The release of the Fiend Folio Appendix (1992) felt like a victory for reasons I can’t quite explain. I think, maybe, because on some level we realized that the original Fiend Folio was seen as an unpopular 1E D&D book because it didn’t get an orange spine reprint (or perhaps it was somehow forbidden, like the earliest editions of Deities & Demigods, with the Cthulhu and Elric material?). Perhaps all that gory Russ Nicholson art made it totemic of the aspects of 1E that were now, thanks to the angry moms, deemed unseemly? I don’t remember and even if I did, I am not sure it would make real sense.

Whatever the reason, the Fiend Folio was back. This appendix collected, give or take, all the monsters from the original folio that had not already been Compendiumified (grell, for instance, were in the Greyhawk appendix). There are some that, flipping through, seem new, mostly filler like the darter, a type of lizard, or the scathe, a kind of evil icy gliding humanoid amphibian? I dunno man, Fiend Folio was always for weirdos, I’m OK with it, plus the illustration is by Steve Bisette. The rest of the art is by the Tom Baxa and Mark Nelson tag team, and just about all of it is tightly done. Nelson seems particularly on his game. That hellcat? The retriever? A+.

The Easley cover is very nice, probably the brightest and most colorful of the lot (which is maybe ironic, considering how much heavy black ink is inside the original Folio, but the original Emmanuel cover is pretty colorful now that I’m thinking about it). I believe the pale fellow is a fog giant, in the middle is the kamadan and the right is a xill. Mindbogglingly: there is no page or attributes for the kamadan inside! How do you mess that up?!