Green with Orcy? Why Green?

In the Warhammer world, Orcs and in fact, all Goblinoids are Green. There are the odd special type like Black Orcs but as a rule, they are officially green. But why?

Well, the warhammer world has, by my working out, 3 main sources:
* J.R.R. Tolkien
* Dungeons and Dragons
* Michael Moorcock

Now, it’s work noting that Tolkien took alot of stuff from English and European folklore, with very little being ‘invented’ by him, and Dungeons and Dragons took alot of stuff from Tolkien. Moorcock’s connection is mostly with the High Elves/Elves and Chaos. So not really related to this point. I was gonna to comment on the Rodney Matthews connection there but his were more… pale yellow with maybe a hint of green (the connection between Rodney Matthews and Micheal Moorcock isn’t only doing book covers, but Rodney Matthews came up with concepts and characters (like the goblins) in ‘Elric at the End of Time” as that story is more Moorcock WITH Matthews, but often doesn’t get any credit for some reason) but Lets look at what I’m wondering about for Warhammer Orcs with this list of features:

• Orcs are Green Skinned
• Orcs are human sized
• Orcs are Bald
• Orcs are bow legged

Now, I’ll take them things because short of culture and stuff, That is kinda a list of the core physical features of Warhammer Orcs. Things like the ears, jaw size, teeth etc did vary over the years to a point in the ‘we don’t talk about it’ period where Orcs couldn’t talk or eat cause of the over sized large teeth etc.

Now the hair bit is a little tricky. Sometimes WH orcs have seam to be shown with hair. In 40K this is explained as ‘squigs’ to give the impression of hair and it does appear that fantasy Battle Orcs are also bald but probably some stick bits of hair onto their heads, but as a general rule, they are bald and to find a haired Orc in the WFB range is extremely rare. You will sometimes get a top knot but this have no direct connection to the body short of the tie or whatever is holding it. So I’m pretty convince it’s 100% the case of bald Orcs (and goblinoids) in WFB.

So.. lets look at possible sources. I’ll start with Tolkien. What are Orcs in Tolkien’s works? Well.. it kinda depends due to the stuff taking place over thousands of years (and of course, not even book is even set in the same ‘universe’ (as it where) but I think most people think of his fantasy work set on Middle earth. Well.. what are Orcs in that? well, they are bow legged. But they are small. In fact, they are kinda hobbit sized in that a couple of hobbits can disguise themselves as Orcs pretty well and the largest Orc, who is described as being very large, is also said to ‘almost be the size of a man’. cause all Orcs are smaller then Humans. there are no known (to my knowledge and quick-ish research as I’m not Tolkien guy) Orc which is human sized or greater. Their skin colour is mostly grey, with some browns and the odd either Black or almost black. well, that’s a far change from green. Tolkien Orcs also have hair. So I think we can say, what we are looking for in a source of Orcs is NOT Tolkien.

Next step then is DnD. Well, first thing I can check is the August 1979 ‘4th edition’ of the ADnD (advanced Dungeons and Dragons) monster Manual by Gary Gyax. I think that’ll do as a source for DnD orcs.. lets see what I can find.

Well, first thing I find is.. What the hell are those heads? I’m used to more human-ish orcs, Pig faced orcs and almost completely human orcs but these? I would call these Dragon Headed Orcs.

But how does it describe there appearance? Well, their size is medium, listing that as 6 foot + tall. They have brown or brownish Green with bluish sheen, with Pinkish snouts and ears with bristly dark brown or black hair, sometimes with tan patches. From the art (and no comment) we can guess they aren’t bow-legged.

well.. I guess these run more towards the Tolkien version of Orcs kinda. Do we have the source of the green skin? brownish green with bluish sheen.. well.. Looking around at various companies idea of what Brownish green is, I’m gonna have to no with a bookmark to return to this at a later point if need be.

So.. Next? well.. Moorcock didn’t really do Orcs and.. well.. talking about Tolkien and Moorcock in the same paragraph is kinda a loaded gun. Moorcock is well known for his low view of Tolkien and things like his famous essay on his writing style and content so.. yeah.. One of the things he brings up is that Tolkien created a race (the Orcs) meant to be so vile and evil that they could be killed without a second thought, where Moorcock had more mixed people and species which were more ‘human’ and where the ‘Hero’ is as equally likely to be a servant of Chaos, as one of Order, though neither had purely good or bad traits. If you have read any Moorcock, you can get what I’m trying to say. Anyway, unless I’m missing something (maybe) I don’t think Moorcock ever used Orcs.

