Citadel Miniatures Logo

I didn't fancy that the first post I'd write in over a year (maybe longer) would be a simple thing like this. I envisioned that it would be a great hurrah of finished minis, lovely juicy photos of blazing paint colors. But by God that is to come, there have been rather SIGNIFICANT occurrences for this Ghola that have held me back from stripping, restoring and painting. But that is soon to change and I hope to be posting much more regularly.

This is a simple posting about a simple thing. A little curious thing I caught out of the corner of my eye. This is for the graphics and drawing folks out there, who appreciate stuff like this, but may be of interest as well to any Oldhammer folks and anyone who loves vintage (and I mean vintage) Citadel minis.

I've long loved that spooky little Citadel-tower that is the essential logo, printed and re-printed on a million products and in a million publications. I've never seen a decent-sized version of it to behold what it actually is, usually it sits about an inch tall, often smaller...

Here's an instance from the closest Citdael product I have at hand, an old plastic Skeleton Army box:

So with that graphic love of a very nice and cryptic logo stuck away deep in my brain for many decades, I was alarmed when I found, within the back ad-pages of an old Dragon magazine (September 1986) this little black and white advert, featuring a fairly detailed and fleshed out vision of THAT building, THAT tower that we've all come to recognize so well.

Now, sure it's not IDENTICAL like a genetic copy, but by golly it's most assuredly the basis, or genesis, for that graphic. So the alarm came from two directions:

A) How did I not see this before? I've had this copy of Dragon since the late 80s... I thought I knew every inch of these classics...
B) Oh my gosh, did I discover a relic of graphic that relates to the original Citadel logo that is of any significance (doubtful)?

I don't believe that Citadel had any connection to this ad or the company, it's just that this company found and used the graphic that had been used for the Citadel logo. Well if anyone has any insight as to the origins of the Citadel logo, and how it relates to the curious little snippet I found, please let me know. I'm fascinated by this stuff. I haven't called the number. I'm going on the bold assumption this won't get me any free dice.