The Cats of Ulthar, Page 2
This is the second page of my drawn-in-four-days adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Cats of Ulthar (created for the Couscous Collective “Kitties” anthology)!
For this adaptation, I had to retroactively recreate my image of Ulthar from the “Dream-Quest” graphic novel, which I drew over 10 years earlier. Unfortunately, I’d lost track of most of the books and sources I used for references that time. Fortunately, the buildings were basically modeled on late-Medieval Germanic, Dutch & British townhouses, so there wasn’t anything too specific or complicated, and I mostly started from scratch with a Dutch Late Medieval theme (with a bit of Roman thrown in, though it’s hard to notice). This story took place 200 years before “Dream-Quest,” so if time means anything in the Dreamlands, perhaps the buildings have changed a bit.
With regard to the mysterious old couple, I wondered why “much as the owners of cats hated these odd folk, they feared them more…”
NEXT UPDATE: Thursday!
Hm, those two do look a bit ghoulish.
This “working faster” thing is interesting, it reminds me a bit of your early pages from “Dream-Quest”, except with better technique.
I still have no idea who the narrator is. In the first page, I kept thinking “where’s the fire?” – I thought I’d missed something, it took me a while to realize that we never actually anything from the POV of whoever’s telling the story. Will this mystery by resolved?
@Esn – This comic, and the “Beast in the Cave” adaptation I did in “Beards,” were both drawn in sort of a rush — not quite 24-hour comics, but I drew them smaller and faster than usual. It’s not a permanent style change, more like a time trial challenge.
I don’t remember If I asked you this already, but in the final panel just What are the suckling felines.I recognize the sphinx , but do the tiger,lion, and panther(?) represent different big cats from folklore or do they just represent archetypal examples of their species?
Also, just what is it that they are suckling from?
Were you inspired by this?
https://imgur.com/4Jvqypj
Hi Thomas! I don’t think you ever asked me, and yes, they represent ‘big cats’ — the Sphinx, tiger, lion and saber-toothed tiger.
And yes, I confess, you found me out: I was TOTALLY swiping from the D’Aulaires’ drawing of Echidna, the mother of monsters! :) I’ve always loved that drawing ever since I saw it as a kid. There’s something about it, to me, that represents the pinnacle of motherhood.