“Moldbug, no. No! Don’t lick the treasure, Moldbug. No! See? Now the cobra bit you again! Aww, Moldbug, c'mere you big goof.”
What is that thing? Wizard’s giant newt familiar? Weird cave lizard? Some kind of half-dog basilisk? I dunno, but it gets me grinning every time I see it. Look at that face.
Lizardling, cobra, and giant rats
David C. Sutherland III
Monster & Treasure Assortment, Set One: Levels One-Three (1977)
Reasons to travel by snail caravan:
Mutual antipathy with horses.
Transporting young wine, unbloomed century flowers, or collectibles expected to increase in value at some future date.
Cursed with Blackstrap’s Lagging Step; found the pace to your liking.
Pledged to make the sesquicentennial pilgrimage of the Monopodotarians.
Too slow to catch a ride on the Tortuga Express*.
Beats walking.
* Any and all excuses to make this joke:
Q. What did the snail say when it went for a turtle ride?
A. Wheeeeeeeeee!! Ya-HOOOOO!!!**
Snail caravan
E.L. Perry
Field Guide to Encounters, Vol. 1
** Speaking of corny jokes: A snail, a slug, and a centipede, old friends all, were spending a day together at the snail’s house. As the afternoon stretched into evening, they got a thirst for a jug of wine.
The snail said, “There’s an inn just round the bend, but if I’m to go it’ll take me all night.” The slug said, “I could go, but I smell rain in the air and I haven’t got any shell to protect me.”
With this, they both looked at the centipede.
The centipede said, “Say nothing more me loves! I’m delighted to go, and I’ll be back in a shake of the legs!”
An hour passed, and their thirst grew, and with the sunset came a steady rain. The centipede was nowhere seen. Another hour passed with still no sign of centipede nor wine. When yet another hour had gone, the snail and the slug began to worry about the centipede and decided to go look for their friend.
When they opened the front door, there on the porch in the cool damp of the evening was the centipede. “What are you doing? Where have you been?” they asked.
“A minute more and I’m off!” said the centipede. “I’m still putting me galoshes on.”
Gargoyle
David C. Sutherland III
Monster Manual
“axiomatic bulette can”
“Axiomatic creatures dwell in lawful planes, the domains of order. Though they may resemble creatures from the Material Plane, they are more perfectly formed, their features sharper and more precise, their fur or plumage shinier….They are often called ‘perfect’ creatures, and some say that the axiomatic version are the true and ideal first models; all other creatures of the same type are merely imitations.”
Perfection. That’s the ideal we strive for at Clockwork Breweries. The best in hops, the best in malts, and the best brewer-artisans. That’s what it takes to brew the perfect monster of a beer, a monster like Perfect Landshark IPA. This brew burrows up from a sweet, earthy underground of rich malts, leaps high with a razor-sharp blend of four different varietals of Arcadian hops, and finishes with a crushing bite. When you’re ready for a smiting, reach for the Silver Bulette – Perfect Landshark.
Axiomatic Bulette (Perfect Landshark)
Matt Cavotta
Jeff Grubb, Bruce R. Cordell, & David Noonan, text
Manual of the Planes (2001)
Of tangential interest: Seriously, who doesn’t roll their eyes reading the shtick on a beer label these days? Half are like rambling stories about epic singlespeed windbike mountainsurfing, maaaan, and the rest seem to be shoving me in the shoulder and threatening to give me a swirly if I can’t handle the brutal hop assault. Chee, I’ll pass on the Don’t Be A Wussy Extra Butch TeethGrinder Pale Ale, thanks all the same. Anyway, there’s probably too much hops in your IPA, pass it on.
I could probably comment on all of the wonderful details in this painting: the fighter’s MONEY $ MONEY towel, the werewolf or bugbear getting a tan in the corner, the dwarf’s chainmail pillow, etc.
Instead I’m just thinking about the worst sunburn I ever got. Summers in high school I worked for a seniors apartment complex where my Grandma S. lived. One blazingly sunny day I was cleaning the street gutters and she insisted on slathering me with vegetable oil as “sunblock.” I knew this was a terrible idea, but well, Grandma S. was a formidable woman, not easy to say no to. Predictably, by day’s end I was fit for the platter—garnish me with rosemary, sprinkle me with peppercorns, shove an apple in my mouth, done.
And I’m also thinking of summers even younger, and vacations on Lake Michigan. I used to stand in the waves and pretend they were monsters, ducking and diving and springing up to slash at the cresting foam as if my arms were swords. Little sister and I had a game we played called Death Frisbee, where I guess the idea was the frisbee was some kind of razored glaive or boomerang. I think we were only allowed to use our off hands to catch with, maybe? Not really sure how that worked anymore. Good times, though, good times.
Have a good weekend, y'all. Don’t forget your sunblock.
At the Beach
Jack Crane
Dragon Magazine #75, July 1983
Of further interest: Here’s Jack Crane’s website. Versatile dude, done everything from medical illustration to greeting cards to six Dragon Magazine covers.
“He looks about anxiously this way and that, and sighs that none of the brethren come to see him, and often goes in and out of his cell, and frequently gazes up at the sun, as if it was too slow in setting…”
OK, whatever man. I was just wondering if it was gonna rain. But yeah, “beware the noon-day devil” and all that. Just seems to me like an entity with the right damned idea on a Friday afternoon. Forecast may be rain later but we got sun now. Sufficient unto the day, people.
