Octopus! The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea by Katherine Harmon Courage Current, Penguin Group, 2013 [Substitution: Challenge # 31: Nonfiction of any kind] I was having a lot of trouble finishing Undead Worlds, the collection of zombie short stories I intended as Challenge # 8, because it was only on my iPad and my …
There are the cheery, upbeat elves who help Santa in his workshop, then there are those other kind. The ones no one talks about. Both came from the same roots, yet one creature was sanitized, the other morphed into Krampus and the servants of Krampus. Here are some names for them. Santa’s Bad …
Since the 18th century, when images of Santa Claus began to be disseminated through newspapers, books, and periodicals, his appearance has changed quite a bit. Often those earlier depictions are a tad grotesque, as much for what was considered appealing at the time as the skill of the artist and the means of reproduction. When …
Hard as it is to believe, Santa Claus did not always have elves for sidekicks. That tradition came from 19th century Scandinavia and drew on the deeper pagan roots of Northern Europe. Elves, pooka, fairies, and the like were all part of a greater folklore of diminuitive, humanlike creatures that lived alongside humans, often in …
’nuff said.
Were they being created, or destroyed? Punished, or enhanced? Monitored, or forgotten? They look caught in motion, yet perhaps the liquid medium just holds them in stasis. Don’t ask the worker at the lower right. He’s just doing his job.
Venture an ocean journey and you may run into entities like this beyond the reach of land.
Speak only when you are spoken to. Excuse me, howled to.
Women-as-dragon, as a concept, has been around since ancient times. In Greek myth creatures like Scylla, Echidna, and Medusa had monstrous or dragon-like aspects, as did Grendel’s mom from Beowulf. Norse myth spoke of the dragon Nidhogg that gnawed at the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil. And of course, there’s Lilith and Tanit/Inanana/Ishtar. They …
Portrayals of women with dragons continued to rise throughout the 1970s, boosted by the rising genre of adult comics, forerunners to today’s graphic novels. The French magazine Metal Hurlant (Howling Metal) showcased many of these new artists like Caza, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Moebius, who later went on to design book covers and movie and TV …