Whatever one's feelings about the setting itself, Gerald Brom's artwork for Dark Sun was truly stunning. Take, for example, this piece which appeared on the cover of issue #173 of Dragon (September 1991), one month before the formal release of the boxed set. The issue featured a number of different articles intended to introduce Athas to the magazine's readers, but, for me, this cover image probably did more to sell me on Dark Sun than did any of those articles.
"Grimdark? Looks pretty sunny to me. Checkmate, normie!!!"
ReplyDeleteI remember this issue -- for whatever reason, that odd-looking bell Brom painted burned itself into my memory. I know a lot people prefer the early Dragon, but Roger Moore's tenure on the magazine was the period when I was a faithful reader. There's some good design on display in this cover -- the pale blue contrasting with the orange shades, the use of positive and negative space. Brom was still in a fairly naturalistic mode here -- less stylized than what he quickly became known for. As an aside, I always liked the pithy cover blurbs from this Era of the magazine.
ReplyDeleteBrom's Dark Sun artwork is right up there among Frazetta, Vallejo, Sanjulián, etc., for sword and sorcery, IMO. I don't think TSR had anyone else who really captured that style nearly as well.
ReplyDeleteThis was my introduction to Brom. Never played in the world, but read a few of the novels.
ReplyDeleteA strong era for Dragon still, with a lot of excellent covers, Brom in particular. This was before they got all cluttered up with copy, which was a truly terrible sign.
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