VENUSIAN MIMIC & NIGHT CLOAK

VENUSIAN MIMIC

"A girl arose genie-like from the yawning opening of an enormous shell. Her shapely body was—perhaps—human. Tentacles intertwined nervously where her hair should have been. Her hands were webbed claws, her facial expression the rigid staring look of a lunatic, and her torso tapered away into the sinister darkness of the shell's interior."

"'Looks a little like a conch shell,' Hilks said. 'It's much larger, of course.'"

The shell was there, as in the first photo, and protruding out of it was the caricature of a shapely Venus. The outline was hazy but recognizable."

"Then the dratted snail did an imitation of me. Made me feel like a dratted fool. But I was wearing a black suit and red necktie, and it didn't have any trouble with those colors."
Lloyd Biggle Jr. ,The Botticelli Horror

NIGHT CLOAK

"Allen scratched his head and tried to envision a sailing, multicolored rug."

"'Well, like I said, it was pretty stuff. Vivid colors, red and black and yellow and white without any special pattern. It had a nice sheen to it—looked like a hunk of thick blanket.'"

"In the distance, just above the seething treetops, appeared a blob of color. It enlarged slowly as it sailed toward them, a multicolored flat surface that rippled and twisted and curled in flight."

Lloyd Biggle Jr. ,The Botticelli Horror

Read Scott's essay about The Botticelli Horror here

This was a truly weird one. Like seriously. A killer rug and a giant carnivorous snail the mimics Boticelli's Venus?! These are maybe two of the weirdest creatures I've drawn for Stories From the Borderland and the Venusian Mimic may be the weirdest one I've drawn full stop. 

The reason is pretty obvious. In Scott's essay he talks about how Biggle was contracted to write a story for a pre-existing cover. So he wrote the story based on the art, not the other way around. 

Sidenote: In his essay Scott mentions the similar relationship illustrator Sidney Sime had with Lord Dunsany. In a very "plate of shrimp" style coincidence, Philly weird artist & researcher Justin Duerr has recently uncovered a lost Sime piece that you can see on his Instagram that will be included in a book he's working on.

Here's the cover art by Paul Frame and, frankly, pretty uninspiring interior art by Grayam from Fantastic, March 1960. Also a cover for Metallic Muse by Ed Nuckolls featuring the Venus.

The Night Cloaks were the hardest to really imagine. I'd drawn something vaguely similar with the living arabesque from Dreams In the Witch-House but I wanted them to be distinct. I began by looking at sheets being dried on lines for the shapes & movements of cloth in the wind. Then I looked at flags. Then I stumbled on ribbon flags and that's where it felt right.



As for the mimic. I obviously looked at Botticelli's painting. I was actually surprised at how inhuman the proportions were when you really studied them. Her sloping shoulders, long neck, thick and long forearms. It's very odd. 


My version of the living arabesque & the red helmet shell.

For the shell I used an actual shell for reference. One I found while on the beach in Mozambique back in 2007. It's a cypraecassis rufa commonly known as a red helmet shell or a bullmouth shell and home to a large sea snail. I obviously only used it as a jumping off point. It's alien, so I had fun with the colors, textures and even added a pearl topper.

Despite it's reverse nature, I did like this story a lot. The invasive species gone wild idea gave me Arachnophobia / Infested vibes. It's fun, bizarre but still imagines a future-fantastic world where bureaucrats have to clean up importation messes.

Next week's another double dosage of weird!