Adventures in Fantasy by Michael Whelan
document.lastModified :I like to think of myself as a treasure hunter whenever I go thrifting. I don't consider whether things may be valuable in a monetary sense, and instead deem my "treasure" to be whatever trinket or memorabilia I want to learn the background of.
As far as internet sleuthing goes, I have alright luck. Identifying things based off their image alone can be a challenge... But thankfully, the first treasure I'm covering was not!
If you've ever taken the time to peruse classic science fiction art on a book cover, you may be familiar with the name Michael Whelan. Whelan has been a prolific science fiction artist for decades, with many book covers, awards, and illustrations to his name. To take a look at his extensive biblography, click here. While his main bread and butter came from illustrating book covers, Whelan also dabbled in album cover art and independent paintings. With so many works under his belt, one might wonder, "this art is amazing, but how could I possibly collect some of these illustrations?" Well, art prints are available for purchase through Whelan's website here, but my treasure is special in its affordability AND its easy variety.
Released in July 1993 by ComicImages, Whelan's Adventures of Fantasy trading cards gave fans of his art a means of collecting small copies instead of full-size prints. 90 cards were released in this series with an additional 3 OptiPrism rares and 3 Spectrascope rares. A series 2 was released as well-- currently doing research on that. If you include the explicitly marked Promo card, there are 97 unique cards to collect.
By scouring the internet, I was able to find a handful of past and active listings for these cards. While they were initially sold as single packs of 10 cards, it does seem that later on a full set was available for purchase. Depending on what you're after, both trading card packs and full sets can be found for sale online.
Here's a priced breakdown of my findings, with sources linked. Please note that not all of these listings are active.
Single Pack | $1.49 | $1.49 | $0.15
5 Single Packs | $12.00 | $2.40 | $0.24
Single Pack | $9.99 | $9.99 | $0.99
Card #S1 | $1.00 | $10.00 | $1.00
Card #39 | $1.45 | $14.50 | $1.45
Card #23 | $2.25 | $22.50 | $2.25
Card #S1 | $12.95 | $120.95 | $12.95
45 Card Collection | $15.00 | $3.33 | $0.33
Full Set of 90 | $8.43 | $0.94 | $0.09
Full Set of 90 | $12.00 | $1.33 | $0.13
Full Set of 90 | $12.00 | $1.33 | $0.13
Full Set of 90 | $15.00 | $1.66 | $0.16
Full Set of 90 | $20.00 | $2.22 | $0.22
Full Set of 90 | $33.99 | $3.78 | $0.38
Series 1 Box | $30.00 | $0.63 | $0.06
Series 1 Box | $89.46 | $1.86 | $0.19
My Pack | $0.90 | $0.90 | $0.09
There's also a curious detail on the wrapper of these trading cards... "It's NIGHT & DAY on this super-special effects mug by Michael Whelan! The landscape's bright when your beverage is cool, and night falls when it's hot!" For $15, this mug was also available to ship out for your Whelan artwork collections. Sadly, I couldn't find any images online of it. [I intend to email Michael Whelan or his website management to find more details or a stray image of this mug.]
8/15/2023: I received an email response in a timely manner, which cannot be said about the time it took me to update this page. I got my answers in January, and only now am I sharing them with the class...
And now, through my efforts, I've collected images of this entire trading card series to serve as a standalone reference page. I'll be linking each work to its own page on Michael Whelan's website or other source, and captioning each with its respective title.
04 - The Dark Tower aka "Gunslinger on Beach"
5 - Hecate aka "Hecate's Cauldron"
18 - Moreta aka "Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern"
19 - The Tree of Swords and Jewels
26 - Job aka "Job: A Comedy of Justice"
31 - The Peeper aka "The Uninvited"
37 - Sands of Time aka "Chronos"
62 - The Adventures of Little Fuzzy
66 - The Bane of the Black Sword aka "King of the Dead"
SPECTRASCOPE CARDS
OPTIPRISM CARDS
RESOURCES
Good stuff, yeah? Some of the images I used are originally from this site. Images of the OptiPrism cards are from here. Images of the Spectrascope cards are from here. For some details on the cards, I used this site.