jedimb, 3 months ago

@LadyMarth01 ...One day, I'm actually going to read all the MTG art books I collected between Battle for Zendikar and Ravnica 3.

One day. For sure.

LadyMarth01, 3 months ago

@jedimb Wait, reading books? I thought we were just supposed to buy them and let them collect dust! 😆

LadyMarth01, 3 months ago

The Art of Magic: The Gathering series by Perfect Square (a Viz Media imprint) is pretty great. Large format books with plenty of full page art, and even when the art isn't full page, it's still given enough room to pick out details in everything. The books also have lots of text digging into histories, locations, and denizens of the planes. Would definitely recommend.

(2/5)

A set of pages from The Art of Magic: The Gathering - Zendikar. A large tree branch extends out into the picture, two people climbing around the branch with rope, dwarfed by this branch. An artificially constructed octahedron floats not far from the branch. In the background is a large floating island, rocky mountains with green plant life at their bases and water flowing off the edges. The whole scene is above the clouds.
A set of pages from The Art of Magic: The Gathering - Zendikar. A painting of a swamp takes up a page and a half, while the left side of the left page describes Guul Draz, the swampy area int he picture. At the bottom of the text is a picture of a large "Heartstabber Mosquito," abdomen and proboscis glowing red, a large horn protruding from its head.
A set of pages from The Art of Magic: The Gathering - Zendikar. Both pages half one large and one small painting showing various scenes around Zendikar, as the text on the page covers Life on Ondu.

LadyMarth01, 3 months ago

Magic: The Gathering: The Visual Guide is exactly what it says on the tin: a visual guide to the universe of Magic: The Gathering. While there's plenty of art here, the formatting makes it clear that this is a book that's more interested in delivering information than showing off the art. Still, there's some great art here, and a lot more information if you want to dig into the lore.

(3/5)

A set of page from Magic: The Gathering: The Visual Guide covering the plane of Dominaria. The same scene from the cover of the Dominaria artbook runs in the background, but various boxes of text or other arts obscure parts of it.
A set of pages from Magic: The Gathering: The Visual Guide covering Will and Rowan Kenrith, two planeswalkers and siblings. Each gets art covering about half of their own page, while the other half goes into their character traits and backgrounds. Of course, neither page's art is left unobscured by text boxes or other paintings.
A set of pages from Magic: The Gathering: The Visual Guide covering the War of the Spark. Again, the continued theme of textboxes and small artworks covering up pieces of large artworks in the background.

LadyMarth01, 3 months ago

The A Visual History books, Rise of the Gatewatch and Legends, are cheaper, but smaller and less desirable than the other options. These small books refuse to lay flat unless held open. Of the two, Legends is probably superior, due to Rise of the Gatewatch having multiple pages where the only thing featured is a single card in its entirety, black borders, rules text, etc.

(4/5)

A set of pages from Magic: The Gathering - Rise of the Gatewatch, A Visual History. Both pages feature Nicol Bolas cards, complete with rules text, set numbers, etc., and the black border around the card. I'd have much rather both be just the art from the card, rather than the card itself.
A set of pages from Magic: The Gathering - Legends, A Visual History showing Jhoira. Art of the character takes up the whole right page and bleeds into the left page, while a smaller painting takes up the top of the left page. Text about the character takes up the bottom of the left page.
A set of pages from Magic: The Gathering - Legends, A Visual History depicting Jenara on the left and Rafiq on the right. Both get art taking up a bit more than half of the page, with text about each character at the bottom of each page.

18+ LadyMarth01, 3 months ago

Lastly, the Boom! Studios Magic graphic novels. Can't really comment on the quality of the writing yet, but the art seems solid enough. Spoilered just in case you care about a non-canon series of Magic: The Gathering graphic novels.

(5/5)

A set of pages from Boom! Studios' Magic graphic novels. The planeswalker Vraska is seen fighting on the left, while the planeswalker Kaya is fighting on the right page.
A set of pages from Boom! Studios' Magic graphic novels, depicting Ral Zarek, Kaya, and Vraska all traveling through the Blind Eternities, and what it means to each of them.