Selected Covers from Old Dragon Mags

For those of you unfamiliar with roleplaying culture (and hoo daddy, is it ever a culture) Dragon magazine is a monthly magazine covering fantasy roleplay, which these days means it covers stuff from TSR and Wizards of the Coast, playing only lip service to other interests. Though I spent a great deal of my time with a Dragon propped up in front of my speckled teenage face when I worked in a comic/gaming shop in high school and my freshman year of college, I haven't read a new issue in over a year. Kind of a bummer, but when you've got the internet a magazine that's often more about pulling one company's party line than it is about gaming becomes less and less desirable.

Some time ago, I was presented with a large box of such magazines from the 70s and 80s, and my love for the mag (at least in spirit) has been rekindled. The older issues are loaded with delicious fluff, and a kind of hokey, zine-like charm.

However, just like all fantasy literature, they often have bad covers. Terrible covers, in fact. I've selected three of the ones I found the most awful, and the three I loved most for balance's sake.

This first one isn't terrible in the sense that the art is awful, but it's just so frigging incomprehensible. What is with the floating, glowing sword? What does that guy to the far left see that's got him having aneurysms? It looks kind of like the dude in green is controlling the glowy sword, but it also looks like he's menacing them with a knife so they don't take that corpse he's hoarded for himself.

I tried to go into Photoshop and zoom in to see just what's supposed to be happening, but the colors are just so frigging dark and murky that it's impossible to discern very much. This is all totally ignoring the hilarious placement of the sword. Use the schwartz indeed.

This one is just horrible on so many, many levels. Let's ignore, for a moment, the bizarre thigh and ass-baring tunic and gogo boots on the woman, and focus on this goony-looking dragon. It's a fairly standard-looking, generic, inoffensive dragon until you get to its head. What the Hell is all that jazz doing on its head? It has neck spines, three (?) horns, a little beard of spines, big floppity ears, a waggly tongue, and what are either tusks or tragically misplaced canine teeth.

Now we can move on to the woman, who's decided to go dragon whispering in a tunic that bares not only her leg up to her hip, but the beginnings of her ass cheeks. Surely her universe has underwear. Right? Then there's the issue of her nips poking through the fabric. That tunic is honest-to-God the only thing this woman is wearing. Look at that thing, the front flap would be her undoing in a stiff breeze, and she's not wearing anything underneath. This, to me, suggests that she is in fact a fantastical flasher.

Uuuuugggggh. I was reluctant to post this one, because it's the only hideous cover I came up with for this post that actually has a reason behind having it on the cover at all. See, the cover is an illustration for a comic/game setting/a whole lot of other things that I still see floating around on the internet and other mags. The putz taking center stage is named Pinsom, and I don't care enough about him to explain him or his universe to you in depth; I just mentioned all this to make sure you know that I know that this cover isn't a non sequitor.

With that said, the cover isn't... necessarily terrible. I mean, it's no Fantastical Flasher vs. Orky Talk Dragon, but it just seems... off, somehow. The weird saccharine colors and goofy character designs make it hard to not just screw my face up and turn the mag over so as to avoid seeing it. That and the princess has one hand with four fingers. I checked and rechecked the comic in the mag, and that doesn't appear to be a racial trait.

Now, I also promised you three good covers, or at least three covers I deem to be good. So, here goes. Feel free to hate on these and praise the sickeningly purple Pinsom cover.

Mostly, I like this cover because it's understated. Yeah, there's a unicorn present, and that usually incites some kind of weird nerd rage in me, but the horny horse that's often associated with purity (how ironic) makes for an awesome contrast to the skeleton of the dead soldier just to its left. The sun beams streaming down from the treetops work to further the contrast between the setting and the skeleton, making it seem entirely out of place.

Still, the image is kind of hopeful. Even though Skully's dead, life goes on around him. He probably nourished those scrub grasses and wildflowers, you know. Circle of life and all that happy crap.

I. Love. This. Cover. It's simple in concept, but the level of detail is staggering. The fortifications in the background, the men in the field, the scavenger bird overhead. The armor and weapons look real, tangible, and from the same period. It's just. It's just awesome. It made me exclaim, "Holy crap, this is so cool!" in the same way the Dragon Flasher cover made me recoil in horror. No. Wait. Actually, it made me exclaim about its coolness even more emphatically than I despaired over the Dragon Flasher cover. Within the magazine, I was able to find some information on the cover that only cemented my opinion that it is Beyond Awesome:

Cover
As Camlan burns, a wounded King Arthur prepares to meet the mounted attack of his hated rival Mordred. This painting was carefully researched by Roger Raupp, who based the weapons, armor, and fortifications on those in existence in the British Isles after 500 A.D. The battle shown here takes place at Hadrian's Wall, where soem sources beleive the historical Arthur lived.

If that's not genuine awesomeness, then by God I'm not sure what is.

Following the baddass King Arthur cover, you may find yourself wondering, "What the fresh Hell is this? Isn't this something you'd normally call bad?"

Oddly enough, no. To me, a cool fantasy cover doesn't have to be totally badass or historically accurate to be considered good, and this cover is definitely cool. In a quirky way, at least.

As with the Arthur cover, a lot of my delight with this image comes from the little details sprinkled about. The Coke bottle (is this urban fantasy?), the wishbone earring he's got going on, the various book spines with things like 'Merlin,' and 'Gandalf,' and (of course) 'Dragon,' on them.

the most fetching thing about the image, though, is that the kooky wizard doesn't even seem to be doing anything diabolical. Upon closer inspection, he's holding a book of stories, and the mist he's conjuring takes the vague form of a sort of illustration to whatever page the book is open on. Not to mention the skeletal dragon is pretty damn cool in its own right.

As a special treat, I offer up the ginormous scanned images of any of these covers to those asking in the comments. Even the Pinsom one.

If you really want it.

You sick bastard.