Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Connections · Dan Panosian · Frank Frazetta · Illustration Art

Connections: Frank Frazetta (1976) and Dan Panosian (2021)

ABOVE: Frank Frazetta, Dark Kingdom (1976).
ABOVE: Conan the Barbarian, vol. 2, no. 20 (2021), with variant cover art by Dan Panosian.

BONUS IMAGE:

ABOVE: Karl Edward Wagner, Dark Crusade (NY: Warner Books, 1983), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.

LATE BREAKING ADDITION (courtesy of an intrepid reader; see the comments section of this post):

ABOVE: Conan (1981) by Joe Jusko.

Filter Frazetta and Jusko through Panosian’s style, and voilà: a variant Conan cover!

Chris Achilleos · Connections · Frank Frazetta

Connections: Frank Frazetta and Chris Achilleos

What interests me about these juxtapositions is not merely Achilleos’s obvious debt to Frazetta but that each of the artists revised his original composition after first publication. Whether the compositions are better or worse now, you can decide for yourself. In both instances, however, the changes were probably driven by what I like to call “the tyranny of second thoughts.” That is, once one gets it into one’s head that improvements are possible, it is damned difficult to resist sacrificing what one has for the promise of something better.

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Connections · Frank Frazetta · Illustration Art

Connections: Frazetta and Maren

[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

Dig the fancy bladework of the attacker in Maren’s painting!


BONUS IMAGES:

Keywords: The Black Star by Lin Carter, Frank Frazetta, Conan, Maren, Mariano Pérez Clemente.

Bill Sienkiewicz · Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Connections · Illustration Art · J. C. Leyendecker · Look Here

Connections: Leyendecker and Sienkiewicz

Old news, I know… but anyway… it’s the style that’s important here:

[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

An homage done the right way by Sienkiewicz!

(If you know of a closer match, please feel free to post a link in the comments. I don’t have time to search… )

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Connections · Illustration Art · J. C. Leyendecker · Maxfield Parrish

Connections: Leyendecker (1918) and Pound (1980)

[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]


BONUS IMAGE (added 21 January 2016):

Connections · Illustration Art · Jeffrey "Jeff" Catherine Jones · Look Here · Photos

Connections: Jeffrey Jones and the great unknown

Stumbling around on tumblr today, I came across an uncredited image that reminded me of something I had seen before…

If anyone recognizes that photo and can tell me when and where it was published, I’d love to hear from you. And if you have a copy of the publication and could supply me with a better scan, well, that’d be just peachy.


UPDATE (22 June 2015):

Thanks to the inspired efforts of an anonymous reader (see the comments section below), we now have the precise context for Jones’s “reference photo” posted above. The source is a photo layout titled “Secrets From My Diary,” shot by J. Frederick Smith, for the December 1973 issue of VIVA (vol. 1, no. 3). And thanks to the efforts of fans on the VFILES site, we can view the photo in the context of the original NSFW article/layout:

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]

The scans are small, yes, even if you click to enlarge them, but the information is much appreciated. Thanks, hsc!