Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
The action picks up in part two. We’ve got a five-headed hydra, the paladin’s Lay on Hands ability, lots of Warduke, the historic dwarf/elf antagonism (from Tolkien), and a helm of water breathing (my favorite page—those fish are flummoxed!).
On the last page, the evil cleric Zargash is charming a snake, but I don’t think clerics have access to the Charm Animal or Charm Monster spells. Maybe I’m wrong.
Part one of the Characters Coloring Book is here.
Along with the AD&D storybooks, Marvel and TSR collaborated on five coloring books featuring the same cast of characters, some of them from the toy line, others from The Shady Dragon Inn (1983), a game aid featuring pregenerated characters (and stats for the characters in the toy line).
Jane Stine, who co-wrote The Treasure of Time (1983), wrote the Characters coloring book. Earl Norem did the cover art. Jim Mooney, who worked for DC in the ’60s and Marvel in the ’70s and ’80s, and John Tartaglione, Silver Age inker of Sgt. Fury and Daredevil, did the interior art. (The lips look unmistakably Mooney to me, so I gather he did the pencils.)
The book is essentially a visual illustration of the different D&D character class attributes, alignments, and skills. It even covers some spells (feather falling) and magic items (helm of water breathing). Unlike the storybooks, there’s a definite link to D&D‘s role-playing core.
Parts two, three, and four of the Characters Coloring Book are here, here, and here.
The D&D Computer Labyrinth Game was not a big seller, as you can see. It was expensive, and D&D hadn’t yet gone viral in the kid world. Here it is with Dark Tower in the 1981 Montgomery Ward Christmas Catalog for $44.88.
Super Simon was in the same catalog for $37.99. The non-electronic games pictured—Ideal’s Rebound, Galoob’s Pro Pinball, Perfection (scared the crap out of me when that board shot up)—were much cheaper.
The photo is alluring, but also frustrating: all of those aisles in the background forever unexplored, all of those endcaps flush with eternally unidentifiable carded toys.
(First image via Historic Images/eBay)
I’ve never seen these before, but that’s not really a surprise. The mainstream expansion of D&D starting in 1983, when the action figure line and the cartoon were released, was a decadent mess. I have fond memories of both, but neither product broke new ground or had anything to do with D&D, and what’s worse, they lived in separate universes. It was a marketing disaster.
Had the cartoon featured the grittier action figure characters and Thundarr-like production and writing, D&D might have become a much different franchise.
I do get a kick out of the toy sets, and I think they’re interesting historically. Maybe I’ll be Warduke for Halloween.
You can thumb through a PDF of the whole catalog at Recycled Thoughts from a Retro Gamer. You can also see the complete catalog at Mikey Walters’ Flickr. The images above are from eBay, where you can usually find a copy for $5 – $10.
The shirts are very cool, but apparently not very well-made. Here they are, courtesy of Grognardia.
The D&D Basic Set advertised in the catalog is the just released 1981 edition, written by Tom Moldvay with cover art by Erol Otus. The images on the t-shirts on the top left are from Sutherland’s cover to the original Basic Set—written by M.D. and fantasy writer-promoter John Eric Holmes—from 1977.
I found the Grognardia post via the Original D&D Discussion forums. Zenopus, who writes a terrific blog “exploring the underworld of Holmes Basic,” posted a number of different photos showing the famous Sutherland red dragon, including this beauty:
It’s from the magazine Games Merchandising (a retailer magazine), and shows the TSR booth at the Hobby Industry of America (HIA) 1981 trade show. Dig the red Face logo chairs!
In 1983 Marvel published a series of D&D storybooks and coloring books under license from TSR. (One year later, the roles would be reversed for the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, published by TSR under license from Marvel.) I believe these are the only two storybooks. You can read The Forest of Enchantment here. The Treasure of Time is here. Both PDFs are originally from Kuronons’ D&D Goodies Collection.
They’re kid’s books, so it’s pretty juvenile stuff, and there’s no effort to introduce the concept of role-playing (unlike the 1979 AD&D Coloring Album). All but two of the characters from LJN’s first run of AD&D action figures make appearances, so the books are basically long toy commercials.
Nevertheless, they’re notable for a few reasons: Bob Stine is Goosebumps author R.L. Stine, and Jane Stine, who founded Parachute Publishing, is his wife.
As for the art, Earl Norem did the interior work for The Forest of Enchantment, and Marie Severin did the cover and designed the book. She also illustrated The Treasure of Time. Severin was a colorist at EC until the notorious publisher was run out of town by the Comics Code. She worked for Marvel—as colorist, inker, and penciler—from 1959 until the early ’90s. She is one of the most well-respected artists in the comics field.
Famously, Severin was directed to soften the facial expression of the Hulk on one of the most innovative covers in Marvel’s history: The Hulk King Size Special #1 (1968). See both versions here. The artist who made the Green Guy too savage for public consumption? Jim Steranko.
Wicked. These appear to be Trampier’s and Sutherland’s illustrations from the original Monster Manual (1977). And they’ve been marked down to 25 cents each!
Images are via the brilliant Monster Brains. Go there to see all of the transfers and other killer stuff.
UPDATE (1/11/13): I found the full book. Please see my updated post here.
As the poor bastard in the second pic below found out, beholders are very, very nasty.
2 Warps to Neptune 