Lets look into the original folk law sources.. Oh dear.. technically, they started out as Goblins, and there is such a huge thing with them. Goblins could be faeries who look human but very small, they could be house spirits who helped women keep the house, they could be tricksters, they could be outright villains.. it’s very complex.

Now, while I’m here alot of people cite Tolkien a the first use of the word ‘Orc’ for the race we know as Orcs. He himself sights his version of Orcs as being based on the Goblins in ‘The Princess and the Goblin’ by George MacDonald. Physically, I don’t know of any bit which stated their colour but the versions in the book are closer to normal Goblins really, or Kobolds. anyway, I would debate Tolkien as the source of the term as it comes from ‘orc-né’ an old english term Tolkien was well aware of, given his background and in fact, lead to the naming of the Orkney Islands off the coast of mainland Scotland with it appears ‘Orc’ being more used by the Picts for ‘young pig’ (thus why you get pig faced orcs) and also leads to the latin ‘Orcus’ meaning … well, tricky.. but often translated as Hell-devils’ or ‘monsters’, or even from the dutch ‘Ork’ being a monster, or ‘nork’ being an evil person, or the old norse ‘orkn’ meaning seal. And there is even a Norwegian reference which claims the Orkney islands were named after an old Earl named ‘Orkan’… ancient words are almost compossible to source and every so many years you find a new researcher has a new ‘it means this’ come up. Of course, the Latin lead to the Whale species name ‘Orca’ (which… just means whale). and of course, if you want the goblin route, they are believed to come from the greek Kabalos, whose name directly became ‘Kobold’ and then believed to become goblin, a term which was first seen in the UK after 1066 and the Norman invasion. Description wise (and carvings) are very much goblin like (the word Kabalos can mean ‘Mischievous Rascal’ in English and are small evil fairy like creatures, though later things remove the large phallic nature alot of greek stuff had).

And well before Tolkien, there was the evil Orcus in the 1590 ‘Fairyrie Queene’ by Edmund Spenser where the name appears to later morph into Orge. anyway, Tolkien cites his word ‘orc’ being taken from ‘orc’ meaning Ogre in Beowulf, also being an old English word for demon (by which he means dæmon… you would think he knew better ¬_¬) so.. Tolkien is hardly the origin of the term for such a creature. Also he very much used Orc and Goblin names as interchangeable, though they have later (and even later in Tolkien’s own work) morphed into kinda ‘breeds’ with the smaller ones being goblins, and the less small but still under human sized being Orcs. Later leading to the Goblinoid term but that’s kinda besides the point.

now, back to the subject at hand.. On the Old Hammer forum, it was commented about that it was one person, or a small playing team at GW that painted the Warhammer Orcs brown until one day, someone painted some green ones and they decided that looks good. Interesting and might make some sense. And it also seams to be hinted that Rick Priestley commented on it being Dave Andrews being the first to paint Orcs green and the blog ‘Oldenhammer’ (http://www.Oldenhammer.com) had a bit about it but kinda makes a few odd things. This points out that the Green Goblin in Marvel Comics (first appearance Amazing Spider-man #14 April 1964) as being a source of Goblins being green with things like Raymond Brigg‘s “Fungus the Bogeyman” (1977) being green a source.. Not fully convinced here but we still don’t have the link. So I’ll add them as possible to check into later

well.. first thing is to Look at the Warhammer bestiary. Well, first stop is Warhammer version 1. In that, I’ll look at Goblins as well as Orcs due to the close connections and.. No colour is given for the Goblins or Orcs though they are very much described in the same way as the AD&D ones were being killers who live underground and hate bright light. They do, however, list Red Goblins. If that means they are Red Skinned or paint them themselves red.. No clue. Orcs are less weak to sunlight though ^_^;

Let’s move ahead to 2ed. well.. the Battle Bestiary cover shows.. is that a Pink Orc? Though the main box show green. But lets see Orcs.. Oh look, under Physique we have it that they are.. much taller then humans (almost 7 foot), crooked legs, Skin is often Greenish or dark olive brown. No comment on the hair though. They also appear to have overly long arms as they are long enough that their huge hands almost touch the ground. So we clearly have the Orc skin colour turning more to green at this point. By the time we get to 3ed, Orcs are clearly coloured green, apart from black orcs which are… dark green-bordering on black. They also appear to have lost both the 7 foot tall side and the long arms. And of course, we have what is meant to be Kev Adams with his Orc and Goblin army but.. Not sure if he painted them but I believe it was more a studio army.. though I’m pretty sure in saying he sculpted most if not all the ones on show.

