Saturday, August 8, 2009

This Week in Starfish Comic Books! Acanthaster planci-the Crown of Thorns gets a COVER!

So, this week, starfish were featured prominently in issue #2 of the Boom Comics rendition of Disney Pixar's "Finding Nemo".

Probably the FIRST time that the Crown of Thorns Starfish (Acanthaster planci) has EVER been shown in comic books!! I've written about the Crown of Thorns before....here..
and some cool video here.

Acanthaster is shown to be sort of a monstrous eating machine....screaming "Foooooood.."" which is uh..probably not too far from the truth.. But it DOES get to chase around those dumb little orange fish! ha! Take that vertebrates!
and..it looks like the artist actually did their homework and did a "picture-real" rendition of at least one color variant (A. planci is actually highly variable in color)
(this pic from Wikipedia)

The mouth left a little to be desired...
Actual mouth: no tongue and uh...no canines! Plus Acanthaster would have probably NO interest in eating living clownfish...(from this excellent website on echinoderms from the Gulf of Aqaba)

And finally.... What MAY be Tosia or some other kind of coral-reef type valvatidan asteroid....

with the BEST line EVER!

"Well, the other fish tend to think we're a little strange..."

Could ANY sentence summarize the starfish (and the starfish worker) any better???

1 comment:

Hi! I'm Janola. said...

*sigh* I hope this doesn't do to crown of thorns starfish what Jaws did to sharks.