Hungry Hungry Harpies

  

 

 "Gods, Men, and Monsters"... I'm still thinking about that title.

 Of all the monstered women of Greek Mythology the most referenced is probably the harpy. There are no drawings of harpies in my old Greek Mythology notebook however, so here instead is Raoul Servais's Harpya, a cracking interpretation, funny in a way that makes it hard to see how one could faithfully depict the myth of a lady with the body of a large bird who repeatedly steals food without being funny. Her gender here is a default rather than a dig though, and her modestly civilized Phineas an identifiably unsustainable sap. Originally recommended by David Cairns here, I came across it again looking through the same unposted, old drafts from 2015 in which I'd found my David Icke notes. The draft began: "I was thinking about monsters," - so, not as new an activity as I thought then - "and who to make the baddies. Binge-watching Buffy and thinking about how, growing up, the monsters don't actually appear to go away..." then there's some stuff about the House of Lords. No idea. Let's just watch the cartoon. They don't give out Palme D'Ors to any old rubbish, you know.

 

 

 (Having never drawn a harpy at school, my first attempt at depicting one must have been at University, sellotaping bamboo canes to my sister's fingers for a film of The Tempest that she'd come down to help with only to end up being cast as Ariel. She was excellent, and looked nothing the Harpy above. Tom Lyall's Caliban on the other hand...)