Dave Trampier, artist for TSR during the 1st ed AD&D era, died on March 24th. If you're a long time gamer, you would recognize his work from the original AD&D Player's Handbook cover where a party of adventurers steal the gem eyes of a giant idol and numerous iconic Monster Manual pieces such as the goblin, lizard man and were-rat. Trampier was also responsible for the beautifully marker illustrated Wormy comic in Dragon magazine which was unfortunately cut short. Word is that Trampier had a complete falling out with TSR, returned his final checks uncashed and refused to have anything more to do with TSR or, later, Wizards of the Coast. He spent the last couple decades driving a cab in Illinois and was recently playing with the idea of releasing a collection of the comics but died before it went anywhere.
Trampier was aware of online copies of his Wormy comics but had no problem with it. He held the sole rights to the comic so if he said they were fine to post online, so be it. If you want to read a great bit of old school gaming comics that will end all too soon and forever unresolved, here are the (in)complete Wormy archives.
Edited, Mar 29th 2014 8:17pm by Jophiel