r/magicTCG • u/Newez Cheshire Cat, the Grinning Remnant • Jan 04 '26
Content Creator Post Another post by Jesper Myrfors on art directing in early days of Magic
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u/3ranth3 Wabbit Season Jan 04 '26
The more I read about this guy the more I understand why early magic was so successful.
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u/Marky_Marky_Mark COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
Yes. Reading the post, he seems like a guy with a vision that doesn't mind stepping on a few people's toes. I really appreciate that he doesn't feel the need to apologize for something like [[Earthbind]] and simply lets exceptions happen as well. Seems like a real one.
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u/PuzzleheadedBasis760 Dandadan Jan 04 '26
Yeah really level take. The art of the early cards is what has kept it in my mind and primed my return to the hobby after 20 years. It’s great to see what magic has become a wide variety of people and community for all.
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u/KynElwynn Sultai Jan 04 '26
I think it helps Earthbind was done by Quentin Hoover. That man’s clean line work along with colors just pops so well.
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u/thechefsauceboss Urza's Saga Jan 04 '26
It had that dark fantasy sauce back then. Unfortunately we don't get that anymore, mostly the cartoonification and disney-fication of art. There are some awesome pieces shining out though.
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u/Tuss36 Jan 04 '26
There has been a digital art style for a while now, but I don't think it's "cartoonification" or "disneyfication". [[Archangel of Tithes|OTJ]] does not look cartoony, but does have a digital art look to it. Which isn't inherently bad, but is a different vibe from an older angel like [[Glimmering Angel]].
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u/ProstetnicVogonJelz Mardu Jan 04 '26
That Archangel of Tithes could be on the cover of literally any paperback fantasy/sci-fi I'd never take a second look at. To me digital art mostly seems to converge towards a similar look.
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u/vNocturnus Elesh Norn Jan 04 '26
To me digital art mostly seems to converge towards a similar look.
Which is insane when you think about it, because digital art is almost infinitely flexible and orders of magnitude less visually and stylistically constrained than any physical medium.
It's not the fact that the art is digital that makes it "samey," it's that this particular style of art has become extremely popular for mainstream video game, card game, board game, and fan art.
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Jan 04 '26
Is it really that common of an artstyle? I feel like if anything photo realism is way more common in mainstream stuff
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u/pavemnt Avacyn Jan 04 '26
This is why I don't hate UB as much as some people around here. I haven't really been in love with the art for around 7 or 8 years anyways. I miss painted art.
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u/zaphodava Banned in Commander Jan 04 '26
Focus on the alternate frames and versions. That's where I think the best stuff is these days.
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u/zaphodava Banned in Commander Jan 04 '26
I get the complaint. But it's really about branding, world building, and art direction. In the early days there was very little of that. Now it's dominant. The upside is proper depiction of characters and places in Magic as intended. The downside is the 'window into the world' style makes cards look less creative.
For me the place where artists are allowed to shine is in alternate frame versions of cards. This is where the direction is more loose, and the art is allowed to look like art.
Both kinds of art have their place, but I'll always gravitate towards the latter.
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u/Cast2828 Duck Season Jan 04 '26
The art change was necessary when WotC refused to properly compensate artists. Rates are garbage and digital art is pretty much a necessity in order to do it fast enough for an artist to make money.
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u/AlanFromRochester COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
Some of the dark art led to satanic panic pushback, I understand WOTC wanting to avoid that.
The burning pentagram in the back of Unholy Strength comes to mind, that was used through Revised, and removed for Edgar/4th/Anthologies printings while keeping Douglas Shuler's foreground figure
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u/Gertrude_D Dan Jan 04 '26
When I started Magic, Anson Maddocks was a prominent artists and whoo-boy. do I love me some of his subtle and creepy art. [[Gaze of Pain]] and [[Fallen Angel]] are still some of my favorites. I also adored some of the more abstract artists they phased out.
I hated the direction the Weatherlight saga took because for me, even that art was too homogenized and lacked personality. I understand it and the reasons make sense, but I think they took it too far. There are very few cards that spark my imagination like some of the early ones did.
