Project Description

INKTOBER 2026 Day #10: MYSTICAL.

“Admittedly, this one doesn’t read so much as ‘mystical’ as it does, well, just weird. When I saw the prompt, I thought of a picture I took on a recent hike. As we crested a rise and entered an alpine area full of large boulders, trees, and moss, I spotted an old, rotten tree root that had grown in a bit of a spiral. From the angle I approached it from, it looked like a circular portal. That was my starting point for this idea, which then led me to a scene in my unfinished graphic novel ‘It’s Plunger Monkey Dynamo Time’. This is actually a combination of a couple of scenes, but either way, it was stuff I wanted to draw so I could visualize some things I had written.

For anyone that followed the web comic that I stopped working on so I could adapt it into a graphic novel, it was a wacky, stream-of-consciousness adventure that ‘ended’ with PMD and I entering a labyrinth. As I wrote the continuation of all that, it veered into some metaphors for my personality, my philosophies, and went in directions I didn’t expect, including some darker psychological stuff. From the outset, something seems off about the labyrinth but it’s kind of benign at first. It slowly becomes more insane and disjointed, with every challenge and obstacle containing some lesson, some deeper meaning, or some revelation. That’s the intent, anyway. We’ll see if I pull that off as I get back into editing it.”

Do you enjoy these silly pen and ink illustrations starring Plunger Monkey? Wish you had a whole book full of them to gaze at lovingly whenever you wanted? You’re in luck! Get a copy of Inklings to satisfy that need: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733734716/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1AO28074KOTGC&keywords=inklings+by+toby+gray&qid=1689026488&s=books&sprefix=inklings+by+toby+gray%2Cstripbooks%2C103&sr=1-1