Category: Illustration Art

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Heads Up! · Illustration Art

Heads Up: ANARCHY COMICS: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION

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I’m a little bit late with this heads up, but as someone who has all four of the original Anarchy Comics, I can assure you, sight unseen, that Anarchy Comics: The Complete Collection, edited by Jay Kinney (224 pages, PM Press), is definitely worth a look:

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Here’s the publisher’s description:

Reviving an iconic comic series originally published from 1978 to 1986, this exclusive collection brings together the legendary four issues of Anarchy Comics, the underground comic that melded anarchist politics with a punk sensibility, producing a riveting mix of satire, revolt, and artistic experimentation. The anthology features previously unpublished work by Jay Kinney and Sharon Rudahl, along with a detailed introduction by Kinney that traces the history of the comic he founded and provides entertaining anecdotes about the process of herding an international crowd of anarchistic writers. Reintroducing the long-out-of-print underground comic that inspired its readers and united a subculture, this collection includes all 30 original contributors from across the globe, including Clifford Harper, Donald Rooum, Gary Panter, Melinda Gebbie, and Steve Stiles, among other talented writers and illustrators.

I’d love to see many more fat reprints of underground comics, and that is why, even though I already have the comics, I intend to buy Anarchy Comics: The Complete Collection.

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

Look Here: Four more F/SF covers with art by Charles Moll

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I featured scans of four Malzberg novels with terrific cover art by Moll on 02 December 2012, and this is sort of a follow-up to that post. Although I’m not a huge fan of his work in general, Charles Moll has produced some very strong covers over the years for various fantasy and science fiction novels, along with many weak ones. Combined with the images in my previous post, the following covers, scanned by me from the old paperbacks in my personal library, should give you an good idea of Moll’s weaknesses and strengths as an image maker:

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Moll’s sombre, psychologically engaging surrealist cover art for Spinrad’s No Direction Home is the clear winner here. The other covers are nothing special, although Moll’s art for Brak the Barbarian (1977) gets points for featuring a pretty-boy protagonist who does not conform to reader expectations for a Conan-esque barbarian hero who lives “in the savage age of blood and barbarism.” It’s an interesting choice, though the sterile execution leaves much to be desired.

With his painting for the cover of Twilight of the Serpent from the same year (1977), Jeffrey Jones produced an image that goes against the grain of heroic fantasy in a similar way but he really made it work, not merely by means of a superior concept but also by means of his superior grasp of the expressive potential of his chosen medium (here’s a link to the full post).

Keywords: The Return of Kavin, The Queen of Air and Darkness and Other Stories, No Direction Home, Brak the Barbarian.

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

Look Here: Two attractive paperback covers with uncredited art

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Whether I’m rummaging through boxes of old paperbacks at a garage sale or tipping the books out quickly, one after the other, from the shelves at a used bookstore or thrift shop to see what the covers look like, I can usually tell at a glance whether the image on the front interests me or not. To speed the plow, I don’t bother looking at “newer” books but instead zero in on anything that looks like it was published in the 1970s or earlier. Also, if the books I’m looking at are divided into genres, I tend to start with the SF and mystery paperbacks, which in my experience tend to have the highest percentage of compelling illustrative covers. But I don’t shy away from other genres, which can produce some nice surprises, like so:

Although uncredited, the cover of The Ugly American is signed by prolific pulp illustrator Barye Phillips. The cover of A Man over Forty, however, is both uncredited and unsigned. Anyone recognize the artist from the style?

Keywords: The Ugly American, A Man over Forty.