ENTRY 003: BONE SHREDDER



It's our first Ron Spencer illustration since I started this series, but by far not the first I've ever reviewed; his style is one that probably influenced my own from a very young age, and he's always had just the eye for biology that I've always loved to see! I actually clearly remember a little quote from him from Inquest magazine about this creature, where he gave it an authentic style taxonomic name: Pterogastrula osteophagus. "Winged stomach" and "bone eater!" The bone-eating flying stomach! Bone Shredder is another monster I consider an overall favorite in the game setting, introduced in Urza's Legacy as presumably some sort of Phyrexian predator or biological weapon.

The card itself is a simple flying creature that can kill a single enemy creature when played, with the drawback that you have to pay its cost a second time, on your next turn, or it automatically dies. That's still a good card even if you don't pay the "echo" cost, since you not only may have killed an opponent's creature, but already triggered any beneficial effects your other cards gain whenever a creature enters play. And in the average black deck, there are multiple ways to benefit from dead creatures or keep bringing them back anyhow!

The design is highly unique, unlike any I've seen in just about any other media; its body is shaped a lot like the abdomen of a wasp, for lack of a better comparison, with a hooked "stinger" up top where the rest of the "insect" would go. The inner surface of the whole chitinous teardrop-body is almost entirely a dark mouth orifice, thickly lined with hooklike teeth, and the lower end is just one big, thick clump of assorted spiny arthropod legs that curl inward with apparently enough strength to grind up its diet of bone like a biological wood chipper. The whole thing is suspended by a pair of purple, undulating gelatinous wing-flaps, and the edges of these wings are both lined with squirming cilia and studded with tiny, cherry red eyeballs!

The rows of tendril-ringed eyes are surely inspired by those of a scallop, still one of the most under-appreciated details of a widely familiar animal, and a considerably more obscure zoological tidbit when Bone Shredder was printed in 1999. The creature's overall body plan, on the other hand, resembles nothing in nature but a veliger; a type of planktonic mollusk larva seen in certain bivalves as well as gastropods, with hairy cilia lining their butterfly-like fins. This was not however the direct source of Shredder's shape, since I once again decided to ask an artist directly! Ron had this to tell us about P. osteophagus:

"Bone Shredder was one of the cards that made me step outside my usual monster formula. It’s been enough years that many of the details have faded. Also, these were the old days when art director and artist spoke over the phone.

Discussing what they had in mind for this, the art director specified that the creature was to be a mollusk or crustacean. Which sounded fun. Then he threw in that it was also a flying type.

This was a bit more of a challenge, as I wanted to do more than put dragon fly wings on a crab. I recall a “let’s see what you come up with” tone of voice he used when I voiced my surprise.

There wasn’t much time to research or look up reference, so I simply concocted a quick physiology that met the criteria.

- milkweed pod for a shell shape
- multiple, random lobster/crab pincers and claws for jaws.
- don’t remember where the wing shape and color came from…probably some variance of coral.
- those are eyes along the edges of the wings, rimmed with cilia .
- the stinger would deliver the obligatory paralyzing agent.

At the time, we couldn’t show skulls or blood in the artwork. So, instead of a ribcage and skull getting ground up, it was an arm. In my opinion, the finished creature does NOT look functional, but definitely painful. So, mission accomplished!


Cool to know that the stinger is functional, and I can see the milkweed pod in the design! I do get what he means about the lack of functionality, but that's never stopped me, personally, and this is a setting with magic in it. For all we know, the wings catch some kind of elemental energy to achieve lift, the claws emit a bone-dissolving vibration as they churn, and the mouth could be a hole to another universe. Anything goes, really, especially if it's a product of Phyrexia.

They definitely chose the right person for the job here; a lot of other artists, asked to draw a flying mollusk or crustacean, really would just slap some familiar animal wings on a scary crab and call it a day, or if they're a little more ambitious, produce some sort of floating gas-bag cephalopod. Don't get me wrong, both of those are terrific options, I'm an especially big fan of floating gas-bag things with tentacles, but I'm glad what we got here was neither quite a mollusk or quite a crustacean, and something that sees out of its wings.

The Bone Shredder seems like it's become a fairly obscure creature, which is understandable given that we're up to around five hundred billion different creatures in this setting, but it's still one of the first ones my mind goes to.

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