RIP John Blanche (1948-2026)

https://officialfightingfantasy.blogspot.com/2026/06/john-blanche-1948-2026.html

#vintagefantasyart #fantasyart #fantasyillustration #johnblanche #gamesworkshop #fightingfantasy #gamebooks #sorcery #stevejacksonssorcery #livresdontvousetesleheros #LDVELH #livresjeu

RIP John Blanche (1948-2026)

officialfightingfantasy.blogspot.com/2026/06/john...

#johnblanche #gamesworkshop #fightingfantasy #gamebooks #sorcery #stevejacksonssorcery
#livresdontvousetesleheros #LDVELH #livresjeu #gamebooks #defisfantastiques

Very sad to see the news that the artist John Blanche has died. When I was working on my art A-level he kindly invited me to visit his studio at Games Workshop in Nottingham, generous with his time, knowledgeable and passionate about art. His miniature figures conversions were stunning and it was wonderful to see some of the paintings I knew so well from White Dwarf magazine in all their (surprisingly small) glory. He was disparaging about the illustrations he had done for Steve Jackson's Sorcery! gamebooks (hurriedly produced for little pay) but I loved them.

https://www.ontabletop.com/warhammer-40k/renowned-warhammer-artist-john-blanche-passes-away/

#Art #Miniatures #Warhammer #WhiteDwarf #FightingFantasy

I've been playing through The Warlock of Firetop Mountain slowly since last week. It's rightfully a classic gamebook but wasn't without frustrations. I defeated the warlock but didn't leave with all the treasure because I was missing two keys.

#FightingFantasy

Author: Marc Gascoigne (distilling works by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone)

Quick Review

The world of Fighting Fantasy owes much of its makeup to Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons, so this book outlining the lore behind the game books is decidedly derivative. For readers of the game books, there is added context offered here, but for anyone not already invested in the world the standard fantasy tropes and well-structured guidebook won’t offer enough to draw them in.

⭐⭐⭐

On BookWyrm

Description

No adventurer should be without this essential guide.  Titan contains everything you need to know, covering the turbulent history of the world, from its creation and early civilisations – through the devastating War of the Wizards – to the present-day wilderness and anarchy where the delicate balance between Good and Chaos could at any moment be overturned…

I had a few little bits of interest to share this week and had Godzilla creep into my attention often.

A while back scrobbling music broke with Google’s Now Playing app. That meant I couldn’t capture the music playing in my environment to Last.fm if it wasn’t playing from one of my own devices.

This set of instructions cobbles together a way to get that functionality back. It also adds some interesting location-based data.

In my Free Comic Book Day haul was a leftover free Halloween issue of Godzilla vs Fantastic Four. It was just as ridiculous as I would expect of this mashup of two of my favourites. I read it while eating lunch today and enjoyed the very silly moments, such as both Godzilla and King Ghidorah gaining Silver Surfer powers.

The last of our orchid flowers that started blooming in November fell just last week, but our office orchid already has the first of a new batch open this morning.

I started a playthrough of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain during my lunch. I’d been thinking of the old Fighting Fantasy books I had when I was a kid and had fun revisiting this classic. There’s more of the mountain to explore and maybe I’ll get to that this weekend.

I started a playthrough of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain during my lunch. I'd been thinking of the old Fighting Fantasy books I had when I was a kid and had fun revisiting this classic. There's more of the mountain to explore and maybe I'll get to that this weekend.

#FightingFantasy