Devil May Care
Jack Crane
Dragon Magazine #75, July 1983
Saint John Cassian, text
“A gigantic ettin mounted on the back of the dread titanothere rushes into the shaft. Bearing pale, blue-brown skin, greenish hair and filthy orange teeth, the two-headed giant’s red pupils blaze from its yellow eyeballs. Its mangy gray fur is almost the same solor as the hide of the beast it rides. Below its lead-colored horn the monster bellows at the adventurers through its pinkish beak.”
All of the monster descriptions in The Official AD&D Coloring Album are this detailed and, honestly, it comes across a bit fussy and finger-wagging. One expects a color-by-numbers key to follow the text, and almost imagines Gary Gygax grumbling about making sure the squidgy little shavers color my monsters right, Zagyg blast ‘em. In fairness, the book was licensed and published by Troubador Press* so this might reflect the house style of their line of coloring albums.
In any case I salute young Tracy F., former owner of the book, for ignoring the text’s preemptive umactually and coloring the critters as they damn well pleased. They maybe mixed up their markers coloring the ettin’s right neck, and didn’t ever get around to finishing the page, but I have to admit hot pink has a lot more pop than the grody brown-green I colored ettins with.
Ettin and Titanothere
Greg Irons
Gary Gygax, text
The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album
Colored by Tracy F.
*Of further interest: Here’s more about Troubador Press, including artwork from several other books and an interview with Troubador’s founder Malcolm Whyte.
An Exhaustively Researched But Not Necessarily Complete List of Bands Definitely, Probably or Coincidentally Named For D&D Monsters:
Aerial Servant (Trance/EDM)
Carrion Crawler (Thrash/Death Metal)
Demon, Type III, Glabrezu (Hardcore/Crust Punk)
Grunt’s Gelatinous Cube (Grindcore)
Invisible Stalker (Hardcore Punk)
Intellect Devourer (Death Metal)
Mindflayer (Noise)
Shambling Mounds (Lo-Fi/Indie Rock)
Troglodyte (Death Metal)
Umberhulk (Heavy Metal)
Special recognition to Pegasus (Melodic Black/Heavy Metal), who you might just think were big fans of Greek mythology or gassing up the tour van if they hadn’t recorded EPs called The Dungeon Master and Dragons of Hope. Honorable mention to Intoxication (Death Metal, Spain), who cut an EP called Cerebral Parasite. Endless demerits, no linkage and no mentions by name to the grindcore band with tired-ass “funny” songs about “gangs” and the NSBM singer whose name sounds even dumber paraphrased as Baron Fish-man. Y'all are corny, fuck off.
I honestly expected to find a few more bands for this list. How’s it even possible there’s not a band called Ear Seeker? That works for just about any genre from EDM to power pop to industrial. Rot Grub’s only good for death metal but goddamn does it work. And if you want to start an awful jam band called Brain Mole I won’t listen to your tape but I won’t stop you either.
Not that I have any standing to be teasing anyone for their musical taste. Here’s the research playlist I made for this post: Monster Manual - An Audio Compendium: Giant Ant to Zombie. Hard rock, prog, NWOBHM and speed metal obscurities. Terrible black metal demos. Tech death metal tracks with that tippy-tappy-tinny drum sound like you dropped a recycling bin full of beer cans. ABBA! Toto! Cover versions of dubious merit. Ringo Starr! Sudden outbreaks of disco. Speaking of which, Ethel Merman! Hey check it out, a Basque ska band! I’m a big goof with more curiosity than sense who spent 20+ hours looking up monster names at Discogs and Encyclopaedia Metallum to build you a playlist, is what I’m saying.
Shrieker
David A. Trampier
Monster Manual
Of further interest: Search results at Encyclopaedia Metallum for Lyrical Themes “D&D” and “Dungeons & Dragons”. Somebody stop me.
I don’t think Alan Hunter gets the recognition from AD&D fans he deserves. I suppose that’s in part because aside from his credits in White Dwarf and the Fiend Folio he didn’t do a lot of RPG-related work, and after all, not very many people love the Fiend Folio like I love the Fiend Folio. Even when the Tome of Creatures Malevolent and Benign comes up for praise, Hunter tends to be overlooked in favor of Russ Nicholson.
Well, as self-appointed Fiend Folio Fan #1, I’m here to tell ya: Alan Hunter rules. His heavy lines, woodcut-influenced style, and rounded figures are a perfect contrast to Russ’s crabbed, sometimes skittery drawing and gristly, scrawny figurework. Likewise, at times Hunter has a playful cartooniness to complement Russ’s sly, side-eyed faces.
I particularly love his use of texture and ornament in his drawings. In the details above he uses calligraphic pen strokes, curvy and straight linework, crosshatching patterns, sponge-work (?), and even screentone. He puts his gift for texture to varied purposes too. Sometimes he uses it naturalistically, creating a swampy mist for the giant bloodworm or a heat haze for the desert-dwelling clubnek. Sometimes it’s decorative, as with the crosshatching and straight lines that brokenly frame the dire corby. Sometimes he offers a comment on the monster, like the watery border of kuo-toa and (possibly, this one might be a stretch) the stamp-like border of his sheet phantom illustration.
Denzelian
Giant Bloodworm
Kuo-Toa
Dire Corby
Clubnek
Crabman
Iron Cobra
Sheet Phantom
Thork
Alan Hunter
Fiend Folio
Of further interest and In Memoriam: Alan Hunter had a long career as an artist both before and after his work for Games Workshop and TSR, especially for British fanzines and small presses. Here are some science fiction illustrations from 1953, and a superb weird fiction illustration from 1988. Snappy dresser too. He died in 2012.
“…new and interesting monsters,”
Fiend Factory logo and header
Alan Hunter
White Dwarf #9, October/November 1978
