John Blanche (1948–2026)

It's magic to this insight into the workings of Blanche's mind as he is dreaming up the nightmares of the Inquisition.

This is absolutely filled worn some of the grimiest and greatest of the quintessential Blanche Warhammer ink and wash illustrations that birth some of the most iconic figures and so many I wish we had seen more of within 40K.

The sketchbook scrapbook presentation with Blanche's frenzied hand written notes and snippets printed lore for these creations and abominations makes the show more whole thing an integrated art piece that is about as close as any of us are going to get to watching the man himself do whatever profane rituals he does to create his art. It feels like you've stolen his notebook in the bed way.

Shout out to murder assassins and the explicit note about not all Imperial agents being male.

There is such a rich and awful life and story told by Blanche's characters and the weapons and ephemera all over them. Every figure in here feels like they have a full tragic backstory and build up the bizarre baroque horror of the Dark Millennium.

My only complaint, and this isn't really about Blanche or this book, more Games Workshop and Black Library. Where are Ll the stories exploring all these fucked up little guys, gals, and non-binary pals?! Blanche gets freaky and we need a new edition of Warhammer Monthly with comics based on all this weird stuff. Tell me you wouldn't want to see a one page story about the sanctioned alien bounty hunter who does a difficult job and gets absolutely murdered or experimented on bu the Ordo Xenos the moment the try to collect the bounty?!

Look, I'm deep in my Warhammer nerd era and loving just now much awesome stuff there is to dive into and this is a nasty, beautiful delight! show less

This floppy book is a collection of many sketches created by artist John Blanche as concept art for Games Workshop's game "Inquisitor". As the game involves relatively large and detailed miniatures, Blanche was given free reign to let his creativity wander. His art is very sketchy, gritty, and lurid, but appropriate for the subject matter of twisted cultists, half-machine technological priests, and zealous Inquisitorial agents. Many pages also include blurbs from Gav Thorpe of the production show more team describing a particular element of the Warhammer 40000 world, often revealing information never before released.

This book will probably only appeal to big fans of the Warhammer 400000 universe and it's many dark, gothic themes. Otherwise, it will probably appear to be just a bunch of very strange people with skull-motifs. Then again, if you're into that sort of thing... show less