I’d hoped that my gushing adulation for the work of Ian Miller a few months ago would inspire my Corehammer brethren to open up expand upon their own personal favourite art pieces and talents from the world of fantasy art. Sadly that has not happened, so unfortunately for you dear reader, you will have to endure another of my clumsy analysis of a cherished work. This time I invite you to peel back the veil of time and take a fresh look at the cover for Joe Dever’s Cauldron Of Fear….

Much like my esteemed colleague David Ager, you may have come to appreciate that my entries here are heavily laced with nostalgia and a deep yearning for the simplicity of youth. The things I still enjoy today are by and large the same things that gave me shelter and escape in the distant past, whether that be a song, a hidden place, toy soldiers, comic books, whatever. They provide me with a sense of comfort and place that might otherwise have languished in the dusty and forgotten corridors of my mind.

When Christmas and birthdays rolled around in the old Bean homestead, being a bookish oddball with niche tastes inevitably meant family did not know what to get me thus I became the twice annual recipient of the WH Smiths book voucher. To many this may have been a thoughtless gift but for a precocious tyke like myself, well it was absolutely perfect, vouchers that could ONLY be spent on books? Ideal!

I saved a lot of these vouchers up and when I did get to go into town I’d usually have squirreled enough away for a couple of books. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, my tomes of choice during the pre-pube years were Jackson and Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy Series. One Saturday in January in 1985, I was hauled into Margate to traipse around the sales with my mother. Yeah I had to lug all her crap around but the bonus was of course getting to spend some cherished time in WH Smiths and spend my hoarded tokens. Imagine my disappointment and horror then when I discovered that I already owned all the available FF titles on the shelves!!!! What was I to do? Buy stationary? Fuck that noise. With my dreams in tatters and the remainder of the Christmas Holidays stretching out before me like an unrelenting sea of abject tedium my eyes frantically scanned the shelves for something, ANYTHING that would ease the bitter sting of disappointment. My salvation came when I spied a title I’d overlooked during my initial rummage through the gamebook section simply because it didn’t have the lurid green spine that was synonymous with the FF titles. ‘Lone Wolf in the Cauldron Of Fear’ read the words on the spine…sounded cool and weird so I plucked it from the shelf, turning it so I could have a proper look at the cover. And that was that…

The sight that greeted me was this haunting front cover image created by artist Fred Gambino. Now context is important here and we should bare in mind this was 1986 and plastered across upon the jacket for a book aimed at children in WH Smiths. Can you imagine seeing something so grim and bloody handed on the front of a children’s book in 2014? Do kids even read books anymore? I don’t know, but that front cover with it’s unnerving pyramid composition, unrecognisable howling monsters, outnumbered heroes and oppressive use of colour troubled me in exactly the same way that the poster for Sepulturas ‘Beneath The Remains’ in Funhouse Records would a few years later.

I can distinctly remember staring at the cover of Cauldron Of Fear for ages in the shop as though mesmerised. All the Fighting Fantasy books had monsters and villains grimacing at the reader from the front cover, that was nowt fresh but the perspective always made you feel like the creature was coming at you, like YOU had a choice in how the encounter might go down. The perspective offered on the cover of Cauldron Of Fear seemed different to me, as though I was peering through a window at a scene unravelling beyond my control and was baring mute witness to the hopeless slaughter of (what I assumed to be) the good guys. Look at that image, none of the lads in armour there are having a good time. One dude has a fucking sword coming OUT of his chest, implying that the defenders are surrounded by evil on all sides and not just getting battered from the right hand side of the page. None of the enemy assailants were recognisable to me either. Clearly not Orcs or goblins, the traditional fantasy bad guy foot soldiers. The guy with the ball and chain kind of looks like an old Chaos Beastman  but I’ve no clue as to the origin or species of the guys with the coloured hair, other than that they look fucking insane. Then there’s the grim reaper hanging around in the mid-right of the picture. What. If recollection serves me I don’t even think this scene takes place in the book? Inconsistencies aside, there is something so hopeless and horrible about this painting that it has stayed with me for years just like that Ian Miller painting I was harping on about last year. I lost my original copy of this book, along with a number of other much missed items (including my will to live and sense of perspective) when I moved to Sheffield to start an ill advised straight edge hardcore band back in 1995 (BloodXGreen for those who keep track of that sort of thing).

I eventually came across another copy of this book in a used bookstore in Edinburgh a few years ago, not far from the excellent independent game store Black Lion. I’d seen other versions of the Cauldron Of Fear but those publications had a different cover and I believe were released in different countries or at later points and it just wasn’t the same feeling. When I unearthed this version again I had one of those weird  stomach curdling feelings that primordial nostalgia tends to stir in a soul, like when Father Merrin turns up that statue of Pazuza during the prologue of The Exorcist (though that is a whole different adolescent nightmare that I’m still not ready to talk about just yet).

Looking at the book again through adult eyes afforded me the opportunity to analyse it a little deeper. Turns out Fred Gambino only ever provided this one cover for the Lone Wolf series which is not only disappointing to me but also seems curious considering how  affecting it was. In comparison to the other covers in the series which had an almost cartoon aesthetic, Fred’s work here definitely stands out amongst the crowd in terms of both content and execution with it’s darker more realistic depiction of a desperate conflict.  One wonders if perhaps the audience didn’t respond favourably to it? I checked out some of Fred Gambino’s more recent work on his website to see if it tapped a similar vein and it does not. He’s really refined the realistic style he’s hinting at on Cauldron Of Fear and his technique and results are awesome,and  kind of reminds me of Stephen Youll’s stuff, but it’s all very clean. Plenty of drama and mood but nothing that makes me feel weird like Cauldron Of Fear did. Maybe it’s simply because I’m just not a sensitive eight year old anymore. Fred is still very active in the realm of Sci-Fi & fantasy art and design. Check out some of his current work HERE

On a related note I am working on a couple of articles (including a play through of Cauldron Of Fear) delving deeply into the fascinating world of Magnamund that Joe Dever created in which to set his novels and games.  In my humble opinion Joe is one of gamings genuine Hall Of Famers, a true creative titan of the community who simply does not get the props he deserves and it is remiss of us here at Corehammer not to have mentioned him before now. Look out for that to be rectified in the future! In the meantime if you’re interested Joe’s made a number of the Lone Wolf books available as e-books for nowt via THIS WEBSITE. Get involved.