MONASTIC MENAGERIE

During Goblin Week 2019 I drew a goblin that was just kind of a little shrew guy in a robe holding a spoon. It ended up being a bit of a hit around tumblr and with friends and myself so the Shrewblin became somewhat of a reoccuring character. It was never meant to be a monk but the line between a ratty little goblin robe and a monk's habit is surprisingly thin. In 2023 I developed a bad case of Shrewbrain and drew a bunch more little trappist shrews and similar critters. In 2024 and 2025 the cast of monks started expanding to incorporate other groups of animals that I thought would look cute in little robes, and my partner coined the name Monastic Menagerie to encompass the whole accidental--and legally distinct from Redwall--project. Brother Gregor the gharial and Brother Ignatz the bittern were the first two to recieve actual names though both intended as just one-off drawings that I improvised little stories next to when I posted them online, but people went buck wild for both of them and now they're reoccuring characters too. They weren't even originally intended to occupy the same monastery or the same world even as the other monastic critters I'd drawn up to that point but one thing led to another and everything got kind of smushed together into one not particularly coherent setting.

I'm not completely sure why critter monks were the thing that snowballed from a handful of doodles to a full blown setting and eventual zine, possibly zines plural. Maybe it's just the books and movies I've consumed but in my mind a monk is essentially a funny little critter alread, always shuffling and scurrying around their warrens doing inscruitable little things and getting up to mischeif. My childhood love of the Redwall books and later adult love of Eduard von Grützner's drunken monk paintings certainly helped. Also big floppy robes are fun to draw.

I don't imagine my critter monks as literal catholics or members of any real world religion for that matter but in my mind this monastery is more of a gentle frathouse/commune for silly little guys that don't fit into regular society and just want to spend their days gardening, making weird herbal cordials, illuminating books, stuff like that, and the franciscan style robes and other mendicant affectations are just some cosmic coincidence. They probably have some kind of spiritual beliefs but of something a little gentler than medieval catholocism.