1 Act, 1 Scene Plays: The Comic Book Morgue File

*insert Backrooms reference here*

Okay where to start…first of all, the trunk isn’t too far off from reality, yeah the opening is too big and too round but they still got the wrinkles on the trunk correct so I’ll give them props for that. They got the tusks pretty close too. As for everything else? Well…yeah 😬

First of all, that tiny round ear…no elephant in the world has ears that shape, they make it look like this elephant lost his real ears in a terrible accident and had to get mouse ears transplanted onto him for whatever reason.

And the body…why’s the chest so square??? He looks like he can’t even raise his head. Tbh his body almost looks like a horse (except for his feet, which I’ll get to later), he even has a horse tail. Could the person who described elephants to the artist have used horses as a comparison maybe? That comparison wouldn’t make sense considering an elephant’s body looks nothing like a horse but idk…maybe the body wasn’t described to them so the artist just made a guess. But yeah, elephants don’t have long, thin, rectangular bodies, elephants are ROUND, baby.

Anyway, I find it amusing that the artist gave them toes and little claws. Elephants actually do have toes irl, if you look at an elephant’s skeleton you can see their feet actually have a pretty similar bone structure to a human foot (including toe bones), but we obviously can’t see them due to the stumpy shape of their foot. They do have toenails though, but definitely no claws.

So yeah, they did an okay job with the trunk and the tusks but everyone else…not so much.

Since this post is about elephants, I’m just gonna comment on the elephant here and leave the dragon out if it.

Anyway, like the caption says, this guy has no ears and a castle on his back. Let’s talk about the lack of ears first: jeez, you think the first guy having tiny mouse ears was bad? At least he has ears, this poor guy has none 😔

As for the castle on his back, is there some kind of mythology to that or did the artist just think it sounded grand to have a castle sitting on top of such a massive animal? If it’s the latter then that would make sense because they’re totally right, that’s awesome as hell lmao.

This one has a rounder body shape compared to the first one so that’s definitely an improvement. They still didn’t get it quite right though, it makes me think of a pig more than an elephant, it even has a curly tail. The feet are stumpier this time but the legs make me think of a horse, especially the hind leg. It does look like they added toenails to the elephant’s feet, so at least they kinda got that right, even if they are drawn pretty awkwardly (I also just looked up how many toenails elephants have: African savanna elephants have 14 (4 on the front feet and 3 on the back), Asian elephants have 18 (5 on the front feet and 4 on the back), and African forest elephants have 18 (5 on the front feet, 4 on the back).

This guy also has human-shaped eyes that are obviously way too big for him, but honestly I’m okay with that because it makes him look adorable lol. The way he’s looking up and frowning makes him look annoyed though, I wonder if he’s unhappy about having a castle on his back or if he’s annoyed by the dragon. Maybe both lol.

This trunk is smoother than the first elephant and has a similar round opening, also the lower lip is too long. The tusks are shaped pretty well, but it looks like they’re jutting out of his chin instead of his jaw lol.

Overall, definitely another very inaccurate design but still very cute.

Again, I’m only gonna comment on the elephants here.

First of all, even though those trumpet-shaped trunks are obviously inaccurate, I don’t mind at all because that’s clever as hell lol. Especially since the humans are playing trumpets of their own. The artist must’ve been aware that elephants make a trumpeting sound.

Everything else is once again wrong. Those tusks look more like a wild boar’s tusks or like two large fangs, an elephant’s are waaaaay longer than that.

The artist was almost close to making the ears look accurate to an Asian elephant’s ears but unfortunately they came out looking more like floppy dog ears. The forehead shape also makes me think of Asian elephants.

These elephants have long necks, something elephants very clearly don’t have. These body makes me think of a pig once again, their feet even look like pig trotters.

Obviously very inaccurate overall, but still a cool creature design (especially the trumpet trunk).

Another instance where the trunks look like trumpets lol. Strangely enough, their ears look trumpet-shaped as well, albeit very short ones. Now I’m imagining elephants that trumpet out of their trunks and ears lmao. That would actually be pretty cool, I’m ngl.

The tusks on these guys are pretty accurate. The lower lips are once again too long though.

The heads on these guys are way too small for their bodies, a problem every elephant in this post has had so far except for the earless guy with the castle on his back. An elephant’s massive head is one of the most noticeable things about them so it’s funny seeing how small they are in a majority of medieval manuscripts.

The bodies once again make me think of a pig, although here the legs are too long and they have tiny paws like a dog or a cat. An elephant’s big stumpy feet and big toenails are also one of the most noticeable things about them, why were the people who described elephants to these artists so bad at describing things lol.

The rails are pretty accurate though.

Once again very inaccurate, but I also wanna point out how cute it is that the bottom picture has a mom cuddling with her baby.

Medieval Europeans were very aware of the concept of “war elephants”, as they show up in a number of classical sources & said classical sources are where they get most of their conception of What Am Elephants. Alexander “the Great” is the origin point here, as he often is — he’s said to have captured some war elephants from the Persians, thought they were awesome, and immediately set about getting more & integrating them into his army. Medieval Europeans love Alexander, so now that’s wedged into the zeitgeist.

One of the effective uses of an elephant in pre-modern warfare is as a mobile weapons platform: you put a squad of archers or whatever in a howdah, and now they have the high ground no matter where they go. This is also sometimes the command post, because (1) it provides a vantage point from which one can see more of the battlefield and (2) officers considered riding around on an elephant to be sick as fuck.

Texts that talk about howdahs often refer to them as “turrets” or “towers”. A military howdah is usually made of wood & leather, of course, but Europeans don’t have a clear sense of how big elephants actually are, so they imagine actual stone towers or even full castles.

This castle-elephant iconography actually survives into the present day, in at least one form that I guarantee everyone reading this has seen:

The Greek shall come against thee,

The conqueror of the East.

Beside him stalks to battle

The huge earth-shaking beast,

The beast on whom the castle

With all its guards doth stand,

The beast who hath between his eyes

The serpent for a hand.

Mark of the Witch (1970) Tom Moore