Despite being a key member of TSR's 2ND-Wave (1977-82) art team, Bill Willingham is probably best known as a comics creator. His writing and/or art has appeared in any number of titles since the early 1980s, including Green Lantern, Batman & the Outsiders, Elementals, Coventry, and Fables. His success in comics comes with no little irony given that critics of his Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) visuals often argue that their "cartoony" character is ill suited to "serious" fantasy gaming.
Be that as it may, D&D's sensibilities were undoubtedly influenced by the comic books of the 1960s and 1970s [1] -- which, along with cheap paperback books, were the pulp literature of the day. And Willingham is no different than a host of other '70s pop artists -- John Byrne, Jeff Dee, Keith Giffen, and Barry Windsor-Smith, among others -- who understood that cartooning (as opposed to illustration) could engage consumers, especially pre-teens and teens, as effectively as any then-current style.
Willingham's TSR efforts were slick, inviting, and dynamic precisely because they tapped into the ethos of the era's comic books. His work may lack the visceral weirdness of Erol Otus's renderings or the high-fantasy realism of later (post-1982) D&D imagery, but there's no disputing that Willingham helped define the game as a pop-cultural artifact, fully in tune with artistic trends of the day.
Note
[1] In a recent interview, Timothy Kask reiterated the oft-noted fact that Marvel Comics' Doctor Strange led to the psionics system presented in Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry. The general impact of comic books, including Marvel's Conan the Barbarian, on the game's early development has routinely been noted by both observers and participants, including Robert Kuntz.
Links of Interest
• "Bill Willingham" (Tome of Treasures)
• "Bill Willingham" (WordPress)
• "Bill Willingham and the Iconography of D&D" (Corky.net)
• "Bill Willingham Interview" (The Comics Journal)
The 2013 Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Open Championship at GenCon (Aug 15-18) will feature a 4TH-Edition homage to adventure module B4: The Lost City by Tom Moldvay:
[. . .] A challenge for experienced players, this adventure features five 7th-level pre-generated characters. The city of Cynidicea was once the capital of a rich and fertile kingdom. It fell into chaos and ruin when its people turned to the worship of a terrible monster called Zargon. Now, hundreds of years after the fall of Cynidicea, the cult of Zargon has returned, more dangerous than ever. The only way to stop them is at the source: Zargon must be destroyed.
This year's Championship is inspired by the classic B4: The Lost City by Tom Moldvay. This event consists of an open entry round, with top-scoring tables participating in a final round on Sunday. The format and scoring have returned to a more free-form play style, so come try your hand at a return to the classic style of the D&D Championship.
This slim red volume emerged before us as a brilliant piece
of game design that not only changed our world with it's own bright light, but
looking from the vantage of 1981, I can see that this game changed THE world.
This world of dark dungeons and savage encounters slowly crept out into ours,
from hobby shops to basements, to computer labs and movie screens. And we're
all better off for having adventured in it, even if the game isn't played quite
the same anymore. (Luke Crane, creator, Burning Wheel RPG – Jun 2012)
• • •
Basic D&D, the version released in 1981 and
assembled by Tom Moldvay, is a big inspiration [for D&D Next]. It’s a complete game in 64
pages and covers the essence of D&D in a compact package.
(Mike Mearls, Sr. Manager, D&D R&D – May 2012)
• • •
The second edition [of Basic D&D] [. . .] is the best possible introduction to the D&D game. [. . .]
I think the new Basic Set rules are an improvement over the first edition. Not a big quantum jump ahead, but better in a number of minor ways. I’m proud of the original Basic Set, and I like to think I did a good job of describing a great invention, the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game, so that everyone could enjoy it. The nicest compliment I ever got for it was from a game-store manager who said, “That’s made a lot of people happy.” May the new edition do the same. (Dr. J. Eric Holmes, editor, Basic D&D 1e – Aug 1981)
A serious family illness is likely to sidetrack my posting plans over the next couple-three weeks. Things should eventually settle down, but I'm not yet sure how long it will be before I can return to my "normal" frequency. In the interim, I include below a list of the posts I'm planning to make as I have the time and energy to do so.
• D&D: 1977-82
• D&D: 1982-83
• Laying the Foundations: Errata
• Laying the Foundations: Pulp Fantasy
• Visual Milieu 2: Bill Willingham
• Visual Milieu: Diesel (David LaForce)
• Visual Milieu: Jeff Dee
Roleplaying games come alive, both in the imagination and at the table, through a mixture of visual, verbal, and mathematical elements. Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) was, from the very beginning, at least partly defined by its distinctive pop-art visuals. Indeed, a case can be made that the game's art appealed as much (or more) to new players as its premises or mechanics ever did -- fantasy worlds are rendered most real, after all, by the imagery they entail, whether painted by words or by brushes.
By 1976-77 D&D's visual style had evolved, with an eclectic look akin to the book covers, record jackets, and alternative comix of the time replacing the fan art seen in the original 1974 booklets. Erol Otus was one of a handful of artists who came to embody TSR's 2ND-Wave (1977-82) artistic sensibility. Nearly every fan of Moldvay-Cook-Marsh D&D knows, for example, that it's Otus's paintings that grace the box (and rulebook) covers for the Basic and Expert (B/X) sets -- the power of his storytelling calls to viewers as palpably as the contents, leaving little doubt about the appeal of B/X D&D's pulp-fantasy milieu.
Otus's images most often depict, or at least imply, ongoing narratives of one sort or another, while his visceral pop style combines elements elsewhere seen in 1930s pulp illustrations, 1970s sf-fantasy paperbacks, and early Iron Maiden album covers. Most of his efforts were for 1e Advanced D&D products, but the power of his B/X visuals indelibly marked those rules' incipient diegesis -- the implied world in which game events are said to unfold -- and added a countercultural edge that the later work of Larry Elmore, Jeff Easley, and Clyde Caldwell (among others) never contemplates.
Links of Interest
• "Art Evolution Special: Erol Otus" (BlackGate.com)
• "Erol Otus" (Tome of Treasures)
• The Erol Otus Shrine (Tumblr)
• "An Interview with Fantasy Artist Erol Otus" (Tor.com)
