When I first created the things I used to do all these wild and weird things with them. Flower pots flying overhead were enough to cause eruptions of flowers from a Thing. Their heads exploded and it was so much fun they did it again.

It’s fun looking back at those images and looking at the old wildness, there was a rawness, weirdness and more experiments. Then I figured some stuff out and found a space and way of doing things that felt valuable... but then I think I started to get over protective of certain things. Lost some of the flowerpot magic in my desire to protect the Things from the badness of the world.

I always wanted to be true to the characters and promises of the Thing, but I think I worked on that so hard I lost other thingish qualities.

I love that one of the Things can pop, reassemble itself, have to go collect one of its eyeballs, because it’s so hard to keep track of everything. That’s a kind of nigh invulnerable too.

Pop Comic Transcript:

Thing 1 has lots of rays coming in at them.

Thing 1 has even more rays coming in at them.

Pop! Thing 1 has exploded into lots of little pieces.

Thing 1 is a jumbled mess of pieces pulling itself together.

Thing 1 has pulled some of itself up, but on of its eyes is falling off the agglomeration of broken pieces.

Thing 1 catches its falling eye and looks itself in the eye.
Thing 1: We got this.

Thing 2: How are you?
Thing 1: I broke, and now I’m sad.
Thing 1: How did I let this happen?
Thing 1: I hate I was so weak.

Thing 2: What if you breaking wasn’t a sign of weakness, but a symptom of having been strong for so long.

Thanks to all my patrons and a special big extra thanks to Mike Decuir, Kate Webb, Erik Owomoyela and Sandra M. Odell.