And with all that, maybe, just maybe, I would get to draw a Thing monster that was part Viking. Now I had a chance to draw a group of short-tempered berserkers under that same kind of pressure.
This causes us to make desperate decisions. I mean, a dozen guys in the Antarctic with flamethrowers, grenades, helicopters, and two-way radios couldn’t handle it, so how in the world were a bunch of twelfth-century sailors wearing animal furs roaming the world in wooden boats with swords going to fare against it? The 1982 John Carpenter film was so good at showing us how poorly humanity reacts under pressure to things we do not understand, and how easily we can go from suspicion to mistrust to outright paranoia. When The Thing: The Northman Nightmare was offered to me, I simply replied, “When do you need it done?” I couldn’t wait to read the script, and I could only imagine the possibilities. What an incredibly visceral and primal combination.
