The new Dragon Delves book quietly asserts that there wouldn't be any AI dragon art if there hadn't been human D&D artists first

Another unique aspect of the new Dragon Delves adventure anthology from Dungeons & Dragons is its inclusion of dragons depicted throughout D&D's 50-year history. Ahead of each one-shot adventure are a few pages dedicated to previous artists' renditions of the core dragon types: Black, Blue, Green, Red, and White Dragons, along with Brass, Bronze, Copper, Gold, and Silver Dragons.

For consistency's sake, three works kick off each section: there's a black-and-white illustration from the 1977 Monster Manual, a pen-and-ink dragon from the 1993 Monstrous Manual, and a golden era painting from the '80s or early '90s.

The next page then shows a shrunken-down full-page depiction from the 2003 Draconomicon, a from-below sketch of a dragon's full body length and wingspan, and a cross-promotional piece of dragon art depicted on a Magic: The Gathering card.

I have nothing against the card game Magic. But the inclusion of these cards and their stats—rather than just showing the raw artwork itself—overemphasizes each historical section's cut-and-paste nature. Plus, to non-Magic players, the text on these Magic cards is nearly indecipherable.

Whenever Ancient Brass Dragon deals combat damage to a player, roll a d20. When you do, put any number of target creature cards with total mana value X or less from graveyards onto the battlefield under your control, where X is the result.

Like, what? I know there are a lot of rules to D&D. We just reviewed a combined 1,152 pages' worth of the new Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual. But again: What?

And besides the text on the Magic cards, there's a conspicuous lack of words accompanying each of these historical sections. There are pictures of dragons simply cut-and-paste from their original pages onto these new pages. There's no visual cohesion that embeds their (non-chronological) placement, or rather scattering, across each page. For a caption, you get an artist and a year. That's about it, aside from a couple sentences insisting, Yep, the distinguishing features of this particular dragon were apparent from the get-go.

I will concede, however, that this lack of context renders these dragons usable in any context and role that I want. For instance, I love Clyde Caldwell's "Dragon of Dreams" (1985). Despite my personal knowledge that it's specifically from a Dragonlance module, the lack of that information here in Dragon Delves frees me to reuse "Dragon of Dreams" in any other adventure of my choosing.

Don't get me wrong. Publisher Wizards of the Coast is masterful at page layout and design. This was a task that outdid them, however. It's the first time I've seen D&D Beyond (that's D&D's online component) completely outclass any of D&D's hardcover books. D&D Beyond's depiction of these "History of..." sections is rather chock-a-block, with one image stacked hard atop another. But it uses your browser's full width to great effect.

Each visual history section ends with the dragon's latest redesign in the D&D 2024 Monster Manual. And I've got to tell you: Every single one of the redesigns is incredible, further extruding the unique features and physiology that make D&D dragons distinguishable from any other dragon you might see. The rhino horn on a Blue Dragon, or the eel-like length of the Gold Dragon. Look at these particular dragons long enough and you'll become an expert at picking a D&D dragon out of any crowd.

Ultimately, there are two more things these History of Dragons sections declare. One, that there wouldn't be any old school renaissance if D&D hadn't been there in the first place. And two, amidst a global-wide backlash, there wouldn't be AI art if, again, D&D (and other brilliant artists over the last five decades) hadn't been there in the first place.