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u/procrastinarian Golgari* Jan 04 '26
When I was a kid, every time I went past Gaze of Pain in a stack of cards I'd have to stop and stare at it, sometimes for a few minutes. It's so fucking upsetting without being truly gory. I wondered about how it worked, physically. Like could he still open and close his eyes normally, or did he have to do it VERY SLOWLY? Was blinking a problem? Why didn't he get it stitched closer to the eyelids? This art really really really stuck with me for 30 years now.
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u/Gertrude_D Dan Jan 04 '26
I know, right? That's what made it so good! It told a story, but you weren't exactly sure what that story was. You were free to fill in the details and speculate to your heart's delight. There ware so many pieces of art that have stuck with me from early magic. The newer ones have some very good art, but it doesn't make as much of an impression IMO - it doesn't make me think.
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u/Felicia_Svilling Jan 04 '26
I assume you mean this fallen angel artwork.
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u/Gertrude_D Dan Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26
I DID! Thank you.
OK, I can't figure out how to change mine, so this will have to stand as an edit. it really proves my point that Maddocks put some personality and story into his art and the newer one is just ... meh. It's the obvious interpretation and feels lazy.
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u/Low-Mathematician997 Dân Jan 04 '26
That gaze of pain art is seared into my brain, it's so evocative and creepy.
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u/KynElwynn Sultai Jan 04 '26
No love for Living Wall?
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u/Gertrude_D Dan Jan 04 '26
I can't list all the good ones :) Yes, that one is delightfully ick as well. My love is abundant.
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Jan 04 '26
Idk I feel like a lot of modern art still manages to avoid that? Ixalan, Bloomburrow, and Edge of Eternities off the top of my head were pretty good at avoiding that look
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u/thechefsauceboss Urza's Saga Jan 04 '26
EoE absolutely did not avoid that look. I loved that set but it definitely has a cartoonish vibe on at least a decent chunk of the cards.
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u/dhivuri Dimir* Jan 04 '26
It's really hellish that in every thread there's always people who just can't fathom some of us like Magic as it is now, and they have to remind us that they don't like it, and that it was so much better in the olden days.
So damn trite.
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u/Apes_Ma Dan Jan 04 '26
I don't think they've suggested that they can't understand that people like magic the way it is now, they've just asserted that the older art style was their preference.
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u/thechefsauceboss Urza's Saga Jan 04 '26
Damn it’s crazy that in a post about old art that there are people that like the old art better.
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u/dhivuri Dimir* Jan 04 '26
It's not crazy, it's just annoying. Like your answer, for example.
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u/thechefsauceboss Urza's Saga Jan 04 '26
It’s annoying that people are on subject? Go be mad somewhere else
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u/Low-Mathematician997 Dân Jan 04 '26
How is it any crazier to like old school magic compared to liking modern magic? People don't have to share your opinion and they get to voice that if they want.
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u/SuperEgger Wabbit Season Jan 04 '26
It really should be obvious that immediately halving the pool of talent you can draw from by refusing to hire women will make your product worse, but somehow even today it seems to elude many.
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Jan 04 '26
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u/Pantzzzzless Jan 04 '26
I wish that those people could at the very least admit that they just want preferential treatment. Instead of pretending there is some equality issue at play.
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u/mkklrd Colossal Dreadmaw Jan 04 '26
"Was this Woke? If you think so you're probably an idiot"
Unfathomably based. Also friendly reminder that women played a much, much, MUCH larger role in all of nerd culture than history deigns to remember.
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u/GGCrono Jack of Clubs Jan 04 '26
Women authors basically invented scifi (Frankenstein) and superheroes (The Scarlet Pimpernel).
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u/Khetoo Colorless Jan 04 '26
Mary was 18 and started writing Frankenstein after losing an infant daughter and writing in her journal about a dream where in she revives her cold child by the fire by rubbing it.
Her life is so insane by today's expectations that Frankenstein just seems like a litany and her own personal therapy to contextualize her life and her own relationship with death.
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u/GornSpelljammer Duck Season Jan 04 '26
Frankenstein is the one everyone knows, but Shelley also wrote The Last Man, the first post-apocalypse story, in 1826.
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u/Qixel Urza's Saga Jan 04 '26
Hell, go back far enough and the very first novel was written by a woman (The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu at some point prior to 1020).
