"This day's experience, set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside." –Alice Munro, "What is Remembered"
From Girls’ Love Stories #1 (August – September 1949), here’s “Unlucky Heart,” with script by Robert Kanigher (uncredited), pencils by Alex Toth — who had graduated from the High School of Industrial Art less than two years earlier, in 1947 — and inks by Bernie Sachs:
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Originally written by Cole Porter for his 1953 musical Can-Can, “It’s All Right with Me” is also the fifth track on the 1962 instrumental album, Playing It Straight, by comedy legends Henry “Homer” Haynes and Kenneth “Jethro” Burns:
From my own collection, presented in order of publication:
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To view three other “Guardians” paperbacks with cover art by Jeffrey Jones, click here, here, and here.
To view a couple more “Kothar” paperback with cover art by Jones, click here and here.
And finally, to view all of the paperbacks with cover art by Jeffrey Jones that I’ve posted so far, click here.
Flipping through the second issue of the E.C. fanzine, Squa Tront, I came across a profile of Bernie Wrightson that made me chuckle. Published in September 1968 — the same year that, according to his official Web site, Wrightson “turned pro” — the profile includes a short biographical and artistic statement as well as three full-page reproductions of Wrightson’s work. In the statement, the man formerly known as “Bernard Albert Wrightson” explains why he has decided to go by the name “Berni” instead of “Bernie” (a decision he later reversed); he forthrightly acknowledges his longstanding fascination with and admiration for the work of Frank Frazetta; and he vigorously defends himself from the charge that his own work is overly indebted to that same artist: “He’s [Frazetta has] probably inspired me more than anyone else and to this day, I hear so much about my copying or ‘swiping’ from him. Well, I have never had a piece of Frazettart [sic] on the board while working. This is just my natural way of drawing, as I was drawing like this long before I ever laid eyes on his work. It’s just my misfortune (?) that our work appears similar.” Trouble is, Wrightson, who was only about 20 years old at the time, says right in his statement that he “became interested in art at about age twelve and when I was fifteen, ‘discovered Frazetta.'” Now, I don’t know what kind of prodigy Wrightson was, but if he was drawing like Frazetta long before he ever laid eyes on Frazetta’s work, then clearly he would have had to have been doing so between the ages of 12 and 15… which, to my mind, definitely does not pass the… uhm… uh… anyway, from Squa Tront #2 (September 1968), here’s “Profile: Bernie Wrightson,” along with an illustration by Frazetta, originally published in the Canaveral Press edition of E.R.B.’s Tarzan and the Castaways (1965), that did NOT appear in Squa Tront but, in light of Wrightson’s statement, holds a certain interest, I think.
Do you see now why “Profile: Berni Wrightson” made me chuckle? Ah, the impetuousness of youth!
Of course, Wrightson would eventually synthesize his influences to produce some of the best horror comics and illustrations of the 1970s and beyond. But he clearly hadn’t done so in 1968. And from all the work I’ve seen, I’d argue that he didn’t do so for a few more years after that. Which, btw, is a perfectly normal path of development for an artist, right down to the denials…
For the Charlton romance comic Time for Love #18 (September 1970), a young José Luis García-López pencilled and inked “A Kiss to Remember,” which was also the story that was featured on the cover. The cover, however, wasn’t by García-López; rather, it was cobbled together from various García-López story panels — some flipped, others not — by penciller Art Cappello and inker Charles Nicholas, which perhaps explains why it doesn’t accurately depict any particular scene in the story. Here, take a look:
Click here to view García-López’s panels in the context of the story.
From the Charlton romance comic, Time for Love #18 (September 1970), here’s “A Kiss to Remember” with uncredited but signed comic art by Spanish artist, José Luis García-López, who was only about 22 years old at the time but was undoubtedly already turning the heads of American comics editors and readers alike with an attractive, naturalistic fine-line style that aficionados would immediately have recognized as falling squarely within the Alex Raymond/Leonard Starr/Stan Drake school of comics photorealism:
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I’m not a big fan of comics photorealism, but when I accidentally come across accomplished but uncredited artwork like the above in an otherwise lacklustre Charlton romance comic, I am compelled to find out who the artist is, though in this instance, it was easy: I recognized the signature!
From my very own collection of crispy-crunchy sf-and-f paperbacks, here are three more classic Zebra/Kensington covers, with wrap-around art by Jeffrey Jones, whose new book, Jeffrey Jones: A Life in Art (IDW), is available in stores now, in both regular and signed/numbered editions:
To view a pair of Zebra/Kensington Robert E. Howard paperbacks with cover art by Jeffrey Jones that I posted earlier, click here.
Here’s some background information about The Hunting of the Snark (ISBN-10: 1854379569; ISBN-13: 978-1854379566), as posted in the online catalogue of the publisher, Tate Publishing:
The Hunting of the Snark tells the story of how the Bellman and his eccentric crew, who include a butcher, a baker, a beaver and a tailor, set off in quest of that most mysterious and elusive of creatures, the Snark.
In 1959 Tove Jansson, the author and illustrator of the Moomin books, was commissioned to illustrate a Swedish language edition of Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece. She proved an inspired choice, the enigmatic charms of her illustrative style bringing the beauty and strangeness of Carroll’s tale to life, as the minds of two of the greatest children’s authors of the past 150 years met on the page.
Remarkably, amid the huge, worldwide success of her stories from Moominvalley, Jansson’s unique edition of The Hunting of the Snark was forgotten, remaining un-available for over fifty years. Now, for the first time, her beautiful illustrations are matched with the original English text in this facsimile edition, so that readers can enjoy this wonderful adventure afresh through the eyes of one of Europe’s finest illustrators.
About the author and illustrator
Lewis Carroll (1832-98) is the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Carroll was a mathematics lecturer who in his spare time penned poems, short stories and children’s tales as well as puzzles and games of logic. He was also a pioneering photographer.
Finnish author and illustrator Tove Jansson (1914-2001) is most famous for her much-loved Moomin characters. A novelist, painter, illustrator and cartoonist, Jansson’s books have been translated into over forty languages. [Source]
According to the catalogue record at Amazon.ca, Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark, with illustrations by Tove Jansson, will be available for purchase in September 2011; according to this facebook post, however, the book will be available 18 March 2011 at Tate Online Shop.
BONUS LINK:
Tove Jansson’s illustrations: »The Hunting of the Snark«
The famous cover of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D #6 (November 1968) is commonly referred to as Steranko’s “homage to Wally Wood” — that spacesuit! — although many have noted that the cover could almost as easily be seen as an homage to Famous Funnies #214, with art by Frazetta. I don’t, however, recall anyone mentioning what I believe is a swipe by Steranko from the opening panel of “The Man in Grey,” World of Fantasy #7 (May 1957), with art by Gray Morrow. Or maybe I’m just seeing things. Take a look and decide for yourself…
Yes, the yellow-and-orange-suited figure on the 1952 cover of Weird Science #15 (art by Wally Wood; see above) is in the ballpark — it may, in fact, have been an influence on both Morrow and Steranko — but there’s something about that Morrow panel…
Ragged Claws Network 
