Talk:You Make the Card
The following paragraph was posted without a source. I doubt its veracity, because the magicthegathering.com website didn't go live with Magic content until 2001. --Hunter (talk) 06:29, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
Doubt it's veracity no more! Here is the wayback link https://web.archive.org/web/20030622004650/http://www.wizards.com:80/magic/expert/apocalypse/ap_article_rememberme.asp --Jeremy3681 (talk) 07:18, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Create a Creature Contest
In the late fall of 1999, the Magic: The Gathering team launched the Create a Creature contest. In this contest, new Magic players were asked to dig deep into the darkest regions of their brainpans and describe the most bizarre, monstrous, powerful creature they could possibly imagine.
Ten winners had their monstrosities illustrated by top fantasy artists, and one lucky monster-maker had the prize of seeing their creation made real in the Magic world. The brother team of Gregory and Bradley from Wisconsin were the lucky winners. Their winning concoction was the creature - Spirit Monger.
Spirit Monger was originally selected as one of 11 semi-finalists from amongst over 12,000 Create A Creature entries. A select panel of judges including members from Magic R&D, Brand Team and Creative Team, read every single entry and submitted their list of finalists to be narrowed down. From there, an even bigger panel of judges looked at the lists of creatures and weighed each creature's impact on the world of Magic. After much deliberation, the 11 semi-finalists were chosen and announced.
Once all 11 semi-finalists were announced, the decision was left to the Magic players on the Wizards of the Coast website. Voting commenced, and in the end, Spirit Monger was the creature that won the contest with the most votes.
From there, the task of turning Spirit Monger into an official Magic card was left in the hands of Magic Research & Development. After looking at the creature's description and illustration, the R&D team went to work deciding when and where Spirit Monger would appear. Since the Spirit Monger was part tree creature and yet used a protective shield of dead spirits, it was perplexing to think that Spirit Monger would have both Green and Black abilities... well at least not until Apocalypse.
With the no-holds barred enemy aligned colored insanity in Apocalypse, the renamed Spiritmonger was an obvious fit. Most likely a product of the green and black magic surrounding the conflict in the Urborg swamps, Spiritmonger emerged with a power that will have you wondering if your next Apocalypse deck will sport 4 copies of this bad-*** beast.