Believe it or not, Magic: The Gathering — the first and still bestselling collectible card game — is about to turn 20 years old. To celebrate, Jeff A. Menges — one of the original artists for the game's beautiful cards — decided to drum up interest in a book of brand-new art created by the group of artists who banded together to decorate the first year's worth of cards starting two decades back. Full Steam Press launched a Kickstarter to publish this book on February 26, and the drive has already raked in more than double its original goal of $32,000.
The drive for The Gathering, as the book is titled, wraps up on March 28, and it's bound to cross a number of stretch goals between now and the finish, adding even more benefits to the backers. I took the chance to interview artist Pete Venters about the project.
Pete Venters: A little background: While the idea of getting all the original Magic artists back together for a project had certainly been talked about by many of us over the years, it was Jeff A. Menges who took the iniative to track everyone down. He collected everyone in a Facebook private group to pitch to us the idea of an art book to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Magic: The Gathering. One of the things he really wanted, and what fired up everyone, was that the book would feature a brand-new painting from each of the contributing artists.
Jeff's ensuring the book is laid out, printed and delivered in a timely fashion. I'm running the Facebook and Kickstarter pages, which is more of a full-time job than people might imagine.
Matt Forbeck: How did you manage to get permission from Wizards of the Coast for this book?
PV: We'd started thinking about the art book as something where Magic was recognized as part of our collective past but wasn't directly addressed as we didn't want to step on Wizards' copyright "toes." But eventually we reached a point where we said "Let's just run it past Wizards and see if they're good with this." They were.
They've actually been remarkably supportive and all we had to do was ensure they had some oversight. After all, we're playing in their sandbox.
MF: How did you select the artists? Was there anyone who wasn't able to join you?
PV: Jeff set the parameters. There were some that wanted it to just be the Alpha artists and there were those, like me, who wanted to expand the list out to Ice Age, that was released in mid '95. It was decided that the artists would be selected from those who were working within the first year of the game, so an artist had to have a card in print by the end of '94 to qualify.
It was hard having a cut-off, but there had to be a line in the sand somewhere. And since the book was for Magic's 20th anniversary, taking an artist selection that was almost a snapshot of those working in Magic by the end of 93 seemed to make sense. We tried to contact everyone. Most were very enthusiastic, a couple weren't interested and unfortunately at least one couldn't take part due to poor health.
MF: Who was the hardest artist to track down?
PV: Well, I think there may still be a couple we could never find, but the hardest artist to track down — who we did eventually find — was none other than Anson Maddocks, one of the major contributors to the first year of Magic. He'd moved to another town, barely used email, and the only phone number any of us had for him was an old one! We caught up with him by sheer luck.
MF: Is there any chance for backers to choose to take delivery at Gen Con instead?
PV: We're shooting for a September release so it's unlikely. However, if we manage to run ahead of schedule we'll definitely consider it. One of our big goals with this Kickstarter is to not disappoint people with unfulfilled promises, so we won't commit to it unless we know we can do it.
MF: What would be the best event to go to if you wanted to collect signatures in your book?
PV: The artists are so spread out across the country that it's hard to say. September seems so far away! However, if I was a betting man, I'd put money on something happening somewhere in Seattle as we have a very high number of Magic artists in the area, which is not surprising since this is also home to Wizards of the Coast.
MF: The Kickstarter has done well so far, blasting past all sorts of goals. Is there any chance for a sequel book, one that could include later Magic artists?
PV: It's not impossible, but one of the things about that very early group of artists was that they all started before the game was big and all lived through the bizarre times of its exponential growth where we each went from being just another freelance artist to being the peeps with huge autograph lines. That sudden stardom was a shared experience and there's still a bond there, a little community of artists who lived through the craziest of times. So, while a book featuring later artists is not out of the question, I think there may be more chance of other projects featuring this old guard. But let's get The Gathering out the door first!
Disclaimer: I'm friends with a number of the artists who worked on this book, and I just completed writing a year's worth of Magic: The Gathering comics for IDW.
