This is my second Lord of the Rings beast (the first being the only slightly beastly Hobbit). This is the first but not the last time I’ll use two beasts from the same source.

Yesterday, I appeared at the Charlotte Mini-Con hosted by HeroesCon. I was selling prints of my first three AlphaBeasts as well as my new Animal Alphabet flash cards and volume one of my graphic novel, Nathan Sorry, which I incidentally am now completely sold out of. It was a great show and I did really well sales-wise and got to meet lots of cool people who were kind of enough to stop by my table.

I’ll be selling the Animal flash cards online soon but for the time being you can buy the prints at a new low price of $6 each. Check them out here: http://nathansorry.bigcartel.com/

I guess to make this chick qualify for an “Alphabeast” I had to leave out her pupils. Ghastly, isn’t she?

I’ve skipped from I to N in order to stay in real time with the other cartoonists doing these. It actually turned out to be a good idea because I originally planned to do Mermaid for M but that would have left me with some tough choices here for N, not wanting to do two sexy, watery “beasts” in a row. I’ll try to catch up with my missing letters when I can while I continue with the rest of the alphabet.

Also, another reminder that I’m selling prints of A, B and C here and if you’re in the Charlotte, NC area I’m going to be appearing at the Charlotte Mini-Con on Sunday January 22. It’s a small but fun show with some big guests like Cliff Chiang, Jason Latour and Dustin Harbin.

Whoo boy, I am hopelessly about 4 letters behind in the weekly AlphaBeasts drawing exercise. Everyone has been doing great stuff so hop over to the Tumblr site and check them out. I’ve just had too much to do recently to really think about these but I still plan on finishing them all even if it’s not in real time with everyone else.

One of the things that slowed me down was that for a while I didn’t even know what I wanted to do for the letter I. There’s not a whole lot of great monster/beast/creature choices but I decided on one that I thought might be challenging. An Incubus is a pretty skeevy kind of creature. It is basically a myth involving demons that have sex with women while they’re sleeping. Hard to do an image of one that doesn’t look too rapey but I tried. I actually envisioned doing something that evoked Matthew Barney’s Cremaster films but wound up slightly more into the old romance comic feel that I gravitate towards a lot.

Anyway, the next letter when I get to it will be a little more kid-friendly. And don’t forget, I’ve begun selling vibrant 8×10 prints of the first three letters from this series here: http://nathansorry.bigcartel.com/

This is maybe the only AlphaBeast so far that I think I liked better in its original black and white ink stage. I had a little trouble figuring out how to apply the two-color scheme properly to this one. I may even revisit it at some point, who knows. Also, I inadvertently obscured the most beastly aspect of these guys: their big old hairy feet. Oh well, Hobbits.

And now I’m caught up with the AlphaBeasts. Sorry for not writing much on these.

I’m a week late on this AlphaBeasts entry. But I’m also posting G shortly.

Ok, this one is a little bit of a cheat. When I started planning my AlphaBeasts drawings I thought as far as E and knew I wanted to do this image – which is burned in my childhood memory – thinking in my mind that the famous creature from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was just called an Ear Worm. That’s what I always thought of it as. But a simple Google search (or maybe being a Trekkie) would tell you that the proper species name is the Ceti Eel. I had already committed to placing this one in E though so I stuck with my improper naming, thus risking a torrent of internet outrage from Trek fans across the world.

So much for planning ahead, by the way. I ended up changing my plans on both C and D at the last minute and almost changed this one too. There are a lot of great beasts to choose from for the next few letters so I’m not even 100% sure what I’m doing next week for F.

I was originally planning to do a Dire Wolf for D because I’m currently reading George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones and am really obsessed with it. But then I realized that Dire Wolves are not actually fictional animals. Apparently they once existed. Who knew? I could have stayed in the same territory and done a Dragon. But the idea of drawing a dragon made me really tired. So I went with Demon which is a fairly broad type of creature. You could probably draw just about anything and call it a demon. But I went with something in the “Mignola-verse” style because demons from the Hellboy comics are the only ones I tend to have any interest in.

Originally for this week’s AlphaBeasts entry, I was going to do a Centaur but then I realized that the letter C was landing right on Halloween so it would be more appropriate to lean towards a more frightful beast. This is a pretty straightforward take on the classic shot of the rubbery creature staggering out of the said Lagoon. If you’re my age, you probably have the same memories as me of getting your 3-D glasses from 7-11 to watch the late night showing of this film on WPIX (New York metro area) and being kind of bored because when you’re seeing this as an 11 year old back in the ’80s it was neither scary nor ironically funny.