If we look at some more 2ed stuff like the Tragedy of McDeath scenario pack, we see the Green Orcs we know and love. So clearly, this happened between 1st and 2nd editions of Warhammer. So that means between 1983 and 1984.. Well.. looking in White Dwarf isn’t gonna be very helpful then as only paid adverts really had colour. Photos of miniatures were in Black and White.. But then that made me think. I do know a source of some Colour images of figures which appeared then. Gary Chalk‘s Thistlewood Miniatures! I said about Thistlewood a while back and even said about Mike from Broadswords and Beasts. well, Not only does he have some colour photos on his blog, but also some photos of the figures he owns/owned which were Gary Chalk’s from the day.

And.. What colour are his orcs? … erm.. grey/blue. So it wasn’t Gary Chalk then.

So, Lets try to look at what Citadel thing was done around the time which may have shown colour images.

The BC boxed sets range was a good first step. but the first one to feature Orcs was BC2 ‘Monsters Started Set’. The Orc on the cover is kinda grey.. but this is 1985 and Ugezod’s Death Commandos was 1985/1986 with Green Orcs.. which doesn’t help too much but that’s interesting.. the Cover art… I don’t have the credits but looks like John Blanche.. this lead me to wander about art. White Dwarf 53 has what look clearly like (though far removed from the 3ed-4ed view) Orcs. Yep.. No two ways about it, Battle scene of Orcs. Which are green. Bald, Bow legged. Cover art was by Angus Fieldhouse and the issue was May 1984 so.. in our ball park. Looking through the issue.. oh dear.. article called ‘The Naked Orc’ which kinda starts with “Most people know that the orcs originally appeared in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy.”.. sigh I take it ‘Rufus Wedderburn’ isn’t your real name mr. Writer of article? But oh wait when talking about Soldier Orcs in AD&D (The article is about AD&D) it says “Their various skin colours will be darker shades of green, brown and even purple. the weaker types will have slightly lighter colourings”. So.. green orcs huh?

Also in that issue… Joe Dever did Warhammer Scanario based on Lord of the Rings ‘Minas Tirith’.. and looking at what Mike posted about it.. Joe Dever painted green orcs. So that’s interesting. So in 1984 we know that Joe Dever painted Green Orcs and the colour painting which appears to have been done for that issue, featured Green Orcs by Angus Fieldhouse. Well.. sad to say both guys are dead, so I can’t really get in contact with them.

But this is still far away from the 1964 Green Goblin point mentioned on Oldenhammer. Now, The Green Goblin was created by Steve Ditko with Stan Lee. The amount of credit to each is probably like that, with way more on Steve Ditko since Stan Lee was known to be a very ‘laid back’ comic writer. They would sometimes have brief talk about ideas for stories, but Steve Ditko never had a script for a comic on Spider-Man by Stan Lee. He did the comics, the first Stan knew of what was in that issue was when he had the art and made words to fit it. Ditko did say however, that Stan had the idea of the Green Goblin being an ancient mythological demon from an Egyptian-like sarcophagus. This would have made.. no sense at all and very much like Stan. Ditko was the one that made him into the Human villain he was known as. The reason for being green is partly to do with print techniques and basic colour design. Green is a strong enough colour to be a visual contrast to Spider-Man’s Red (with Blue) which is why he has soo many Green Enemies (Scorpion, Electro, Doctor Octopus, Vulture, Sandman, the Lizard, Mysterio and this is just the first 14 issues) so the reason for him being green here isn’t really much (I could also comment on how much Green-purple scheme is in comics on the whole but that’s not really the point here). That said, it does appear that name which created by Stan Lee and it does have alot of ‘goblin’ folklore features in it. The cave (as goblins are described generally as underground dwelling creatures, the title of the first story? “The Grotesque Adventure of the Green Goblin!” Of course, what does Grotesque mean? it’s to do with stone. It’s the from the same word for Grotto ‘Stone Cave’. then used for the name of stone carved monsters, often mistakenly called Gargoyles but are easy to tell apart cause Gargoyles ALWAYS HAVE DRAIN PIPES IN THEIR MOUTHS! sorry for the all caps there but… sigh.. the amount of people who can’t tell the difference between a grotesque and a gargoyle is ridicules. I blame Heroquest’s blood thirstier…

Of course, Green monsters (or Aliens) go back to ‘little green men’ go back to atleast the late 1800s with the often cited story “Green Boy From Hurrah” in 1899 and since these aliens are often shown as being small ‘goblin like’, we can see how that got merged with goblins. And before that, around 1200s there was a told story of the two green children of Woolpit, Suffolk which some have said might be more faerie folk (like Goblins) or aliens.. or a more down to earth version that they were just French children who wore green. Though the Main period for little green men was the late 1920s to the 1950s with Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and many more fighting green aliens, many of which give strong ‘goblin’ like designs. So lets go back around the myth root here.

