Wednesday 26 August 2020

A Woeful Picture: The Shadow by Jeff Butler (?), Reviewed

There is a prima facie case to be made that the Shadow is an interesting, even frightening, monster. A non-corporeal entity comprised only of darkness; something that was once a person but which has been cursed to spend eternity as a literal shade of what it once was, and to spread that curse as far and wide as it can. You can spin it into something akin to a vampire, or something akin to a zombie plague, or really anything in between. 

You can even get a little excited about how you could give effect in your campaign to the slightly cornball antics suggested by this:

[S]hadows do not hoard treasure. In fact, such earthly baubles only help to remind [them] of their former lives. Instead, the furious undead throw all the treasure they find away, in the same location (often at the bottom of a well or deep pit) where it is out of sight...

Or this:

[S]hadows appear to have been magically created, perhaps as part of some ancient curse...When victims [of Shadows' attacks] can no longer resist...the curse is activated and the majority of the character's essence is shifted to the Negative Material Plane. Only a shadow of their former self remains on the Prime Material Plane, and the transformation always renders the victim both terribly insane and undeniably evil... Fortunately, shadows rarely leave their lairs, and a bold party wishing to rescue a lost fighter or wizard should have plenty of time to venture forth and recover their friend...

But then your eyes stray upwards to the accompanying art, and there the excitement ends:


Is this the worst piece of D&D art ever drawn? It is possible. Admittedly the poor execution is really not helped by the design of the 2nd edition Monstrous Manual, which did not provide for the possibility of backgrounds for the pictures - just a stark autopsy-table kind of whiteness entirely unsuited to presenting the creatures in a bestiary. But even granted that, why does the withered and sanity-blasted undead remnant of a once living human being, now existing only in darkness, look like it has just stepped out of Gold's Gym having downed a nice whey protein shake after a particularly vigorous chest-and-arms night? Why is he all spiky and clawed? Where does it say in the text of the entry that as well as shifting the victim to the Negative Material Plane, the curse also turns them into a Warhammer Orc? (Sorry, 'Orruk'.) Above all, why does it look as though Jeff Butler (for I assume it is he), tasked with drawing an illustration for the Shadow entry, just took a reject from his scrap paper pile for some other entry (Orog? Ogrillon?) and filled it in in silhouette with a black felt-tip pen? 

One can picture him at his desk, 4pm on a Friday afternoon, colleagues waiting downstairs to head off down the boozer, hastily scribbling, perhaps with the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth like a 6 year old doing some colouring-in. "Hold on a sec, guys, I've just got to finish off this last one for Zeb!"

The picture is neither scary, not interesting, and it does not evoke a reaction except for mild derision. Good bestiary art makes you want to use the monster in your game. This image provides you with no inspiration for how to do so, and it is impossible, looking at it, to envisage it doing anything much at all. It's an ugly black thing with claws. And that is all. 

0 becs des corbins. 

15 comments:

  1. Basically all the non-Diterlizzi art in the 2e manual is either pretty bad, or suffers by comparison.

    This shadow would have at least been fun. https://diterlizzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/2014_Shadow.jpg

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    1. I love some of those old Diterlizzi sketches. There's a great one of a pit fiend around somewhere.

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  2. On the other hand, I think the Shadow illustration in 5e is probably the best in the Monster Manual: https://media-waterdeep.cursecdn.com/avatars/thumbnails/0/155/1000/1000/636252758977032019.jpeg

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  3. With the three fingers and spikes, it always reminded me of the hordling in the MM2. But yes, lackluster art here, and for many monsters in 2E.

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    1. Interesting - will have to have another look at the MM2.

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  4. I get the impression Butler was trying to do something more interesting than a blurry silouette, but severely overcompensated. The mouth is the worst part imo.

    Someday I would like to reinvent the shadow monster as the manifestation of the Jungian shadow, but I haven't thought of a good way to do that. Is that pretentious?

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    1. I'm afraid that is very pretentious. Don't let that stop you from doing it though. Everything that is now grand was once pretentious.

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    2. It is pretentious but a cool idea all the same. Don't let it stop you!

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    3. Also, I am not a massive Tool fan, but "46+2" is a real guilty pleasure of mine.

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  5. Gotta agree. The 2e MM has some of the best writing and worst art in of any edition's core MM. :/

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    1. The writing can be corny as anything but I do love it.

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  6. The image literally could have been a black void with eyes and it would have been more effective. Might have cost an extra $0.01 in ink that way though.

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    1. Yeah - as somebody mentioned above it's almost as though he was desparately trying to do something better than that, but failing.

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