Dragon Magazine

On 11/15/2014 at 03:51 PM by KnightDriver

Today I donated the last of my books to the library. When I got there, I realized it was book sale day, and so I went down to the basement to see what's what. I knew they had gotten in a bunch of old Avalon Hill board games about a month ago, but I had only a very slight hope that any of them would be left, and sure enough, none were; but there was a box of old Dragon magazines, probably from the same donor as the board games - 65 issues ranging from #65 to #214. I thought about it a while. My instinct was to grab the whole box. Then I thought I'd only take the ones from the 80's. Finally I gave in and grabbed the whole box. At 10 cents a piece, it all came to $6.50. I can't wait to read through them and scan the covers and any interesting graphics within, like ads for video games or board games.

d65

Issue 65, the oldest one in the collection I just picked up.

Dragon Magazine covered more than just Dungeons & Dragons. They reviewed board games and PC and console video games too. In the Brett Weiss book I'm reading right now, The 100 Greatest Console Video Games: 1977-1987, he quotes from articles in Dragon Magazine frequently. I may now have a few of the issues he quoted from since Dragon #65 is dated sometime in 1982.

d214

Issue 214, the last one in the collection I just got.

Back in the 80's, I had a few Dragon magazines, but I never subscribed to it. I was always fascinated by the fantasy art covers and usually read a few articles when I came across an issue. I never had anyone to play D&D or board games with, except for one friend I played with infrequently, so I didn't really need the magazine, but I was always interested in reading them.

dbo

A Best Of Issue I had back in the 80s.

I did some research to see if these magazines were online anywhere. Apparently they were available on Archive.org about a year ago, but not anymore. Wizards of the Coast owns the rights to the magazine, and was publishing new issues online, but it looks like they're not doing it anymore. There was a PDF collection you could buy of 250 issues of the magazine, Dragon Archive. I think you could get that on Amazon probably. Also, I'm thinking the magazines might be in a library somewhere on microfiche. I used to look up old 70's Guitar World interviews that way.

Dragon Archives out as PDF files for PC.

I'm going to read these 65 issues I got and do a few blogs on them. Should be fun.

C.S.3590SquadLeader

11/15/2014 at 03:56 PM

The covers alone look pretty cool.

KnightDriver

11/16/2014 at 03:21 AM

Yea, I love the covers. It's so cool to hold a magazine in your hand. I was paging through Dragon 65 just now, and wondering why we've all just gone online. Magazines are so cool.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

11/15/2014 at 03:58 PM

i bought a lot off Ebay about two months ago. IT was so fun to go through them. I love Dragon Magazine. Good find, man!

11/16/2014 at 03:23 AM

I had about 19 of them from a used book store find a few years ago, but after I scanned the covers, and paged through them, I got rid of them. It's so hard to keep these bulky things around when you live in an apartment. There's just not enough room. I'm going to take a while to go through these though.

Cary Woodham

11/15/2014 at 04:23 PM

I've never heard of Dragon Magazine. But then, I never got into D&D either. Dragon Magazine sounds like something Spyro would read. :)

11/16/2014 at 03:29 AM

I was thinking Spyro should've made the cover of Dragon in 1998, but he made the cover of many other magazines that year including the Official Playstation Magazine.

spy

I wonder if Insomniac put any of their old characters in Sunset Overdrive just for a joke.

11/16/2014 at 04:34 PM

Probably not Spyro, considering he's in Skylanders and all.

Other dragons that remind me of Spyro:

Figment

Spike (from the My Little Pony cartoon, and no I'm not a brony, I just know things)

11/17/2014 at 02:06 AM

DOUBLE RAINBOW BOOM!!! ha ha.

11/17/2014 at 07:24 AM

Yeah you lost me on that one.

I met the lady who does the voice of Spike once.

11/18/2014 at 01:13 AM

It's from the only episode I've watched of the show so far. Kinda good really.

Not going to watch it regularly though.

11/18/2014 at 07:15 AM

The cartoon itself is really not bad at all. It's a very well-written cartoon for girls. With that said, I don't watch it regularly either.

11/18/2014 at 04:06 PM

It reminds me of how I really liked the Power Puff Girls even though that's also for girls. I didn't watch the TV show, but I did watch the movie when it came out.

11/18/2014 at 07:49 PM

The My Little Pony cartoon was done by some of the same people who did the PowerPuff Girls cartoon.

11/19/2014 at 02:16 AM

That makes a lot of sense.

Alex-C25

11/15/2014 at 07:38 PM

Always nice to go through old stuff.

11/16/2014 at 03:42 AM

Just read a letter to the editor, in issue 65 (Sept. '82), asking why the media was bashing D&D so much and saying it leads kids into demonic cults. Ha!

11/16/2014 at 10:29 AM

Very 80s

Good thing the media has stopped bitching about D&D.

Super Step Contributing Writer

11/15/2014 at 08:09 PM

I like the cover art.

11/16/2014 at 03:50 AM

Nothing like some cool fantasy art, the weirder the better.

d25

Like issue 25.

xDarthKiLLx

11/15/2014 at 09:08 PM

That'll make a badass stack for your home library.

11/16/2014 at 03:54 AM

There was also a Dragon magazine calendar with the cover from issue 165 blown up huge.

d165

Vice's Assistant

11/16/2014 at 06:23 PM

Those covers are amazing. I really wish more magazines used more fantasy paintings/art on their covers today.

11/17/2014 at 02:13 AM

Heavy Metal is another one and I think it's still around. You can still subscribe to it on their website.

Ranger1

11/17/2014 at 09:51 AM

Some of the things I had to junk recently were a bunch of old Isaac Asimov Science Fiction mags. I had a subscription for most of high school and all of college. Cyberpunk was very in at the time.

11/18/2014 at 01:26 AM

I probably had a few of those issues. I remember cyberpunk getting popular when I was in High School, but I was still into hard scifi and fantasy. I only just read two cyberpunk classics this last year, Snowcrash and Neuromancer.

NSonic79

11/17/2014 at 12:46 PM

I never heard about this magazine. But then again back in the dayd I didn't take much to magazines themselves in general. It wasn't unil the mid 90's that I took a firmer intrest in them. Moreso when it came to gaming mags like GameFan.

11/18/2014 at 02:07 AM

When Dragon was out in the 80's, I was into photography and had subscriptions to several like Popular Photography. Those were my magazines. I didn't start getting gaming magazines until sometime in the early 2000's. Then, of course, this wonderful internet we have destroyed all of them by 2010. Now all I have is memories. . . <sigh>

goaztecs

11/20/2014 at 10:42 AM

Good stuff on donating books to the library. I asked the librarian once if I could do that and she looked at me like I was crazy.

Nice pickups on the box of magazines. From what you wrote it seems like it covered a good portion of various gaming platforms. Its fun to look through older magazines to look at the ads, and read what people thought during that time period.

11/20/2014 at 04:15 PM

Each library is different. This one library in my home town has a very large basement and can store lots of stuff for the sale. The library one town over though only has a small room and you can only donate on certain days. I lucked out.

This collection covers years 1982-1995 but not every issue. Weird thing, I just found Dragon 1-250 stored online here: (http://annarchive.com/ ). Just browse archive and look for Dragon magazine. I thought all this stuff got taken down, but apparently not.

PixlBit

Dragon Magazine

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