THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 90

The first fantasy books I read were Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain series. I found them in my second grade class bookshelves which held a surprisingly good selection of titles, thank you Miss Brock. This was well before the Disney movie came out of the Black Cauldron (the title of the second book in the series). I was stoked to find these books at school & have access to some sword & sorcery books. Especially with a cool antler & skull masked guy on horseback on the cover. These books are distinctly high-fantasy with very generic Welsh-based character names & mythological sources. It wasn’t until I was a pre-teenager that I started to want more than escapism from my fantasy. When I saw Monty Python’s Holy Grail & then Terry Gilliam’s Jabberwocky I realized that I could have both grime & hilarity with my fantasy. The BBC Robin of Sherwood series showed that you could add some Hammer horror-esque elements in there too. Then watching Wizards & Robert Asprin’s Myth Adventures made me realize that you could stuff whatever you wanted into the fantasy basket. Vaughn Bodē comics sealed the deal, with overt sex, drugs & Rock&Roll & a style that was cool enough to be one of the building blocks of  NYC graffiti in the late 70s. Later I found the world of fantasy blacklight posters & the fantasy informed biker tattoo flash online when it became easy to access most of the history of human output. As far as games went I liked how Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay emphasized the “life is cheap” & anti-heroism of adventurers & how Call of Cthulhu made combat irrelevant because your enemies would make you insane & fighting them was beyond David & Goliath in proportions, it was Bambi Vs. Godzilla. I learned that I had no time for escapism in my fantasy, I wanted to be shown something cool & have potential opened up to me. This is why Warhammer Fantasy (just so people understand that WH40K didn’t come on the scene until later) was so pivotal for me. I hadn’t even pieced together that some of my favorite models (Orcs & Goblins) were sculpted by an actual Punk Kev Adams. At this time in my life I’m more open to the craft of good escapism, not for my own consumption but for others. All of these elements & a whole lot more went in as the building blocks of DUNGEON DEGENERATES.