Early life Rodger MacGowan was born in San Francisco in 1948, the son of career
Marine Donald L. MacGowan, and grew up on various Marine bases in Hawaii, North Carolina, New Jersey, and California. Rodger was a budding artist from a young age and using his personal observations of military life, he began creating military history illustrations in the seventh grade. MacGowan restarted his gaming hobby again after playing Avalon Hill's
Panzer Blitz. MacGowan kept in touch with his high school gaming friends, corresponding with them about the games he was playing and describing the games in "Battle Reports" which included maps and analyses. These proved to be so popular with his friends that he expanded his concept to create an amateur magazine,
Arquebus. Following graduation, he found work at an advertising agency, where he was serendipitously given the opportunity to create cover art for one of the agency's accounts, a science fiction magazine titled
Vertex. Although the magazine only lasted sixteen issues (1973–1975), MacGowan contributed one cover and over a dozen interior illustrations for various science fiction stories. MacGowan moved to Los Angeles to become a television graphic artist. The first issue was 48 pages, and had a circulation of 2000. In 1982,
F&M was sold to
Steve Jackson Games. For many years, MacGowan was a graphic design consultant with
Computer Gaming World.
Personal MacGowan enjoyed music, especially movie scores by
Jerry Goldsmith, for inspiration while painting. He was married and lived in
Santa Monica, California. He died on February 21, 2025 of pneumonia. ==Partial list of box cover art by company==