MONSTROUS FROG

MONSTROUS FROG

"There, squatting in the midst of the tumbled bedding from that long-abandoned bed, sat a monstrous, leathery-skinned creature that was neither frog nor man, one gorged with food, with blood still slavering from its batrachian jaws and upon its webbed fingers - a monstrous entity that had strong, powerfully long arms, grown from its bestial body like those of a frog, and tapering off into a man's hands, save for the webbing between the fingers..." 

H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Shuttered Room

I have to admit, I did redraw a bunch of frog monsters in this batch. Lovecraft and his crew loved a frog/toad creature. I think I did a good job of making them distinctly weird but I hope it doesn't get too redundant.

The redrawing of this one may seem redundant but I'm much happier with it. I really didn't change much aside from the lifework, color and rendering. The design, pose & basic color scheme is the same but it's cleaner, simplified and more streamlined. I think the human elements I kept in this frog thing make it really creepy. It's mostly frog but it's got humanoid hands, teeth and eyes. But the rest is frog baby!

This story was originally published by Arkham House in The Shuttered Room & Other Pieces with a cover by Richard Taylor. Subsequent editions featured cool covers by John Holmes and Bob Haberfield. The monstrous frog isn't depicted in any of these covers (maybe the hand in the Arkham edition) so there's not much to compare to.

This is another of August Derleth's "collaborations" with Lovecraft. That's in quotes because most of these were ideas Derleth fleshed out into full stories after HPL died. Derleth was a great editor but man was he an awful writer. I find these stories soooo painful to get through.