Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Frank Frazetta · Illustration Art · Look Here · Roy Krenkel

Look Here: Three Ace paperbacks, with cover art by Frazetta

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Frazetta’s Krenkel-influenced Edgar Rice Burroughs covers will be familiar to many, but his Maza of the Moon cover is somewhat less well known, mainly because the book’s author, Otis Adelbert Kline, never achieved any lasting popularity:

If Otis Adelbert Kline is known for anything, it is not the quality of his writing but the way he promoted his highly derivative adventure stories by surreptitiously circulating a rumour, reported in the fan press but later debunked, of a feud between himself and the pulp-fiction juggernaut he most closely styled himself after, Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Next up: more Jones covers!

Keywords: Carson of Venus, Lost on Venus, Maza of the Moon.

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

Look Here: Four Ace SF Specials, with cover art by Leo & Diane Dillon

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More scans from the library of you-know-who:

To view all of the scans of covers by Leo and Diane Dillon that I’ve posted so far, click here.

Keywords: The Silent Multitude, The Jagged Orbit, The Island under the Earth, And Chaos Died.

Book/Magazine Covers (All) · Book/Magazine Covers (Jones) · Drawings and Sketches (Jones) · Illustration Art · Jeffrey "Jeff" Catherine Jones · Look Here

Look Here: “Wolfling”/”Conan” art by Jeffrey Jones

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This past weekend, I finally located (and purchased) a copy of Gordon R. Dickson’s Wolfling, with cover by Jeffrey Jones, so now, at last, I can post this comparison of two very similar images by Jones executed in two different mediums, oil vs. ink:

The “Conan” frontispiece was published in Savage Sword of Conan in 1975, but the style and the signature suggest to me that it was created around the time of the 1969 Wolfling cover. Anyone know if the “Conan” frontispiece was published anywhere else prior to its appearance in Savage Sword?

Frank Frazetta · Look Here · Woody Allen

Look Here: “Make Beautiful Hair Blecch”

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The “Make Beautiful Hair Blecch” ad parody, which featured Frank Frazetta’s classic portrait of Ringo Starr, was the back cover of issue #90 (October 1964) of Mad Magazine:

frank-frazetta_back-cover_mad-magazine-n90-oct1964

The story is, Frazetta’s “Ringo Starr” portrait caught the eye of United Artists films, which then commissioned Frazetta to do his first poster art for a movie, What’s New Pussycat?, a 1965 comedy written by Woody Allen. I don’t have a copy of that poster, but I did purchase an LP, in very good condition, of the What’s New Pussycat? Original Motion Picture Score, with music by Burt Bacharach, last month from a local Value Village store, and have been waiting for the right moment to post it. Now might be the time:

frank-frazetta_lp-cover_whats-new-pussycat

frank-frazetta_detail_whats-new-pussycat_lp
ABOVE: Although this scan appears to be the same width as the previous one, if you click through to the file, you will find that it is actually a bit larger/wider.

Guess it’s lucky for fans of Frazetta’s movie posters that the “Ringo Starr” portrait appeared in a beautifully designed fake advertisement on the magazine’s back cover, where it could be reproduced in “glorious technicolor,” because buried inside the magazine, where it would have had to appear in black and white, the portrait probably would not have attracted the attention from Hollywood that it did, and Frazetta’s lively and lucrative side-career as a movie poster artist would not have gotten off the ground.

BTW, sorry about the lousy image quality: the album wouldn’t fit on the scanner bed, so I had to scan in pieces, stitch together the panoramas, and touch up (very roughly) around the edges. The results aren’t the best, but I’m not scanning (or photographing) for print reproduction, only appreciation.

Heads Up! · Richard Corben

Heads Up: Another Corben Art Sale

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Another selection of Corben comic art pages will go on sale Saturday 21 August 2010, at 12:00 noon, Central Standard Time. The sale includes 10 pages from Hellboy: The Crooked Man, 11 pages from Rip in Time (which I hope have been scanned and the files properly backed up, so a best-possible-quality new edition can be published at a later date), and 10 pages from Ghost Rider. The pages are up for “viewing only” now. The prices will be posted when the sale goes live on Saturday, the 21st.

If I had the money to purchase one item from the sale, I’d buy the original black-and-white art for the following page:

richard-corben_hellboy-the-crooked-man-v1p13
Heads Up! · Walt Kelly

Heads Up: Pogo and Walt Kelly Get Their Due

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This fall should see the publication of the first volume in the proposed twelve-volume reprint series, Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips, from Fantagraphics Books. Here’s what’s been posted thus far at Amazon:

walt-kelly_pogo

Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder (v. 1) [Hardcover]</strong

Walt Kelly (Author), Jimmy Breslin (Introduction), Steve Thompson (Contributor)

Product Description

A masterpiece of satirical comics finally gets its due. Walt Kelly started his career at age 13 in Connecticut as a cartoonist and reporter for the Bridgeport Post. In 1935, he moved to Los Angeles and joined the Walt Disney Studio, where he worked on classic animated films, including Pinocchio, Dumbo, and Fantasia. Rather than take sides in a bitter labor strike, he moved back east in 1941 and began drawing comic books. It was during this time that Kelly created Pogo Possum. The character first appeared in Animal Comics as a secondary player in the “Albert the Alligator” feature. It didn’t take long until “Pogo” became the comic’s leading character. After WWII, Kelly became artistic director at the New York Star, where he turned Pogo into a daily strip. By late 1949, Pogo appeared in hundreds of newspapers. Until his death in 1973, Kelly produced a feature that has become widely cherished among casual readers and aficionados alike.

