Angus McBride

Angus McBride's illustrations always go above and beyond. His subject matter is pretty standard-issue high fantasy and history – he's best known for his cover artworks for Middle Earth Role-Playing (MERP), the first officially licensed JRR Tolkien RPG.

While I typically prefer my fantasy art to look like the surreal and colorful Paul Lehr, McBride's moody, detail-rich artwork always pulls me in. Take a moment to soak in "Ambusher 2," his 1987 cover to MERP's Assassins of Dol Amroth.

The ornate cloak. The two lizards with sinister expressions. The bats. The hazy blue reflection of a distant town in a lake. That weary horse silhouette. The extra-quiet booties the assassin has on her feet.

This one of Treebeard rocks; he's so goofy looking.

MERP issued 90-something supplements between 1982 and 1997, so McBride had a lot of material to work with. And one of those titles was essentially just an art collection of McBride's previous artwork: Angus McBride's Characters of Middle-earth, 1990. (Herb Petro said "this book is nearly totally useless as a game supplement" in an otherwise positive review for White Wolf #25 in 1991.)

Physical copies aren't cheap, so put this one on your list if you love hunting through used bookshops. You can check out a PDF of the whole thing over here.

It opens with a short biography of McBride that reveals he was self-taught when starting his career, and drew inspiration from Frank Frazetta as well as famed British illustrators Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac.

My favorite McBride works are the quieter ones, like the Ambusher one from earlier, or this creepy one, "River Haunt."

A lot of his cooler stuff takes place at night and includes some horror elements.

McBride does have plenty of engaging action scenes as well. This one really captures that frenetic energy a battle needs. Love the backflipping orc.

McBride knows you have to throw in a decaptitation, just so that the kids really feel like they're getting away with seeing something they're not allowed to.

The MERP books were all published by Iron Crown Enterprises, a tiny RPG company that, like I mentioned earlier, was the first to get the coveted Lord of the Rings license in the early '80s. Let's check in with the very cool RPG history compendium Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground: A Guide to Tabletop Roleplaying Games from D&D to Mothership, by Stu Horvath:

Surprisingly, Tolkien Enterprises granted the license without issue. The fact that this tiny company, new to the scene, managed to snag what was arguably the biggest license in fantasy RPGs will never cease to boggle the mind: it's made all the more astounding by the fact that no other RPG company prior to that even tried!

MERP books had some pros and cons going for them, Stu explains: They were creative and ambitious when expanding into new Lord of the Rings territory, but they also amped up the magical elements and gruesome violence in ways that didn't feel of a piece with Tolkien's style.

Still, they often expanded the mythos in ways that felt plausible, and they definitely sound like a cool world to me. One update you wouldn't have seen from stogey ol' JRR: One of the Ringwraiths is a corrupted queen, rather than a king. Here she is on the right-hand side of this McBride illustration:

Tolkien Enterprises pulled the license from Iron Crown in 1999 in order to flip it for a profit since the Peter Jackson movies were about to boost the market value, and Iron Crown went bankrupt soon after.

McBride had a lot more going on beyond Tolkien. His body of work covers far more than I can include here, such as ton of Osprey military history titles and illustrations for Look and Learn.

Among the many illustrations McBride did for Look and Learn's magazine was a series covering 36 “Legendary Beasts.” My favorite is this very sleepy Midgard Serpent from Norse mythology, in Finding Out, Vol 17 No 3.

Perhaps the biggest confirmation of McBride's talent for crisp, engaging commercial art? The fact that this artwork – his 1988 MERP cover for A Spy in Isengard, by Terry K. Amthor – became the "Pondering My Orb" meme just over three years ago.

The meme was kicked off by a tweet from my friend DeepThot, but it wouldn't have gone anywhere without McBride's ability to deliver a straightforward yet fascinating fantasy scenario.

McBride wasn't around to enjoy it, though: He passed away in 2007 from a heart attack that marked the end of a prolific career in illustration. I don't believe he ever published an art collection after Angus McBride's Characters of Middle-earth, which didn't even cover all of his Lord of the Rings artwork, let alone the rest of his oeuvre.

He'll live on in the hearts of Lord of the Rings fans everywhere. The memes are just a bonus.

Next Time: Colorful Spaceships