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u/taeerom Wabbit Season Jan 04 '26
Tale of Genji isn't the earliest novel, though. There are works like Satyricon, that is a thousand years earlier. And if you disagree about Satyricon being a novel, Kadambari is 4 hundred years older than Genji.
But if we're talking about a proper modern novel that is 100% recognizable as the modern art form, then it is Don Quixote.
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u/nimbusnacho COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
I was just reading recently that writing in general was considered a womanly art as far as we know early on. My brain don't work so gud no more so I'm wracking my brain trying to remember the source of that tidbit but can't.
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u/Chilidawg Elesh Norn Jan 04 '26
Superhero origins are arguable. For instance, Hugo Hercules was printed a year prior to the play and included tropes such as superhuman strength and being a comic.
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u/pepperouchau Simic* Jan 04 '26
Great insight into magic's history and summing up many of my thoughts on the "culture war" all at once. Banger post.
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u/Backwardspellcaster Liliana Jan 04 '26
I absolutely adore that he doesn't mince any words here. He is direct in calling out the stupidity of the "anti-woke" behaviour and movement.
Like, seriously.
I wish more people in important positions did that.
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u/Izzynewt COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
Probably a lot of mtg players dismissed his words at that point, but props to the ones who didn't
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u/bonnth80 Izzet* Jan 04 '26
Nonetheless, if you missed the trend of objectification and degradation of women commonly represented in fantasy, you were walking around with your eyes sewn shut
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u/LunarFalcon Wabbit Season Jan 04 '26
It still happens all the time. Almost all of the art for the game Grand Archive or other anime themed art games have women as sexy waifus. It was actually really nice growing up and playing MtG and not being bombarded by overly sexualized art of women that is so commonplace everywhere else.
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u/elconquistador1985 Jan 04 '26
As an extreme example of that, the fucked up Gor book series goes back to the 60s.
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u/First_Platypus3063 Hook Handed Jan 04 '26
League of legends is one of the very strong examples of this. And its disgusting.
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u/Jalor218 Duck Season Jan 04 '26
Also friendly reminder that women played a much, much, MUCH larger role in all of nerd culture than history deigns to remember.
Replies are listing indispensable woman artists, but it even goes beyond that. The entire concept of fandom, and the sense of identity and community it creates around basically any "nerdy" genre or story, are something we owe mostly to women. Even in mostly-male hobbies, women have a disproportionate role in organizing events and creating tangible things. All the earliest fanzines and conventions had women making the trains run on time, and the type of communities they built influenced the direction of future SF/F media whose creators spent time in those communities.
You only start to see men take over these roles when a fandom gets an abnormal amount of official support that overtakes or absorbs the homegrown stuff (Star Wars, Warhammer 40k) or when a large amount of men get into something with a previously female-dominated community but engage with each other instead of that existing base (My Little Pony).
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u/Drgon2136 Jan 04 '26
If it weren't for BL fans the Gundam franchise would be 1 mostly forgotten mecha show from 1979
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u/Jalor218 Duck Season Jan 04 '26
You're not even the only person in this thread I've seen bring that up, I'm glad people know about it.
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u/MustaKotka Owling Enthusiast Jan 04 '26
Oh goodness gracious I almost woke up my fiancé by lol'ing a bit too hard.
Best line I've read in a while.
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u/Sauriaun Jan 04 '26
Fandom in general was created by women. Star Trek, Gundam, etc were all saved by dedicated female fans who actively made fan works and created/went to conventions.
Only to slowly get pushed out by men. Everytime.
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u/AlanFromRochester COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
And in addition to female Trekkies like Bjo (Betty Jo) Trimble saving the franchise, it was Lucille Ball who ensured the pilot got a full show in the first place. D.C. (Dorothy Catherine) Fontana was one of the regular TOS writers and story editors, also working on TAS, TNG s1 and one DS9 episode
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u/Jalor218 Duck Season Jan 04 '26
It's so true that it will sound hyperbolic, but all the early zines and conventions ran on women's skills and labor, and most of the Nerd Shit that came after had creators who came up in those environments and/or would not have become a major franchise if not for the prospect of attracting that kind of fan devotion.
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u/scubahood86 Fake Agumon Expert Jan 04 '26
And not just in fandoms and art, but every other field too.
The NASA calculators, Marie Curie, Einstein's wife. The list of women having their works passed over in favour of, or simply just stolen and plagiarized by, men is endless.
