Monstrous! Part 2 — Night of the Firebeast, 1979–1983

Yesterday, I wrote a bit about some of my old artwork I turned up while turning my old homestead inside out for renovations (Monstrous! Part 1 — The Ultimate Godzilla [or Not]). If you were willing to slog through that, I reckon you might be willing to slog through this as well.

In the early 1970s, I composed a silly but fun little SF monster story called “Night of the Firebeast,” which featured a giant winged reptilian critter (see illo above) from the planet Venus called Damiron (or Damarron, in at least one of the tale’s numerous revisions). I drew a ton of pictures of the monster, and friend Bill Gudmundson, who regularly constructed detailed, articulated models (and animated them, à la Ray Harryhausen), built a couple of different versions of Damiron for me. I still have one of those models, a bit worse for wear, but still holding together.

In my final year of college (1981), having discovered the writings of H.P. Lovecraft — and by now entertaining grandiose notions of becoming a famous horror writer — I rewrote “Night of the Firebeast” as a weird hybrid of daikaiju and Lovecraftian lore, still featuring Damiron but under the name “Pachacutec” (the actual name of a Peruvian king, which I considered apt, since the story was now set in Peru). I went full bore illustrating scenes from it, mostly in pen and ink. Although the tale was hardly the masterpiece I had envisioned in my budding little brain, it felt pretty solid (and at some much later time — early 2000s, I believe — I sent a copy of the tale to J.D. Lees, editor of G-Fan magazine, who up and published the thing). “Pachacutec” became the first chapter of my first honest-to-god novel, again titled “Night of the Firebeast,” which I finished in 1983 — just after I moved to Chicago to live with Bill G. The novel rightly never saw the light of day, but I have long considered it a valuable practice run for my novels that eventually did come to fruition.

In later years (2006), Pachacutec appeared again in a short story, this one entitled “The Transformer of Worlds,” published in an Australian anthology of giant monster stories, simply titled Daikaiju, edited by Rob Hood.

Again, for the sake of future history — if any — I am posting the complete set of drawings and paintings I created for Night of the Firebeast, if not for your entertainment then for mine, as I do find these personal chronicles useful for looking back to figure out what the hell I was thinking at any given point in time. These are pretty much in the order of events in the novel, so feel free to draw your own conclusions regarding the context. I don’t have it in me to compose a synopsis for the old beast; as it is, I’m not sure I could even remember, as these go back forty years and more. Click on these little fellows to enlarge.

Please note that I warned you yesterday that this might happen!