Blanchitsu! (bless you)

John Blanche died.

I first encountered him in Steve Jackson's Sorcery! books.

Now that's a wizard!

His art had the rubbery weirdness of someone like Erol Otus, but went beyond with a sort of feverish decadence, and a (un)healthy gob of punk. You could feel Blanche's work crawl and writhe, and probably spit, too.

Much will be written in the next few days about Blanche and his art by better writers than I, so here's a personal story instead.

I fell into the Games Workshop Hobby™ hard when I was about nine or ten, but lacking access to more than HeroQuest and White Dwarf, my engagement consisted mostly of drawing a lot of orcs and orks. For some mad reason, when I was eleven I decided to send some of those pictures in to White Dwarf. I have no idea what I was expecting. Such hubris!

They were not good pictures -- I was eleven! -- but a few days later I got a postcard with this painting on it:

And on the back, a message from John Blanche. Not much, just a few words of vague encouragement. Did he mean it? Who knows? But it meant a lot to me then -- and still does -- that he took the time to do that for an eleven year old fan.

Thanks John.