The fourth edition of the Call of Cthulhu rules, the first I owned, has a bunch of color plates tipped into the regular pages. They are mostly drawn from color plates that Games Workshop stuck into its own publication of the third edition rules — Chaosium apparently liked that, and did the same for some of their books for a while. Anyway, most of those plates featured art by English painter Les Edwards. Oddly, none of these really related to the Cthulhu Mythos, a fact that might have made them (and the world of the Call of Cthulhu RPG) all the more beguiling. It was my first real encounter with Edwards’ work (I wouldn’t learn he did the HeroQuest cover art until much later) and they pretty much made me a fan for life.

Of course, that meant I’d be on the hunt for Blood & Iron (1989), one of two art books Games Workshop produced in the ’80s (the other, a collab between Ian Miller and John Blanche called Ratspike, is still very much on my want-list, but is pretty universally priced outside my budget). I found it recently for a reasonable price (no easy task) and while it may be the mustiest book I currently own, it was well worth it to get such a concentrated dose of Edwards’ work.

He’s gnarly, man. All bug-eyes and too-wide grins and gore galore. Some of his fantasy stuff is kind of hilarious (his covers for Fighting Fantasy are pure, glorious cheese) and it’s is cool to see the process essay for the gross AF cover of The Lost and the Damned, but his horror work is really where it’s at for me. It’s so metal (to the point that, unsurprisingly, a number of his paintings were used as album covers). Even his pin-up paintings, which routinely feature big boobs and improbable poses, still come off as appealing somehow — that black idol is so good! I don’t really care about the titular high priestess, but she doesn’t bug me the way a lot of other artists pin-up work makes my eyes roll (see Chris Achilleos, tomorrow).

Anyway, a real wonderful time capsule of Edwards’ work. Oh! The cover. I gotta mention the cover — it’s the second version of the cover of a Graham Masterton novel called The Devils of D-Day (1978) which was used to replace Edwards’ earlier cover painting. It’s a novel about a demonic tank? I dunno. But the first cover! That was re-used for the Metallica single Jump in the Fire. One of my favorite bits of fantasy/metal cross-over trivia.