Fish-People
Sea monsters are an enduringly popular subject for speculative fiction stories, and they come in a few different general categories: Huge serpents, Loch Ness-type plesiosaurs, or Krakens with masses of tentacles.
I could do an entire post on each of those, and probably will, but right now I want to focus on the smaller, humanoid kind.
I almost named this post after the most famous example, the Creature From the Black Lagoon, but the truth is that these types of monsters – typically green, with gills and a fish-face –turn up in a far wider range of different stories, from Innsmouth to Hellboy and a bunch of retro sci-fi illustrations like these.
Jack Gaughan depicts some helpful creatures saving some Vikings on the 1967 Ace Books cover of King of the World's Edge, by H. Warner Munn.
Dean Ellis has one of the best fish-person designs, done for his 1975 cover to Red Tide by D. D. Chapman and Deloris Lehman Tarzan. This one's in my art book!
Frank Frazetta has a more famous example. This version appeared on the 1978 cover to Creepy #97, although it's a revision of a piece he original did in 1966.
Boris Vallejo tackled a fish person for his 1977 cover to Philip José Farmer's The Gates of Creation.
The brothers Hildebrandt did a straightforward troll-like fantasy Creature for their 1977 cover to Jack Vance's Eyes of the Overworld.
Some artists leaned more into the horror of a fish-like humanoid than others.
Sebastià Boada's June 1974 cover to Nightmare #19 introduces a fin-heavy mask-like appearance from a bloodthirsty fish-person, complete with a gothic castle and lightning in the background.
Vicente Segrelles has a creepy and very large take for his June 1979 cover to Das Ding ist da! by Georges Gauthier, the 329th installment in the German horror paperback series Vampir Horror-Roman.
It's true, too... Das ding ist da.
The most upsetting horror version of this trope is probably Melvyn Grant's 1978 cover art for L. Sprague de Camp's The Fallible Fiend (later reused in a couple of Steven Caldwell/Stewart Cowley's lesser art collections).
It's not the flesh being rent from the arm that makes this one so unsettling... it's that "caught doing something I shouldn't" expression this catfish-whiskered demon is giving the viewer. I feel like I'm five seconds away from parting with my jugular.
Not into bloodthirsty monsters? Try another popular micro-genre: The nuturing fish-person.
Jack Gaughan delivers a cheeky spin on the classic fish-person with this 1968 cover to the very first issue of Worlds of Fantasy magazine, just a year or two after he featured similar creatures helping those Vikings.
Vic Prezio's July 1969 cover for Eerie #22 delivers a great variation on the standard fish-person appearance, with unique attributes that include pincers, lengthy seaweed-like hair, and very sad eyes. This Creature even appears to have an irritable child with her.
This next one is another favorite of mine... Darrell K. Sweet's strange 1977 cover art for Robert A. Heinlein's Red Planet packs in so many odd details including a truly alien fish-person complete with three legs and four (at least) eyes.
Klaus Bürgle’s 1979 cover to Der Wasserplanet, by Lothar Streblow, introduces a missing-link-looking fish-person on a dolphin steed.
When it comes to official 'Creature From the Black Lagoon' art, this backboard art for a Black Lagoon-branded pinball machine has some great colors.
I'd be remiss not to mention that science fiction artist and long-time monster movie fan Vincent Di Fate did a few concepts in 2006 for a never-finished Creature From the Black Lagoon reboot. (According to this Twitter source, at least!)
I'll wrap up with the funniest example of a fish-person sci-fi illustration: Jack Kirby’s concept art for a futuristic uniform for the Green Bay Packers, done for a feature in the October 21, 1973 issue of the NFL's own Pro! magazine.
I'd definitely watch a game featuring a team of these guys!
Cool Links
I'm gonna try something new, where I share one or two interesting links I might have come across recently here – I'll probably mostly stick to art, fiction, or pop culture topics.
Rollercoaster Tycoon (or, MicroProse’s Last Hurrah) - The Digital Antiquarian
A little history of the surprising success of the Rollercoaster Tycoon game.
This guy gives away free one-shot microRPGs. I might try hosting this one for some friends... it's about a group of linguist-assassins, each of whom can modify the rules of the game during gameplay in a variety of ways.
I’ll probably never read it but I’m glad this book exists - Fraser Sherman
You gotta click to see what the book is, sorry.
Music rec: I'm proud to say that I've reached a place with my YouTube algorithm that it has seen fit to show me "DJ Bill Gates plays the windows error remix," a video which debuted 9 years ago and therefore is definitely not generative AI, even if it feels like it. Is it good? Not relevant.
I've long held that featuring weird internet mashup/remix shitposts like this would go far towards giving modern blockbuster movies the innovative edge they sorely need. Granted, the best options are more digestible ones – imagine randomly hearing this one – but that Windows Error one should be the club music in a cyberpunk setting.
Next Time: Book Notes on "The Art of NASA"