Recently, a reader suggested to me that I put together a compendium of monsters, so readers could see all the monsters from the Land of Szornyek world. As you may know, I have already done illustrations for my patrons (click here to become a patron!), but I decided that it’s time to start sharing the drawings more widely.
I’ve put quite a few on Instagram in various stages of conception, but now I will be sharing each of them in blog posts. I have considered doing a book as well, but that would be a future project. For now, enjoy the monsters from Tentacles and Teeth!
Nagy
This was the first monster introduced! This creature is enormous, with purplish skin and twelve tentacles. It is voracious and quick, and will eat any living creature that gets in its way. They are luckily quite rare. This is also the first monster drawing I ever did, and what convinced me to continue with the style of stippling.
Rarohan
In the first draft of Tentacles and Teeth, there were no rarohan. This monster was added in editing. It was, however, still the second drawing I ever did. Drawing the rib bones gave me quite a headache lol.
Fun fact: Later, when I began using my drawings as part of digital illustrations, I became annoyed with myself that I had cut off the tail in the original drawing. Why, me, why?
Gamba
The gamba might be one of my all-time favorite monsters (after Polly, Arrow, of course). I think they are hilarious, and whenever I do a live reading of my work, I always pick the scene where Askari pokes a gamba with a stick.
Pok
One joke writers like to make is how they create terrible situations but then have to figure out how to get their characters out of them. The pok was one of those situations for me. I’d come up with what I thought was a creepy and cool monster (also a favorite of nine-year-olds at comic cons, in case you were wondering), but it was basically unkillable.
It’s dead now, but there’s a reason I didn’t bring it back later in the series lol
Kover
The kover is a favorite of a lot of readers. I liked the idea of a slow monster, but it had to have some way to protect itself. Enter: incapacitating poison and ejectable quills. Fun fact: did you know that porcupines don’t actually shoot their quills? The quills are more like spiky hair.
Hulla
Hulla were one of my creepier inventions, at least in my mind. I wanted something that would allow me to explore how we think about death, and here we are.
Fulek
The fulek was actually one of the last monsters I wrote for this book. Originally, there was a different scene here, with a lake monster. But the lake monster didn’t really have anything to do with anything. I instead needed a way to talk a little bit more about the Lamplighters, while also giving the reader a chance to get to know Minda just a bit more. I also wanted a monster that wasn’t inherently bad, to add some fuel to the fire of Askari’s changing mind, since that was one of the main themes of the series.
Gyiks
Gyiks! When I invented these, I wanted something easy to kill. I’d started off by making so many of the monsters in this series impossibly large, impossibly strong, and impossibly everything. So then, I made gyiks. Of course, I didn’t want it to be too easy, hence the horde.
Another fun fact: this was the first color monster illustration I did! I ultimately decided not to do them all in color, because it took me a lot longer than black and white.
Barlang
The barlang represents a significant shift in my mindset as I was writing Tentacles and Teeth. It was the first monster I wanted the reader to feel some kind of compassion for. I’ll be honest, if I were a monster, I’d be a barlang. I want to live in my cave, eat cave lichen, and be left alone. If a bunch of humans took up refuge and then attacked me, I’d probably be pretty pissed.
I still feel a little sorry for this creature, and sometimes wish I had found a way to let them live.
Elnok
Elnok! Was my way of humanizing the hulla, to provide some nice, round, fat cognitive dissonance for Askari. Wait, these creepy AF monsters have a queen? Some semblance of a society? And Minda is friends with them? Yup. I love cognitive dissonance. It’s why I’m an absurdist, I guess.
Minket
And here we have everyone’s favorite, adorable, little companion: a minket!
Polly is a great monster. She’s clever and fun and funny. And Dreadnaught—what a gem.
Polly was designed to be one of the most significant nails in the coffin for the beliefs Askari was raised with: that all monsters are evil and bad. Which was also a theme I wanted to explore in the book in general. So many of the ideas and ideologies we are taught are presented in black and white terms: good or bad. But the world is a lot more complex and nuanced than that, and my personal belief is that one of the most important things we can do as humans is learn to accept nuance and contradiction.
And Polly is the manifestation of that belief.
A Few More Monsters
Those are all the main monsters in Tentacles and Teeth, but I’ve done a lot more art than just those eleven illustrations. So below, enjoy a slideshow of a few of the other pieces I’ve done over the last few years! And stay tuned for a post about City of Dod!
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