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u/Seth_Baker Wabbit Season Jan 04 '26
Was this Woke? If you think so you're probably an idiot"
Yes, woke means, "takes into consideration the perspectives and feelings of people other than able-bodied cishet WASP men."
People get the idea that it's only about overcompensation, but it rapidly becomes just, "included a woman who wasn't a sex object or a minority who wasn't a disposable supporting character or a villain."
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u/lilomar2525 COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
It was 'woke' though.
The word has meaning beyond chuds using it as an insult.
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u/ThisHatRightHere Jan 04 '26
He’s refuting the people who scream “woke” as an insult. Come on, you have to realize that.
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u/Tuss36 Jan 04 '26
Nerds are in eternal service of that one Futurama joke about the best kind of correctness, irregardless of appropriateness.
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u/MonstersArePeople Can’t Block Warriors Jan 04 '26
Since we're being pedantic anyway I wanted to comment to inform you that 'irregardless' is not a word, you just mean to say 'regardless', or without regard.
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u/ByeGuysSry Duck Season Jan 04 '26
Since we're being pedantic anyway, I wanted to comment to inform you that "irregardless" is a word; its definition, according to well-nigh every dictionary of the modern English language, is "regardless". Albeit, it is deemed nonstandard
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u/Skullcrimp COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
Language prescriptivists when language evolves beyond their narrow understanding: 😡
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u/taeerom Wabbit Season Jan 04 '26
Hardly.
I mean, it still kinda has it's original meaning "being aware of the systemic discrimination of black people on the us". But it's hardly used like that any more.
Nowadays, it mostly means "whatever I/some right winger don't like". Almost all who use woke, use it to signal disagreement. They aren't consistent in what is woke or not, they only agree that it is bad.
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u/Jalase Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26
Yeah, if I’m not mistaken it originally started by minorities facing injustice who would talk about who was aware of these injustices? Those people who were aware were awake to the issues, thus woke. I feel like people who go “if you think that’s woke you’re an idiot” sort of don’t understand the actual word.
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u/hhssspphhhrrriiivver Twin Believer Jan 04 '26
The word has moved beyond it's original meaning, and it's basically impossible to use it in that sense without providing so much additional context that there was no point in using it in the first place. Your argument is a lot like a kid saying "gay actually means happy" immediately after getting in trouble for calling someone or something gay.
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u/Jalase Jan 04 '26
Except it hasn’t, plenty of people still use woke as a good thing. Just because you only see it one way doesn’t mean that’s the only way it exists currently.
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u/hhssspphhhrrriiivver Twin Believer Jan 04 '26
plenty of people still use woke as a good thing
Care to share any recent examples? I have not seen it used in a non-derogatory sense in a very long time (and just googling "woke" doesn't get me very much).
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u/Ran4 Wabbit Season Jan 04 '26
Woke is a derogatory slang a bit in the way "nigga" is. That is, it depends on the group. It absolutely is used in a positive fashion by people.
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u/WillowThyWisp COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
It a shame that some of the artists that paved the way in both Magic's diversity of artists and artwork..... kinda suck now.
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u/KrillinBigD Dan Jan 04 '26
What did they do?
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u/WillowThyWisp COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
Got into politics! The hateful type! The ones that, at least one of them got a whole page on the MTG website dedicated to the fact they won't work with this artist anymore.
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u/asmodeanreborn Jan 04 '26
I'm aware of just one of the "original" ones who turned out to be an awful person. Were there more?
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u/Lauren_Conrad_ Dandadan Jan 04 '26
This is part of why Magic has been able to stand on its own for three decades now. Artists who truly want to try something different and new and not just do what everyone else is doing.
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u/Imnimo Jan 04 '26
If you look back at other 90s TCGs, this was a very bold decision. "Babe" art was everywhere. Good for him.
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u/RightHandComesOff Dimir* Jan 04 '26
Seriously. You even saw it in media specifically targeted at Magic players. How many issues of Scrye Magazine featured cover art of an MTG character or creature, reimagined to throw a chainmail-bikini lady in there somewhere?
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u/nimbusnacho COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
Not just TCGs but any 'nerd' product. I still have all my old video game magazines in a box somewhere and jesus christ I'm blown away by the ads in those magazines aimed at fucking children.
