Tag Fighting Fantasy

‘City of Thieves’ and ‘Deathtrap Dungeon’.

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Having already covered the illustrations from the previous four books in the ‘Fighting Fantasy’ series, it is now time to appreciate the artwork from the next two classic adventures.

For me personally, I felt that these two titles marked the peak of the franchise – with ‘Deathtrap Dungeon’ in particular elevating the popularity of the collection to new heights.

The covers and inside artwork for both books were created by the same person: – American artist Iain McCaig, who is perhaps best known for his work at Lucasfilm with the ‘Star Wars’ prequels. According to what I have read across numerous sites, McCaig played a major role in designing the characters Darth Maul and Queen Amidala.

McCaig is a brilliant artist, and you will note throughout the following drawings that he often has the subjects ‘stepping outside the frame’, so to speak. It’s a fantastic effect and made the artwork for these books stand out and added both weight and atmosphere to the exceptional writing and storytelling.

Let’s start with ‘The City of Thieves’ – where the story is set in a dirty, crime-riddled and violent town called Port Blacksand. Within the city walls are countless foes and villains wanting to kill you, and McCaig’s illustrations reflected these perils perfectly.

Is it just me, or does the person in the last drawing look like Barry Manilow?

All jokes aside, we now continue with ‘Deathtrap Dungeon’, where I have selected more of McCaig’s exceptional work to be admired. As with the previous book, it is difficult to filter out the illustrations into a ‘greatest hits collection’, but I will do my best.

For more information about Iain McCaig, please follow the link below to his IMDB profile.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0564572/

McCaig’s only other contributions to the ‘Fighting Fantasy’ series were designing the covers for ‘The Forest of Doom’ – which I covered in the previous review – and ‘Island of the Lizard King’, which I will focus on next time.

Covers and illustrations courtesy of Fighting Fantasy, Iain McCaig and Ian Livingstone.

More artwork from the ‘Fighting Fantasy’ book series.

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Following on from my article about the first two entries in the series, we now move on to appreciate the art from books three and four: – ‘The Forest of Doom’ and ‘Starship Traveller’.

These were two very different editions, with ‘Forest of Doom’ continuing on with the fantasy/sorcery genre, whilst ‘Starship Traveller’ veered off on a science-fiction trajectory and introduced a more complex system of game play.

‘The Forest of Doom’ was illustrated by Malcolm Barter, and his style is similar to Russ Nicholson – who provided the artwork for the previous two books.

Not only did ‘Starship Traveller’ go in a different direction plot-wise, but the illustrations were also on an alternate wavelength. I’ll be honest here and say that I did not like this change, and never read/played this book as a result.

Examples of the artwork from Peter Andrew Jones are below.

To me, there is something about the sword and sorcery art that gives it an edge – perhaps there is more imagination and menace immersed into the illustrations – who knows?

I am not being overly critical of the designs from ‘Starship Traveller’ as they are stylish and futuristic, but I just find the artwork from ‘The Forest of Doom’ – as well as ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’ and ‘The Citadel of Chaos’ – vastly superior.

Cover art and illustrations courtesy of Fighting Fantasy and Puffin Books.