More from the MONSTER ART ARCHIVES, courtesy once again of the jaw-droppingly awesome Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Here’s one character you wouldn’t want to find in your bath: meet THE EARTH SPIDER…

Handsome, ain’t he? And you can see he doesn’t like it when you wave the butter knife at him. Here (below) is more of the rest of the pic, which is called Minamoto no Raiko and his retainers battle with the Earth Spider.

I don’t know what happened to the blokes shown here, but I’m guessing it wasn’t good. Until I found this in the Archives, I had wondered where the monsters’ collection of somewhat blood-spattered traditional Japanese clothing came from: now I’m rather afraid that you’re looking at the last recorded appearance of the original owners.

When we TBM authors hear the distinctive approaching clicking of the Earth Spider’s claw-tips skittering across the cave walls, we’ve learned that by far the best thing to do is just hide. And as for his minions…

This is The Earth Spider conjures up demons at the mansion of Minamoto no Raiko. It gives you an idea of the kind of posse the Spider can round up when he’s riled. Check out these guys:

And, as if those weren’t bad enough, these:

If you’re reading this and you’re not in a cave and you happen to live in London, the wonderful current exhibition of Kuniyoshi’s stunning prints is only on at The Royal Academy for about another week. Do yourself a favour and check it out. But if you can’t get to see the real thing (the prints I mean – we’ve got the real real thing down here and believe me, you’re well off out of it!) there’s a terrific selection of scans on Flickr, here.