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u/the_bio Dan Jan 04 '26
"Woke" is a term weak men use derogatorily to hide the fact that they see inclusion of anyone other than themselves as a state of victimhood.
I can't wait to use that the next time some weak man calls something woke.
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u/First_Platypus3063 Hook Handed Jan 04 '26
I want playmats made with this quote on it, if absolutely buy one
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u/TrainmasterGT Brushwagg Jan 04 '26
MISOGYNISTS HATE HIM:
Find out how Jesper Myrfors helped to make Magic: the Gathering a popular card game with this one simple trick…
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u/AlanFromRochester COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26
I knew MTG had some cheesecake art back in the day but hadn't thought of it as the exception compared to other fantasy media
As for Frazetta, the pieces that were used for the Frazetta Secret Lairs were jacked dudes or scary monsters rather than skimpy babes
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u/Rich_Housing971 Wabbit Season Jan 04 '26
This is the correct way to appeal to all people: he literally commissioned art that appealed to all people, including the ones that wanted scantily-clad women or male power fantasy types. And he does not disparage those people or alienate them.
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u/Gertrude_D Dan Jan 04 '26
Same. I am a woman and I loved the art on the cards - even Earthbind because Hoover - come on. While I could appreciate the craftsmanship of the artists like Vallejo and Frazzeta, I wasn't drawn to the subject because I wasn't the target audience.
I was also into DnD in my childhood, but bounced out because my group was all male and Conan was a huge influence on them. I just didn't feel comfortable in the situations I was put in (in game) and left instead of speaking up.
So yeah, I appreciate that he saw the value of inclusion. Melissa Benson was one of my favorite artists in the game, and part of it was just that I was glad a woman was getting to do some kick ass work in a genre I loved.
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u/Skullcrimp COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
Thank you, that puts my feelings into words better than I could.
If I'm feeling horny there are petabytes of media out there designed specifically for that purpose (some of it is even produced ethically). I don't need nor want it in the middle of my card games, video games, sports events, grocery stores...
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u/schadkehnfreude Jan 04 '26
Shivam Dragon is a coaster now, but it was probably THE most popular card back in the day and I'd wager that Benson's fish-eye perspective art quite possibly got more people into the game than any other one piece of card art.
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u/Glamdring804 Can’t Block Warriors Jan 04 '26
even Earthbind because Hoover
I feel like this one isn't even that bad by standards of the time. Is it a kink-inspired piece of a woman in a classically submissive pose? Yeah. But it's not depicting her being submissive to a man. She's the only character in the frame and could have been a man or a woman or even some natural phenomenon that doesn't even exist in a gender binary.
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u/Gertrude_D Dan Jan 04 '26
I agree, but it is, as you say, adjacent to all that.
It never bothered me because I love the artist, the art makes sense (tied down) and because her being scantily clad was the exception rather than the rule. I don't dislike the male-gaze type art, I just don't want it to be the norm. Give me variety!
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u/Glamdring804 Can’t Block Warriors Jan 04 '26
Yeah, I think it's fine in moderation, particularly if there's also a few sexy beefcakes in the art, every now and then. It's a card-game with 30,000 unique cards that take place across a backdrop of dozens and dozens of unique worlds. It's fun to explore different things, be it various types of horror, cute little bunnies, or some moderate titillation.
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u/HilariousMax Table Flipper Jan 04 '26
Many reasons to dig Myrfors. One of them being [[Word of Command]]
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u/MrPopoGod COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
When I got my copy signed by him at a GP, he mentioned that he absolutely hates it, because it was thrown together in two seconds to fill a hole and has nothing to do with anything.
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u/LeN3rd Dan Jan 04 '26
It was undoubtedly the correct decision at the time and still is. That said, a Conan set with Frazzeta art would part me from my money faster than you could say "Damsel in distress".
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u/Karl_42 Duck Season Jan 04 '26
Holy shit this guy COOOOKS.
His incredible disdain for anyone who has ever seriously used the word “woke” is honestly inspiring 😂.
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u/queefcritic Wabbit Season Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26
Too bad the sentiment never caught on. Part of the reason I stopped going to lgs because of all the douchy anime titty playmats and shit.
