Between John Blanche and Ian Miller, I don’t think they ever DID decide which one was Spike. I’ve held a lot of artists and musicians as influences, inspirations – as formative forces in my Life. But I haven’t MET a lot of my heroes. I’ve always been shy. I don’t chase autographs or put myself forward. I was mortified when my Dad said he’d TALKED to John Christ. ‘ quiet about my fanboyism and my own music when running sound for Robert Lighthouse. I pretend like Jimme Haha’s just some guy, and always gave Ian MacKaye his space.
It must’ve been the late 80s or maybe the early 90s when, obsessed with painting monsters and drawing dragons, saving every penny for Warhammer miniatures and Rifts books, John Blanche came to America running games of Space Hulk, and playtesting a cool new thing called Necromunda. My mom took me to the Games Workshop in College Park and I hung out with plenty of similarly denim-clad long-haired kids. I rolled 2d6 my Stormbolter held back the onslaught of raging Genestealers, and my black and white painted Morbid Legion Terminator squad weren’t the BEST painted force no the table, but they were certainly not the worst. I’m sure I was eventually torn apart by the slavering coven but over the course of the day I eventually worked up the nerve to talk to John Blanche.
It must’ve been the early 90s. I remember talking about getting ready to go to art school.
I don’t want to put TOO much weight on meeting John Blanche. I haven’t thought a lot about him since my gamer days in high school. I used to revisit Ratspike and various Warhammer books pretty regularly for inspiration, but as he warned me, art school frowned on such things – and eventually I met my guitar and my Life took a dramatically different turn.
But John Blanche made it seem POSSIBLE. He was Living and breathing and he said encouraging things and didn’t scoff at my affection for acrylics. He’d gone to art school. I could go to art school. He painted dragons, I could keep painting dragons. It could all go… somewhere.
It was never going to be a linear course. But I look back at his paintings, his writings, and I know it’s in my DNA somewhere. The idea that sometimes you can just do what you want to do and somewhere, somehow, you’ll find your audience. It doesn’t have to make sense. The story can be half-told as long as it’s intriguing. He created incredible, jewel-like – not mere illustrations – but illuminations – and though the subject was dark he brightened the world.
He probably didn’t change the course of my Life, but I know for sure he bent me a little bit.
I see a lot of farewells and salutations, and many of them say “May the Emperor Guide Your Soul” – but I think they missed the point. John Blanche, though he provided the Imperium of Man with so many of their battle prayers and Latinized, classical Grimdark weight, John Blanche was a force of CHAOS. May he resurface from the Immaterium in another place and another time with all the Infernal Powers the Chaos Gods infuse their Mightiest Champions. May he return a Prince.
Consider ye this: the Warrior doth strive, sword in hande, to slay and lay waste his enemies. Yet I say unto thee, more fearsome still are the diligents who wield brushe and pigment in the creation of multifarious images. For whereas the warrior sows only fear and reaps naught but death, the artist can provoke both wonder and horror. In the incitement of such emotions is power indeed – for the hearts and minds of those who behold the artist’s creations may thus be changed forever.
~ from the back inscription of Ratspike – one thing those old books taught me is that sometimes it’s not about crediting every little piece, but about the whole of the thing – but it was PROBABLY written by John Blanche
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