Category: Book/Magazine Covers (All)

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Carmine Infantino · Illustration Art · Look Here

Rest in Peace: Carmine Infantino (24 May 1925 – 04 April 2013)

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The great comics artist, designer, editor, and publisher, Carmine Infantino, died earlier today at age 87.

In tribute to the master, I’ve assembled a small gallery of scans, displayed below, that includes several comic covers from the 1950s, pencilled by Infantino and finished by various inkers, including Sy Barry and Bob Lander, along with one cover from 1964, inked by Murphy Anderson, and a couple of pages of original art from Vampirella #59, inked by Alex Nino:

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“You know, the most important thing about my artwork: It never matured. Because just before it reached maturity, I stopped and became an editor. Because a good friend of mine once said to me, ‘Why don’t you ever talk about your artwork? Why don’t you have any around your apartment?’ And the answer is very simple: My artwork to me is like an unfinished symphony, a painting that has never been completely done, a baby that never was produced… You understand what I’m saying?”
— Carmine Infantino, in conversation with Gary Groth, The Comics Journal #191.

BONUS IMAGES (added 05 April 2013):

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RELATED LINKS HERE AT RCN:

Arthur Suydam · Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Connections · Frank Frazetta · Illustration Art · Ken Kelly

Connections: Frank Frazetta and Arthur Suydam

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ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Back to the Stone Age (NY: Ace, 1978), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Art Suydam, Mammoth (1980).
ABOVE: Frank Frazetta, Mammoth (1974).

I scanned the cover of Back to the Stone Age by Edgar Rice Burroughs, with pulse-poundin’ art by Frank Frazetta, from the copy of the paperback edition in my personal library.

Arthur Suydam’s Mammoth was published as a poster/print in both an unsigned and a signed and limited edition by Glimmer Graphics in 1990. I borrowed the image of Mammoth from the Glimmer Graphics site.

Suydam’s stories in Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated were among the best those magazines had to offer.

Frazetta, of course, is Frazetta.

BONUS IMAGES:

ABOVE: Frank Frazetta, Stone Age [Mammoth and Sabre-Toothed Cats] (1964).
ABOVE: Frank Frazetta, Tyrannosaurus and Cavemen (n.d.)
ABOVE: Ken Kelly, Mammoth and Cavemen (1991).

Perhaps those “Bonus Images” ought to have been a “Connections” post all on their own.

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Illustration Art · Look Here

Happy Valentine’s Day 2013 from RCN!

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april-gold-by-grace-livingston-hill_ny-bantam-1971_s5789

There are a LOT of novels in this numbered series of paperbacks by Grace Livinston Hill — the above is number twenty seven! — and to the publisher’s credit, they all have illustrative covers. But sadly, the level of artistry on the covers is, for the most part, neither excellent nor odd enough to make the novels worth collecting. The illustration on the cover of April Gold, however, is not only a cut above ALL of the others that I’ve seen in the series but is quite lovely and, yes, romantic, in and of itself. Which is why I bought it to scan for display online today, 14 February 2013.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Illustration Art · Look Here · Philip K. Dick · Richard Powers

Look Here: THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, with cover art by Richard Powers

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I can’t remember when I bought the sixth printing of the 1974 Berkley Medallion edition of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle for a long time — it was a long time ago — but I do remember being both happy to have the novel to read and unhappy with the cover. Specifically, I’ve always been irritated by the wide red banner that the folks at Berkley Books rudely slapped across the face of Richard Powers’ lovely cover art in order to have a spot to brag about their decision to re-print a much-admired novel and to inform/remind readers that Philip K. Dick’s book had won the Hugo Award for “the best S-F novel of the year” — in 1963! But I am irritated about that no longer, because today I found a copy of the novel with the same cover but without the red banner — Berkley Science Fiction, 1982, tenth printing — in lovely condition, and it only cost me ninety-nine cents and tax to add to my collection.

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Do you see now what was obscured by the red banner? Ironically, it is none other than a little silhouette of “the man” standing ramrod-straight in a void (or hole, or window, or empty eye socket) in Powers’ oddly sculptural, strangely forbidding “high castle.”

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Illustration Art · Leo and Diane Dillon · Look Here

Look Here: DEATHBIRD STORIES, with cover art and design by Leo and Diane Dillon

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It’s not often that I see paperbacks by Harlan Ellison on the shelves in thrift stores these days — or used-book stores, period — but a couple of months ago, I came across what looks to me to be an unread copy of Deathbird Stories at Value Village — I took it off the shelf just before a local bookseller showed up, looking for underpriced books to stock his shelves, and when I showed him what I had found (I’ve purchased books from his store many times; his prices are reasonable), he told me that I was lucky that I had gotten there before him — and because the book also had the classic cover with both art and design by Leo and Diane Dillon, I bought it. Here’s a scan of the front and back covers along with a rough panorama of the wraparound:

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Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Illustration Art · Look Here

Look Here: Two “Michael Shayne Murder Mystery” novels with cover art by Robert Stanley

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Actually, only A Taste for Violence includes the credit line “Cover painting by Robert Stanley,” but the stylistic and circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that Stanley produced the cover painting for The Corpse Came Calling as well. And yet, the style was common during the period, so maybe someone else deserves the credit:

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The diagrams on the backs of the novels are not something I personally tend to associate with mystery fiction — fantasy fiction, on the other hand, seems to me to be head-over-heels in love with maps and really ought to marry them — but I do wonder if readers at the time ever actually consulted the back covers as they were reading. The disappearance of the maps and floor plans from later editions of the novels may be a sign that they were not a big selling point, that punchy, suggestive copy did more to whet the reader’s appetite for the story within than a label-festooned diagram of an apartment or a neighbourhood ever could.

I’ve got many more “Michael Shayne Murder Mysteries” to scan and post, all with cover art by everybody’s favourite pulp cover artist, Robert McGinnis, but those will have to wait for another day…

Keywords: The Corpse Came Calling, A Taste for Violence, Michael Shayne.