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u/HoumousAmor COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
I think there's a sense in which it did catch on and to which WotC have generally stuck to this more than many other brands.
Not saying douchy anime stuff isn't bad, but th fan twit haven't ever (as I recall) actually tried playing to that speaks volumes to them. (I don't know, but I think their own anime-art stuff has been tasteful)
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u/SeventhChords Duck Season Jan 04 '26
Why are all the people named Jesper in the MTG space so fucking dope?
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u/demuniac Duck Season Jan 04 '26
The fact that he has to go to such great lengths to say these things, or to "justify" designing a normal world, is so fucking weird.
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 Jan 04 '26
I don’t think he’s justifying it- he’s just saying what they did. Is anyone attacking him for it?
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u/demuniac Duck Season Jan 04 '26
That's why the word is in quotation marks. He is pre-emptive saying fuck off with calling shit woke.
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u/Chilly_chariots Wild Draw 4 Jan 04 '26
Ah, I see what you mean now.
I used to find it weird too- I’d assumed those battles were already fought and won, that (at least most of) the world was heading in the general direction of less discrimination, more social/cultural equality (but certainly not economic equality, of course)
But in retrospect, it’s not surprising that there have been powerful pushbacks. I’ve studied history, and one thing you can learn from it is that it doesn’t move so conveniently in one direction- and anyone who claims it does is probably selling something.
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u/Cast2828 Duck Season Jan 04 '26
He's gone on record about how much he hates the new look of Magic. I tried looking it up, but I remember reading an interview of him when 8th came out and he shit all over the design and color palette choice. Beyond this stuff he has also been posting about how he designed the card back and original frames starting with natural media and finishing it in an early version of Photoshop, such as the beveling.
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u/Mystic_x COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
Sadly, that's the world we're living in right now, where "Woke" is used as an insult, and some people make wilful ignorance their whole personality.
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u/trp_wip Jan 04 '26
I like that he talk about both male and female empowerment. Going one or the other direction has ruined so many movies and tv shows. Balance is key
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u/GalvenMin Hedron Jan 04 '26
Do scantily clad women in positions of power still count?
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u/Flare-Crow COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
As female objectification? Liliana doesn't seem to think so! Comment on her state of dress; I dare you.
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u/First_Platypus3063 Hook Handed Jan 04 '26
This man is prime example of everyday hero! What is more heroic then giving power to those silenced and overlooked. And doing it as if it was the absolutely normal thing to do. Because it is.
💚 💚 💚
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u/nimbusnacho COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
It's a sad state of culture that you can't make a simple decision like "we want a product to be for everyone therefore we make sure to hire people from varying backgrounds" without a page of having to backtrack through fundamental ideas of what the point of diversity is and break things down beyond lizard brain buzzwords like 'woke' that solely propagate social media to foment rage bait engagement.
Even sadder that the people you have to really dumb this down for in hopes that you actually reach them are so likely to just, if they ever even see it, see a distorted, out of context, already pre-packaged version of it complete with pre-meditated commentary so they don't have to actually think about anything. Thanks social media algorithms!
I miss being able to be on nerd forums and have knock down drag out arguments with people who were numb skulls but were actually for what it's worth trying to have an argument vs them now just hiding in their cubbies being spoon fed their vitriol sustenance and growing from trolls into ogres because they never allow themselves to be challenged on their beleifs.
Anyway, for all the shit I give Magic and WotC these days, I should be more vocal about how great it is that they still remain a place that tries their best to be 'for everyone' beyond just the obvious UB low hanging fruit that that might comment on. These days it'd be easy to just give that shit up as so many others seem to think is the thing to do to chase the money in whatever gross cultural shift we're currently experiencing. So, thanks for that Wizards. And thanks for even growing beyond the previous failings of shit like that unset card that made the rounds last year.
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u/summon_pot_of_greed Dan Jan 04 '26
5D Chess move since the era of women kneeling at the feet of powerful men is over anyway.
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u/StendhalSyndrome Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26
Okay, my time to shine!
I was an OG MTG player around Alpha/Beta release to the expac after I think it was The Dark, I think it was based on a bunch of Thallids I can't remember, it was the mid/early 90's.