Goblins are basically European. So nothing for Egyptian. Various versions of Goblins including Brownies, Boggarts, Clurichaun etc. While the stories change a bit, the Glaistig of Scotland is also known as the Green Maiden, but appears unconnected to Goblins really, but Scottish myth has TONS of Green Ladies. Sometimes green skinned, sometimes wearing a green dress she wore when she was still human but then killed. Often Green was used in theatre for a stand-in colour for ‘The dead’. Maybe partly to stand out, maybe partly to show things like the effects of death as green is often seen with ‘rotting corpses’ in art despite skin not really turning green, unlike many things which mould. It was kinda a ‘censorship’ like colour at times or just symbolic. In English myth, Green represented nature as in the green of the earth, the plants, etc. So when someone died and their body returned to the earth, it was green. In Egyptian mythos, Green was connected more to the dead as Thoth, god of the Moon and other things, would lead the souls of the dead to the green hills of the underworld, and people like Osiris, ruler of the underworld, was green faced. There are also connections to the colour green with things like Envy and jealousy (which are kinda the same thing). In Japanese myth, Green had connections to the element of ‘wind’ (going with the more logical fire red and water blue). We then come back to Goblins and Faeries with many of them, like the Sidhe, who were meant to be descendants of the Faeries, had green eyes. There are also connections in to Wisdom in some Egyptian and Scottish myths, as well as some others.

So really, we have a range of things connected to the colour green. Death, Nature, Envy, Widsom, Faeries. That’s.. kinda helpful but not great.

Let’s flip back a bit here.. In the 1975 Tolkien Calendar, artist Tim Kirk (from the USA) shows some orcs on the road to Minas Tirith and.. they are pretty damn bright green! Tim Kirk did his Master’s Degree in Illustration thesis doing illustrations from the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and it was 13 of these which made this calendar, which was the first one to have an illustrator other then Tolkien himself. These were done in 1972 and the total of 26 were on display at the 1972 Westercon art show. He started out as a ‘fan artist’ doing stuff for some Tolkien fanzines before turning pro.

Sadly, with his official site (or company) ‘Tim Kirk Design Inc’ being closed, I haven’t been able to contact him about his choice of green for the Orcs, which is completely different from how described in the books. However, these pieces would have very much been known by Tolkien fans in the UK.

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Well, as this is quite long, lets do a little recap timeline going backwards:

• 1991 – GW Orcs are Green [3ed Warhammer Fantasy Battle]
• 1987 – Rogue Trader features Green Orks which have many connections to the Fantasy Battle version in design.
• 1986 – John Blanche’s Cover of the Tragedy of McDeath [2ed Warhammer Fantasy Battle]. Card Mini tokens (Bob Naismith) also show Orcs being Green.
• <Dave Andrews started working for Games Workshop? Earliest reference to something he did which I can find is 1984 with 2nd WFB>
• Citadel Colour Paint Set 2 comes out, mostly likely 1985. It includes Goblin Green, but does have Orc Brown. However, Back of the Box has John Blanche painted minis which appear to show a Green Orc.
• May 1984 – Angus Fieldhouse cover of White Dwarf #53 shows Green Orcs. Rufus Wedderburn AD&D article ‘The Naked Orc’ features Green Orcs.
• 1974 – The 1975 Tolkien Calendar published by Ballantine Books featured Tim Kirk’s 1973 Middle-earth art showing Green Orcs
• May 1964 – Marvel Comics Amazing Spider-Man #14 debuts ‘The Green Goblin’ by Steve Ditko with Stan Lee
• 1920s-1950s – Pulp comics and stories feature the rise of Little Green Men. This is often said to be a direct inspiration for the Green Goblin being Green.
• 1200s – Story of the Green Children of Woolpit.

