Monday, April 10, 2023

WALKER

WALKER
“Storch stared out over the army of creatures that fluttered, staggered, stumbled, stood and slowly shook his head, still smiling. —Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch. Not so many anymore though. Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others. Ones from Mother Storch used to last longer. Her best could even talk. They got more real blood n’em, like you and me.”

“He saw several one armed things that met the description, but was Cousin Whatever still here, the one from the Parkway?”

“—Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch.”
Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe
For this second week, I thought I'd jump into a contemporary author, and not just anyone but a friend and collaborator, Scott Nicolay. The two of us worked on the essay series Stories From the Borderland where Scott would pick an overlooked but influential Weird story and I'd illustrate the creature(s) from it. I also illustrated the cover for his novella after and his translation of the R.-H. Rosny story The Xipehuz (both published by Dim Shores).


This one, though, is from his body-horror themed Jersey Devil story Tuckahoe. It was one of those stories where the creatures popped in my head immediately while reading it. Where I was tempted to put the book down and sketch the creatures. And I did, but I was busy with other drawings at the time and lost track of them. Recently I reread the story and it all flooded back. I had to draw one of the creatures. In fact, I had to draw all the creatures. I wound up drawing 5 from this one story alone. So, all week will be creeps from this story.

Both of Scott's collections are amazing:


           Ana Kai Tangata         And At My Back I Always Hear

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