Here's Mike Huddleston's first full sketch of one of the big, nasty vampires from The Strain. These vile creatures are very well described in the novels, and after tracking down an insane amount of references in the source material for Mike, he piled all that prose into his brain and this awesome monster is what came out when pencil hit paper.
Getting to be a fly on the proverbial wall as Guillermo del Toro and Huddleston figure out some of the details of these monsters has been a treat. The two are very well paired when it comes to collaborating on these horrid bloodsuckers. del Toro's creature pedigree is well known, but take a look at some of Mike's initial notes for Guillermo from this round of sketches and you'll see he's a similarly mad monster genius.
"If this large stinger organ is connected in the mouth, when it is recoiled inside could the weight pull the skin of the mouth and face inward? If the skin covered the teeth, it would be an 'anti-vampire' fro, what we traditionally see."
"Can we have the neck area be an area of color to ad interest, a.k.a.: turkey neck?"
"Any chance of mutating vampires with multiple or weird stingers?"
"If the neck swells to hold the stinger, I thought it would be cool to see a fat guy with a huge stinger that looks like a bullfrog when his stinger is recoiled."
You'll have to read the series to see what came out of the resulting conversations about these vampires, but hearing how Huddleston was puzzling the physiology of the monsters is fascinating and enticing for horror fans.
Can't wait for you folks to read the series!
Jim Gibbons
Assistant Editor
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