If you are a fan of the old Judge’s Guild products like I am, you may have noticed that some of the art on those early products was by Wes Crum. Crum was my favorite artist of the Judge’s Guild newsprint era, and, I think, probably the most talented of the people to illustrate for Judge’s Guild. His pictureas have a real ‘pulp-horror-comics’ flair that I like (and that I think Sembieda, who also worked for JG at this time, lacks). Take a look at this typical Crum cover:
That art just looks straight out of the pre-code days of comics. Crude, and Wes was capable of better work, but I love it).
Crum went on to do some pornographic comics (which I won’t link here because I am not on my own computer — search “B.J. Betty” and “Anal Intruders from Uranus” published by, I think, Last Gasp Comix if you are interested). He was/is also involved in some conspiracy/UFO stuff (you can try to buy his art here if interested; I’m not sure how old that page is). I’m interested in the UFO/Conspiracy theory stuff, but strictly as a tourist — I am not a believer but don’t want to wind up or bullshit people who are serious about it in order to gain their confidence simply because I think that’s a douchebag thing to do. For the same reason, I’m curious about what goes on inside a Mormon church, but I’m not going to lie to them to get in there.
I don’t know what the extent of his (Crum’s) work with RPG or Fantasy stuff was or if he worked for any of the old D&D/RPG publishers other than Judge’s Guild. I used to trade emails with Bob Bledsaw years ago (a really nice guy, but an erratic correspondent; I think his health was failing at the time — he stopped responding and later I heard he had died). When we were corresponding, I asked him about Crum but never got an answer. I also, stupidly, asked him about Sembieda, not realizing, at the time, that there might have been some bad blood between Bledsaw and Sembieda. Unfortunately, I had no idea that Sembieda had gone on to form his own game company and apparently made a lot of enemies in the process. So, Bob, if you are reading this from wherever you are, I was just being clueless; I wasn’t trying to get you to dish on things you didn’t want to talk about.