40,000 Leagues

For those who like to be well informed, a league is a distance of about 3 miles.


When I was in Hainan last year, I was eating in a open air restaurant that had its own aquariums. If you wanted to, you could choose your dinner fresh from the tank. There were these strange shellfish swimming around in one. I thought they were adorable until I realized that I was looking at them the wrong way. And then they weren't cute at all, just another run of the mill arthropod...one without huge, charming eyes.

Anyway, one of these days those imaginary protostomes will make an appearance in my art. Until that day, however, I will have to content myself with drawing giant squid. The next panel (or two) is going to have two giant squid basking in a shallow lake, one with his tentacles wrapped around the hill that the shipwreck survivors are climbing up, and the other will be making sweet, sweet love to a large layer cake with lots of icing.

I'm telling you, eyes are hard to identify on sea creatures. For example, what if the eyes on this vampire squid are those two dark spots near the top of the head (right under the angel wings)? The animal then looks cute and harmless for the most part. But, what if the eye is that menacing pearly blue thing in the middle of that bulge (which it probably is, judging from the top picture)? All of a sudden it's a killer with crazy eyes. Never trust a vampire squid.