dangerous lakes and rivers. Or perhaps the Kappa really is there, watching from among the reeds.

"Skin like a catfish." A 18th Century Kappa.

It would have been there a long time. The Kappa in the above image was captured and then sketched sometime about 1770 near present-day Tokyo. According to the text that accompanies the illustration it was two feet tall and had skin like a catfish. Later, an illustrated guide to twelve types of kappa was produced, based on sightings and reports. The crawling creature in the image below is one.


See the whole document here.

Later, in the 1850s, a well-known Kappa lived in the Tone River. Its name was Neneko. It moved along to new locations along the river each year, taking lives wherever it went.


Neneko.

Most portrayals that I have seen of the Kappa show it as a smallish beast. This might explain why it always goes after children, Kappas are not big enough to take an adult. Once claimed, the child is dragged under the water and either drowned or, some say, converted into a Kappa themselves. The victim becomes amphibious, grows scales and soon cannot be distinguished from its surrogate family. It embarks on a new life, grubbing around riverbanks and watching for opportunities to gain a brother or a sister. I wonder how long it takes for the kidnapped child to forget its previous life. Perhaps it never does, and this sense of loss and loneliness is what has it leaping from rivers at children. Maybe the Kappa just wants to play, but whatever the reason another child is dragged under and the cycle continues.


Wooden carving of a Kappa, observe the bowl in its head. Collection of the National Museums of Scotland.

Should you encounter a Kappa it is vital to remember the following defense: The Kappa is a water creature and needs to maintain contact with its native element or it will become feeble. It has a bowl shaped head for holding water as it emerges on a kidnapping mission. The water-holding bowl can be seen clearly in a small carving I found in a museum lately. But the bowl is not exactly the Kappa’s weakness. Its weakness is its politeness, its Japanese culture of respect. If a Kappa comes at you quickly bow to it. The Kappa will be immediately compelled to bow back at you. With its head bowed the water will spill from the bowl and the Kappa will become weak. It will immediately have to dive back in the river, or die.