I think that is the list of the kinda important ones. We might say the Story of the Green Children doesn’t really connect but I’m gonna say it kinda does. Not as the story itself but as a number of stories around this point lead to myths of Green Children and child-like creatures. This in-turn lead to the ‘Little Green Men’ thing which wasn’t 100% Aliens at first, but became more Aliens in the pulp era, which was meant to lead to the Green Goblin being green. Now.. we then need the connection between that and Tim Kirk. Could be he read Spider-Man and for some reason, decided to paint his orcs green, despite kinda being against the subject matter. The images were quite well known and clearly seen by DnD players and early Fantasy gamers, which leads to the White Dwarf issue, then Early painters like Gary Chalk and Joe Dever being very much DnD players and while not direct as much as some people, did lead to some ways Warhammer went.

Though this is focusing on the Green side, We have the baldness and human sizing we could talk about… but I think more focus should be on the Greenness.

In 1935, Enid Blyton, a very well known British author released her book ‘The Green Goblin Book’. Well, there is a big thing.. that book itself is pretty pricey to get these days and only appears to have been reprinted in sections (the first green goblin Book and the Second green goblin book). However, this book does not contain goblins with green skin, but it is a green book of goblin stories. However, it does create a strong link between ‘Green’ and ‘Goblins’ (more then just the GG thing) Could have been the ‘Grey Goblin Book’ of course but it was chosen to be green. Even if you have never read or heard of this book before, Enid Blyton and her connections to British culture run deep and that connection between green and goblin could easily enter into the culture, maybe even the reason why the Marvel character was named and coloured green as well as (or instead of) the alien thing. Very possible, while she was a British author, her books were sold and very popular around the world.

We also, of course, need to think of other works which could have highly influenced people’s minds on this issue. The 1959 Disney fantasy film ‘Sleeping Beauty’, the last fantasy fairy tale film made by the company in Walt Disney’s life time, features the Evil Fairy Maleficent (often mistaken for a witch) with her underlings, often referred to as Goblins, who are green (though looks kinda browny-green at times) and very goblin/orc like, though they do also have a level of randomness, which is also kinda goblin like.

And I guess we also need to talk about Roald Dahl. He wrote a children’s novel ‘The Gremlins’ which was published in 1943, inspired by his WW2 RAF times, where they came up with a folklore creature ‘the Gremlin’ which worked for the Nazis to damage planes. IF something werent wrong, it was a Gremlin. The book was in fact not only his first but written for Walt Disney Productions to make a film based on it. Pre-production was done and characters designed but short of the book (with Disney art and names) the film was never made and because Roald Dahl was still in the Airforce at the time, the rights got confusing. Though most were pink skinned, one of the main Gremlins was shown as being green, and while the film was never made, they did appear in art, merchandise and Dahl highly popularised them but again, Disney was unable to get the rights because others now used the Gremlins idea and lead to Gremlins even being used in WW2 propaganda posters, some even showing them being green. Some WW2 Nose art was directly depicting the gremlins from Roald Dahl’s book in Disney design.

Well.. I think we kinda see where Dikto and Lee got the idea for Green being the colour of the Goblin from if nothing else. But we don’t have direct connections. But we can see the connections between Gremlins, Goblins, Orcs and the colour green in the public mind. I guess as he is a BIG name in comics, I should comment on the Will Eisner connection here.

In Will Eisner’s 1944 “The Spirit” comic series, there was a popular backup strip called ‘Intellectual Amos’ by Andre LeBlanc. This featured small guy ‘Amos’ with his Friend Wilbur the bright green Goblin! The character appeared in pretty much every issue from May 1944’s #209, to #264 in June 1945. If you want to know if Stan Lee or Steve Ditko would have been aware of the character…. well, I’m pretty sure they would. Will Eisner was a HUGE influence to to Ditko and he would have most likely seen a back-up feature.

So… all I can say is that the idea of Goblins and Goblinoids like Orcs being green was in the public mind before the 1960s and the Green Goblin came around. Was it made more popular by it? probably. But it was already a thing and it’s leaching into fantasy gaming was a slow but surely a fait accompli, and today, you see any game with orcs and goblins, green skin is gonna be the first thing you will see and the most common thing they all have in .. well, common.

But I really need to say, anyone that traces it only to Marvel Comics is missing a large chunk of the story, and as I said before, I’m missing a few chunks too. chunks which there are a couple of people still around which MIGHT be able to slot into place, but if they do or can for sure, is very unknown sadly.