Is One Head Better Than Five?

August 27, 2008

I’ve been working on John Howe’s latest book Forging Dragons (which is awesome by the way!) and I came across something very interesting …

There’s a section in the book about ‘cosmic dragons’, dragons which are found in the world myths of ancient cultures – like Ouroboros, the world-circling serpent, or Apep, enemy of the Egyptian sun-god Re. One of the first paintings in this section is of a beautifully rendered, inky dragon flying through the stars. The combination of colours in this piece, along with the sinuous, shifting shape of the dragon, is simply breathtaking.

Imagine my surprise then when I discover that this is a painting of the famous dragon Tiamat, from the 70s kids cartoon Dungeons & Dragons!

In the cartoon Tiamat is portrayed as a fearsome dragon with a screeching voice and five heads. Her heads exhale fire, ice, bolts of lightning, acid, and streams of poisonous gas, respectively. She lives in the Dragon’s Graveyard and is, of course, evil. And very, very cool!

None of this is present in John’s painting, however – according to Forging Dragons Tiamat is a figure from Sumerian and Babylonian mythology. She existed before creation began and her body is the material from which the universe was made – a dragon of chaos!

Wow, that’s some interesting info. It certainly helps to add a depth of meaning to John’s painting. It’s amazing how fantasy art can sometimes give you a brand new perspective on something you thought you already knew… But the important question is, which is the coolest Tiamat?

Dungeons & Dragons was never beautiful but it was a pretty awesome show, especially when Tiamat showed up. But John’s painting is utterly exquisite, the way he’s used clouds of ink to make the dragon’s body … but his Tiamat doesn’t have FIVE heads!

Arggh! I’ll let you decide!

Tiamats

Which is better?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 10:45 am and is filed under Fantasy and Sci-Fi, John Howe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Is One Head Better Than Five?”

  1. monammichael Says:
    August 28th, 2008 at 8:31 am

    In my opinion, there’s no comparing the two. The cartoon Tiamat is fantastic. It makes me really, really want to watch the cartoon–awesome.

    One of the things I love about John’s illustrations is that they seem to place fantastic events and characters into the world that we know. Next time I look up at the sky on a dark, wispy-cloud night–I’ll think of John’s illustration and wonder–might that be a dragon up there?

  2. Justin Combs Says:
    September 2nd, 2008 at 10:44 am

    Check out John’s thoughts on Comic Con on his site. He’s got some great insight there plus you can find out who unleashes the master’s inner fanboy.

    Here

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Fantasy and Sci-Fi, John Howe