Hi-res art & notes: the original spooky doctors (Patreon)

PSD file attached if you like looking at that!

This was an illustration made for the original Doctor Phage "creepypasta," depicting  a prototypical Phage, Phleboto, and a third doctor who hasn't really been revisited since. Originally, I was just torn between whether Phage or Phleboto should be the main monster of the Hospital setting, back when it was never going to be anything but that single short story, but I eventually came to think of them as part of a group of entities almost like Clive Barker's Cenobites. Once I decided there'd be more than one, it was only natural that the littlest nerdiest one be the boss, not to mention that a bacteriophage is the most ancient "doctor" there is.

I just had to round them out with a third, or so I thought, and hastily came up with the pustule-like being. By now, the world they inhabit holds that all doctors should resemble things utilized in medicine, so the "pustule" was phased out...but actually, the earliest "vaccines" known to man were simply fluids collected by smallpox sores, so I think perhaps this character would still work as the manifested concept of inoculation? I held for a while that Phleboto would cover that topic, but he's really more the concept of anything and everything done with a hypodermic. He's also gotten a lot bigger and more menacing in the years since this art; current Phleboto would barely even fit into an exam room, but that's why he's got the long neck :)