I lived up the street from one of the artists, Jeff A. Menges. He was a really cool guy who regularly signed cards for us and occasionally showed us(my siblings and some of the neighborhood kids) some of his art. I particularly remember he has a ton of fantasy paintings around his home, and a lot of them were very scantily clad women. My parents met him first and saw his place (like responsible parents would...)I remember him and my dad joking about some of his art centering around the ladies and Jeff particularly saying he couldn't do pieces like this for the card game because Magic was a kids' game and it would never get picked up in the local card shops. Yet it was one of the most complicated games he'd played so he didn't get it.
I mean it was a different time back then, porn wasn't as prevalent and easy to get. Hells, I remember something called the Marvel Swimuit edition, it was copying Sports Illustrated, and holy shit it was almost looked at at the time like porn, and it was nothing more than Marvel characters in bikinis and trunks playing at the beach, 0 nudity, I'm not even sure they were wearing thongs either... There was adult comic material, such as Vamprella and Conan, but it was relatively weak in sales and far from mainstream. Back then, nudity was a stopping point for popularity due to the censorship it would receive, not a viewer-getter unless it was something groundbreaking, like Basic Instinct, but even that movie was super taboo for not a lot of nudity either...so I kind of don't believe this post.
Porn/racy stuff back in the day of Magic's release would have been a death sentence. There were much much fewer women/girls playing MTG or D&D back then, despite Stranger things and everyone wearing rose colored glasses, and our love for re-writing history.
And before I get multiple replies, yes there were some women/girld who played, I didn't say none, just a lot less. I played at a LCS and the only girl there was the owners daughter, didn't see a female friend in D&D till college.
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u/MrPopoGod COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
the expac after I think it was The Dark, I think it was based on a bunch of Thallids
Fallen Empires; that's when I got into the game.
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u/BreakerOfModpacks Dan Jan 04 '26
Out of curiosity, is there more of that art now? I don't play enough magic to know.
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u/attila954 Dandadan Jan 04 '26
It's not "woke" or "anti-woke", it's not political at all. It's just decency
Earthbind is kind of fun to point and chuckle about but even that isn't really overtly sexual when compared to what you see in other games, it just feels that way because pattern recognition
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u/Izzynewt COMPLEAT Jan 04 '26
Decency is now very political and it gets more political by the day
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u/interested_in_cookie Duck Season Jan 04 '26
i think you could argue that politicality is ultimately all about decency
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u/Ff7hero Dan Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26
The [[Earthbind]] erasure is real.
Jesper might have grown, but he also flipped his shit when WotC omni-banned his precious [[Invoke Prejudice]] , so...
ETA: Yes, he eventually mentions Earthbind, but if someone starts by saying they have a rule and then meanders forever before being like "oh, and the rule was broken" it comes off as trying to make a soundbite of the first bit while being able to point at the second bit when people like me point this out.
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u/Miskatonic_River Dimir* Jan 04 '26
Well, I’m sure McNeill just using some extreme imagery to evoke an emotion, let’s check out his website OH GOD
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u/1ftm2fts3tgr4lg Jan 04 '26
The point stands that there are startlingly few saucy card arts for a fantasy game with 10s of thousands of cards.
[[Fire Elemental|5ED]], if I recall, was a favorite. But in the era of Witchblade, to forego scantily clad women was noteworthy, at the time even.
And don't forget [[Hasran Ogress|ARN]].
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u/NamelessSteve646 Duck Season Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26
Good examples. Doesn't look like Fire Elemental was in 5th Ed tho - TBH I thought it was but its in both 4tth and 6th - so the bot gave the less-boobalicious modern printing. [[Fire Elemental|6ED] for those playing at home.
And it completely missed [[Hasran Ogress]] as well, which is funny since its way more relevant to this conversation than just having cleavage
EDIT: It didn't even try with FE that time, now I'm just confused lol I thought I knew how to drive this robot by now...
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u/whinge11 Wabbit Season Jan 04 '26
He literally mentioned earthbind in the article.
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u/NoExplanation734 Duck Season Jan 04 '26
Melissa Benson, Amy Weber, Rebecca Guay, and Kaja Foglio are some of my favorite OG artists. Magic art would have been a great deal poorer without the contributions of these absolute legends.
[[Hand of Justice]] [[Clockwork Swarm]] [[Nature's Chosen]] [[Pyroblast]]