Kelly blended nonsense language, poetry, and political and social satire to make Pogo an essential contribution to American “intellectual” comics. As the strip progressed, it became a hilarious platform for Kelly’s scathing political views in which he skewered national bogeymen like J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon. Kelly started when newspaper strips shied away from politics — Pogo was ahead of its time and ahead of later strips (such as Doonesbury and The Boondocks) that tackled political issues. Our first volume reprints approximately the first two years of Pogo — dailies and (for the first time) full-color Sundays. This first volume also introduces such enduring supporting characters as Porkypine, Churchy LaFemme, Beauregard Bugleboy, Seminole Sam, Howland Owl, and many others. And for Christmas, 1949, Kelly started his tradition of regaling his readers with his infamously and gloriously mangled Christmas carols.

Special features in this sumptuous premiere volume (the first of twelve), which is produced with the full cooperation of Kelly’s heirs, include an extensive biographical introduction by Kelly biographer Steve Thompson, a section explaining some of the more obscure current references, and more. Color and black-and-white comic strips throughout.

Product Details

* Hardcover: 360 pages
* Publisher: Fantagraphics Books; illustrated edition edition (September 28, 2010)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 1560978694
* ISBN-13: 978-1560978695
* Product Dimensions: 11 x 9 x 1 inches

And once you have volume one in hand, and you’re anxiously waiting volume two to appear, you will almost certainly be tempted by the following book from Hermes Press:

walt-kelly_life-and-art

Here’s the info from the Hermes Press site:

The Life And Times Of Walt Kelly
By Thomas Andrae and Carsten Laqua

The first comprehensive monograph about Pogo creator Walt Kelly, detailing all of his work from its beginning with Walt Disney through his long creative work on his signature character, Pogo. This all color art book is profusely illustrated with original artwork and documentary materials never before seen.

Hardcover: $49.99
Ages, 16 and up
ISBN #1-932563-05-9
208 pages, color, 12″ x 12″
Coming soon…

I go Pogo! How about you?

Heads Up! · John Buscema

Heads Up: “John Buscema: Michelangelo of Comics”

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john-buscema_michelangelo-of-comics

Despite the uninspired cover design, fans of John Buscema’s work will undoubtedly want to own this book. Here’s the Amazon listing:

John Buscema: Michelangelo of Comics Deluxe Hardcover
Brian Peck (Author), John Buscema (Artist), Joe Sinnott (Artist)

Product Details:

* Hardcover: 176 pages
* Publisher: Hermes Press; Deluxe edition (Aug 10 2010)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 1932563555
* ISBN-13: 978-1932563559

Product Description:

Now for the first time a comprehensive art book about one of the greatest comic artists,commonly referred to by his peers as “The Michelangelo of Comics,” John Buscema. This exhaustive look at Buscema’s career and art covers every aspect of this legend’s work and is generously illustrated with over 200 examples of the master’s original art. Over five years in preparation, comics historian Brian Peck interviewed everyone of note who ever worked with Buscema and paints a complete picture of one of the comics most outstanding artists. This hardcover is limited to 300 copies with a special print pencilled by Buscema with inks by Joe Sinnnott.

“Aug 10 2010”? Drat. I’m late to the party again! (Or am I? Has anyone seen this in stores yet?)

P.S. According to Amazon, a softcover edition was to be released on the same date as the hardcover.

P.P.S. On an earlier version of the cover released for publicity purposes and available all over the Web, the name Michelangelo is misspelled “Michaelangelo”; but now I see a new image has been posted on the Hermes Press site, with the spelling corrected. I wonder if the people at Hermes Press noticed the mistake before or after the book went to press. Because if it was after, the book might be delayed…

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

Look Here: Five random covers, with art by Frank Frazetta

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I don’t have a lot of paperbacks with cover art by Frank Frazetta, but here are a few I do have…

Rogue Roman is an early cover painting by Frazetta that someone out there might enjoy seeing in its original format. The painting sans text appears in the Frazetta art book, Icon (Grass Valley, CA: Underwood Books, 1998), page 126. Looks a lot different there, too: the overall tone is much, much warmer. But I can’t decide if Rogue Roman is one of those pieces that was altered at a later date by Frazetta or not. And since there’s no mention of alterations in the discussion that accompanies the painting in Icon, it might just be a case of inaccurate reproduction on the paperback. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Of course, most Frazetta fans know that what makes the artist’s Moon Maid cover more than just a visually arresting illustration is that the original painting was substantially altered (though not, IMHO, improved) by Frazetta when he got it back from the publisher; which is to say, the painting as you see it here no longer exists.

The male model for The Mucker could easily have been Frazetta himself.

And finally, the central figure in Frazetta’s Tanar of Pellucidar was clearly swiped by Arthur Suydam for the painting that appears on the cover of his The Art of the Barbarian (Special Edition): Conan, Tarzan, Death Dealer. Look it up and you’ll see!

Keywords: Rogue Roman, The Book of Paradox, The Moon Maid, The Mucker, Tanar of Pellucidar.

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

Look Here: Two “Ben Gates Mystery” novels, with covers by McGinnis

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One bare foot… hm… perhaps it’s a sign… a symbol of some sort… if only I could think what it means…

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]


Sorry about the iffy scan on the second one. The book is a little bit warped, so the scanner created and caught a bit of glare.

BONUS COVER SCAN (added 14 August 2010):

This evening, as I was absent-mindedly browsing the paperback shelves in our basement, I came across a cover by an uncredited artist that had something about it that made me want to include it here…

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]

BONUS LINK:

Flickr > Kyle Katz > Robert Foster Covers

Keywords: Kill Now, Pay Later, Some Like It Cool, In Pursuit of the English.