Monday, July 5, 2021

Elmore's Debut

I was flipping through issue #55 of Dragon (November 1981), an issue I never owned – or saw – back in the day and only relatively recently acquired. There's a surprisingly large amount of interesting material in its 80 pages, to which I may return later. For the moment, I want to draw everyone's attention to a three-page comic that appeared in the issue, drawn by none other than Larry Elmore. Here's the first page.
Does this look at all familiar to anyone? Bear in mind this is 20 issues and nearly two years before the formal appearance of the first SnarfQuest comic, but it sure looks like Snarf, doesn't it – a prototype of the heroic zeetvah, to be sure, but the resemblance is clear. 

How is it that I've never seen anyone reference this comic before? The comic's story is intended to announce the arrival of Larry Elmore at TSR as a staff artist, making this (I presume) his first published work for the company (someone can correct me if I am mistaken in this). At any rate, my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw this and I thought it worth sharing with readers who might otherwise have not yet seen it.

11 comments:

  1. Love this and loved SnarfQuest. I have the collected 'Graphic Novel' somewhere. I always wanted to add Zeetvahs as a playable species but we rarely played D&D by the time I got really into the comic strip.

    A similar species does appear in some of my Star Wars RPGs though.

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    1. Weren’t the gungans (Jar Jar Binks, etc.) just zeetvah in SW clothing? I’d even peg the accents as being close.

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    2. You know Elmore published a Snarfquest RPG worldbook for 3.0 D&D back around 2002-2003, right? Long OOP AFAIK and probably tricky to find at this point, but a must-have for fans.

      He also did a whole new post-TSR era graphic novel in 2014, which is still available on his site:

      https://larryelmore.com/store/SQPS/snarfquest%3A-danger-on-the-mystical-plains-of-sashaar

      Can't personally vouch for its quality, but I expect it's up to his usual standards.

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  2. Oh yeah, I remember this one, and the issue's amazing Otus cover too. Couldn't say for sure if it was really his first work for TSR and I'm kind of surprised it was two years before Snarfquest started, though. Didn't seem that long in my foggy hindsight.

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  3. I vaguely remembered a story behind this comic, but couldn't track it down; it turned out to be in Dragon 55 itself (go figure). On the bottom of page 73, just before "Da Letter," is "Da Story of Da Letter," which explains that Elmore had done a painting for Dragon Publishing's calendar for which payment was...somewhat overdue. Da Letter was his way of needling Kim Mohan. After the calendar had been published, Mohan published Da Letter, whose last panel parodies the calendar painting. On the strength of that painting, Elmore got hired by TSR. So Da Letter is Elmore's second published work for Dragon Publishing and led to his first published work for TSR.

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  4. Here's a good review of the calendar in question, with a good picture of Elmore's cover:https://waynesbooks.games/2019/11/03/days-of-the-dragon-1982-dungeons-dragons-fantasy-art-calendar/

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    1. Neat, thanks. New to me and I don't think I'd ever seen that blue dragon piece Otus did for it either.

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  5. "How is it that I've never seen anyone reference this comic before?"

    I don't know. I talked about it nearly 3 and half years ago.
    https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2017/12/this-old-dragon-issue-55.html

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    1. Have to agree with you about Gardner Fox. The man was a mad genius, in and out of the comic industry. I think the Niall story might have been the first non-comic fiction of his I'd read, but you can bet I kept an eye out for more after that.

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  6. Funny, but aside from the cover, the thing I most strongly recall from this issue is “What’s New”, with Phil and Dixie miniature wargaming in bed, a water bed, at a time when miniatures were mostly made of metal…

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  7. This was the very first issue of Dragon I ever owned, as it happens. Purchased at a B. Daltons, no less!

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