[Kuruharan]

Okay, with all due respect to John Howe (and no offense to his fans), he is a wonderful artist and more talented than I could ever possibly hope to be, but I think that his visual representations of Middle earth are almost all wrong. However, sticking to Balrogs specifically, there are several problems that I have with his version.
1. It has wings (but I'm not meaning to open that can o' worms right now.)
2. The Balrogs are entirely too tall. (More on this in a second)
3. He generally makes his Balrogs look like big dogs with bat wings and bull horns.

Back to the matter of size. I find it impossible to believe that Balrogs could be more than 15-20 feet in height.

First when the Balrog is described as towering over Gandalf, you have to remember that the Balrog is being described in relation to. A Maia whose form is that of an old man. You take a 15 foot Balrog and a 5'6" Gandalf, and the Balrog would seem to tower over Gandalf.

Second, the Balrog had existed in Khazad-dum for centuries. It could have lived entirely in the larger chambers (even though I find that a bit hard to swallow), but it is described as physically entering the Chamber of Mazarbul. That chamber was a smallish room, as was the tunnel and the door leading to the room. There is no way that a 50'-80' Balrog could have gotten through.

Third, if the Balrogs could be 80' tall, why did they not just stomp on their enemies and be done with it? That would have been so much simpler than having to battle these puny, pesky elves like Feanor and Fingon who were putting up such a nasty fight.

As for Balrogs changing shape, too much attention is paid to the sentence where the Balrog has the strength of a strangling snake. Just because they had crashed into deep water and the Balrog was still very strong does not mean that he had taken on the form of a snake. The Balrog had always been that strong, its just that the description sounded better now that they were in the water.
Plus, Morgoth and Sauron had both lost the power to shape-shift. I don't see a compelling reason to accept that the Balrogs still had a power that their masters lost.

And in conclusion, I would like to apologize for my lack of quoted material in the above post. My books are packed away in boxes and I can't get to them right now. I'm afraid that you'll have to wait a few more weeks for me to deluge you with my usual slurry of quotes. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]