My Favorite Monster Manuals

My favorite monster manuals were not published by TSR or WotC.

In 1977 Rien Poortvliet's Gnomes was first published in English, this is the same year the first Monster Manual was published. The book of Gnomes is a masterpiece of imagination and art dealing with fantasy creatures. Written and drawn in a naturalist style, it is as if the artist observed and recorded these benign and fascinating little beings in their natural habitat.  It somehow succeeds in making the fantastic mundane in a charming and engaging way. The book has become a perennial best seller, continually in print since then. Rien Poortvliet is a world renowned artist with several other similarly illustrated books  

Shortly after the publication of Gnomes, two other artists Brian Froud and Alan Lee (yes the great concept artist for the Lord of the Rings films) joined forces to illustrate Faeries, a book that is similar to Gnomes but with even more exposition. Brian Froud went on to partner with Jim Henson to create The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and on other films. While Alan Lee was a principle concept artist on the Lord of the Rings movies who got the job because of his long career of illustrating Lord of the Rings calendars with particular respect to detail and accuracy to professor Tolkien's literature.

Both of these tomes should be in your fantasy literature library as a source of delight and inspiration. With all due respect to the artists of the original Monster Manual these Gnomes & Faeries books are on a wholly next level of artistry and are what I imagine a Monster Manual could have been even back in '77.

Even if TSR couldn't have afforded to publish a lavish full color manuscript of such high quality then, by the mid-80's they certainly had the resources. All of the art from the original Monster Manual had been colored, or redrawn in full color in the Monster Manual cards and those Rub-off Decals. When they rereleased the books with new covers and orange spines how much better if they'd been revised and updated with this full color art and also fix some missing things, like XP values.

Since then there have been many creature collections clearly inspired by Gnomes. There was a series by artist extraordinaire Julek Heller such as Giants.

 In some ways you could say the 5th edition MM is designed much this way.