Homage: 1976
Here's the cartoon homage that was produced during Episode 4.
While chatting with Ed Stark and overcoming tech glitches during the Episode 4 livestream, Stan! still managed to get most of the way through a cartoon homage. The year being honored this time was 1976, and that provided its own challenge—only THREE D&D supplements got published that year.
The most famous is Eldritch Wizardry, and the cover for that is notorious in its own right for featuring a naked woman laying across a stone altar. No adventurers. No evil wizards. No ravenous demons. Just a naked woman. Nothing wrong with that … but famous as the cover is among D&D fans, the image itself just wasn’t begging for a cartoon adaptation.
The next most famous D&D supplement from 1976 was Gods, Demigods & Heroes. The cover this time basically looks like a recreation of a tomb painting from inside an Egyptian pyramid—a hawk-headed and a crocodile-headed figure sit across from one another, with columns of hieroglyphics framing them. While there’s a good argument to be made that this was the best piece of artwork to appear on a D&D product to date … it again doesn’t say much about the game itself.
The final product from 1976 is one that many fans (including me) often forget even exists—Swords & Spells. The reason it’s often overlooked is that this is a set of rules for miniatures battles. It’s a weird closing of the creative circle that began with the original Chainmail game. The material in this book was rarely-if-ever used by most early D&D players, and so it is often overlooked. But the cover is terrific AND very much feels like it belongs to the game of D&D.
Revealed by a hole burning through an ancient scroll, an army (or at least a unit) of monsters face off against a group of what look like adventurers. Printed in brown ink with gray shading on a beige paper, it seems a bit muddled and muddy at first. But after taking time to look at it more closely, I think it’s now one of my favorite pieces of early D&D art. (Also, the book has the lizard-man logo that I did as an homage last week.)
It certainly was more complex than the homages from the previous episodes—which each were single character illos. But I was still able to get the main line drawing (with six characters) done during the course of the show. I finished the scroll and did the coloring the next day.
Here, then, is the finished cartoon homage:
I’m quite pleased with how it turned out … how about you? Leave a comment and let me know.
Tomorrow I’ll be posting a process video exclusively for paid subscribers … so hey, if you like that kinda thing maybe you wanna consider upgrading your subscription. (Just sayin’.)