The second assignment I had for Mythos was for the Mythos Now! standard game set. I did six cards for this set, and it was a lot of fun. Collectible Card Games (CCG’s) were quite popular in the 90’s, after Magic, The Gathering exploded onto the scene. There was a lot of work for freelancers then in the gaming industry. I was fairly new to the scene, but after I did the cards for Heresy, Kingdom Come, it was easy to get work – until it all dried up rather suddenly when the CCG craze died down.

Doing CCG cards was fun and easy. Since they would be reproduced very small, I could make the original drawings fairly small too. Instead of making a 16 x 20″ or 20 x 30″ drawing, I could make them only 9 x 12″, and they would still tighten up in the reduction of size. I also couldn’t make the details too small either, because when it is on the final card, the illustration is only a couple of inches tall, and small details vanish.

I’m glad I got the Chrysler Building card. I lived in Manhattan for 10 years (and worked there for 35 years!), so the city was my home and the Chrysler Building was a beloved landmark. In the Mythos game, it seemed to drive people crazy – a lot of things drove people crazy in the Lovecraftian game….

The drawing, Ju-Ju House is still one of my favorites. I wanted a very film-noir look, and I think it came out really well. The image stands out from the standard gaming fare, and it feels like a fine art drawing to me. I loved it.

Another dark image is Rue d’Auseil, a sinister street in Paris. This also is one of my favorites, as it really evokes a dark, rainy night in Paris, which is a city I love! It’s where I honeymooned….

The last card of this group is The Pentagon, because Cthulhu is so powerful that the military needs to get involved. I wasn’t sure how to approach this subject, but then I thought of Doctor Strangelove and put them in a dimly-lit War Room, with some kind of giant video display behind them.