Spooktober 2025: Watchful

Though I first introduced a prototype of them on the final page of The Blood of Seven Queens: Prologue, my conception of what the Winged Monkeys would look like has evolved over the years. While I initially favored the very steampunky-looking robot monkey that appeared at the end of the Prologue, I could never make it look frightening enough. It just always looked silly. And so, perhaps having thought too much about the evolution of the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica—a show I’m rewatching from the beginning at the moment—I decided the robot-looking monkey would be the first iteration of the species, while my new winged chimpanzee would be the new new.

And yes, I know chimps are not monkeys. I’ve gone back and forth about what the in-universe version for them being erroneously called flying monkeys might be, and I’ll let you know what I decide when I decide it.

At any rate, today I finalized the model for the new winged chimps—just in time for them to appear for the first time in earnest in The Blood of Seven Queens #6—and I thought it would be fun to throw together an image for the Spooktober prompt word of “watchful.” Let me know what you think.