"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"
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mad King (New York: Ace, n.d.), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Pellucidar (New York: Ace, 1972), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Oakdale Affair (New York: Ace, n.d.), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land of Hidden Men (New York: Ace, 1978), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, At the Earth’s Core (New York: Ace, n.d.), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Carson of Venus (New York: Ace, n.d.), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
Seems the designers at Ace couldn’t decide whether Ace’s 1970s reprint series of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels looked better with the art wrapped around to decorate the spine (as pictured above) or with coloured type on a white background (not pictured). No doubt, there was a lot of annoying input from marketing about which design would be more attractive on the store shelves and ultimately produce better sales…
The more elaborate Carson of Venus design is the odd man out here, I know, but since it is the last Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback with cover art by Frazetta that I have on hand, I thought I might as well throw it in as a bonus!
Keywords:The Mad King, Pellucidar, The Oakdale Affair, The Land of Hidden Men, At the Earth’s Core, Carson of Venus.
Well… in all fairness, the two paintings posted below are different enough that I probably should have tossed this post into the “Connections” category. And you know what? I think I might have done so, if only Boas’s style here weren’t every bit as derivative as his concept…
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ABOVE: Frank Frazetta, The Dark Kingdom, Creepy, vol. 1, no. 9 (June 1966).
ABOVE: Marcus Boas, untitled illustration, signed and dated 1982, back cover, Heroic Fantasy, vol. 1, no. 1 (February 1984).
Marcus Boas’s debt to Frazetta in the above painting is clear enough, I think; however, in terms of painting technique, colour sense, and model types, Boas owes an even bigger debt to Boris Vallejo circa 1980. Because the fact is, Boas’s Heroic Fantasy painting is pure pastiche. It has nothing original about it other than the poorly designed creatures whose misshapen wings are attached to their bodies by wishful thinking rather than by anatomy and the inevitable awkwardness that seems to emerge whenever a mediocre illustrator attempts to make changes to a composition he has cribbed from an acknowledged master.
BONUS IMAGES:
Two covers by Boris Vallejo, scanned from the paperback library of yours truly:
ABOVE: Donald J. Pfeil, Through the Reality Warp (New York: Ballantine, 1976), with cover art by Boris Vallejo.
ABOVE: Andrew J. Offutt and Richard K. Lyon, Demon in the Mirror (New York: Pocket Books, 1978), with cover art by Boris Vallejo.
As I recall, Boris’s un-Frazetta-like cover for Demon in the Mirror made a big impression on me as a teenager, and truth be told, it remains one of a handful of Boris’s covers that I quite like. In recent years, Boris has unfortunately transformed his fantasy art into a platform to indulge what can only be described as a personal fetish for the bodybuilder physique, both male and female. Notice, however, that no bodybuilders were recruited to pose and flex for either of the above covers — thank god!
Keywords:Through the Reality Warp, Demon in the Mirror.
Look closely and you just might see the tell-tale signs that Big John Buscema had Frazetta’s lion in mind, and perhaps even on his desk, when he drew the cover of Conan the Barbarian #96:
The face of Frazetta’s lion is so lively and expressive that it makes Buscema’s more symmetrical version seem flat and mask-like in comparison.
The Bud’s Art Books catalogue arrived today, and as I was flipping idly through the pages, I noticed something that seemed familiar in a tiny thumbnail image of a book cover (issue 1010F, page 67, item E). Here, take a look at the much larger images below, and see if you notice it, too.
Is this mere happenstance? Maybe, maybe not. You decide.
ABOVE: Lin Carter, Thongor against the Gods (New York: Paperback Library, 1967), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Lin Carter, Thongor in the City of Magicians (New York: Paperback Library, 1968), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
The painting on the cover of Thongor in the City of Magicians also appeared on the cover and foil-embossed slipcase of Night Images, a limited-edition collection of Robert E. Howard’s fantasy verse published by The Morning Star Press in 1976, with interior illustrations by Richard Corben. That same year, the Morning Star Press also published the hardcover black-and-white, first-edition of Corben’s Bloodstar, which was an adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “Valley of the Worm.”
Now, did you know, dear reader, that a few years earlier, writers Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, along with artist Gil Kane and inker Ernie Chua (Chan), had produced a comics adaptation of “Valley of the Worm” for the third issue (April 1973) of the Marvel series, Supernatural Thrillers?
And did you also know that Gil Kane was co-editor at The Morning Star Press, along with Armand Eisen, of Corben’s Bloodstar, and that Kane himself was the one who suggested the hero’s name be changed from “Niord” to “Bloodstar” and designed the distinctive star mark on Bloodstar’s forehead?
Well, even if you didn’t know before, you do now!
Small world, eh?
Keywords:Thongor Against the Gods, Thongor in the City of Magicians.
P.S. I not only own several copies of the signed and limited first edition of Bloodstar but I actually have in my collection a beautiful copy of the slipcased, limited edition of Night Images. Lucky me!
Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the cover of the first edition of Herbert D. Kastle’s paperback original, The Reassembled Man, which I purchased for the princely sum of four bucks in a used bookstore here in the Queen City earlier today:
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ABOVE: Herbert D. Kastle, The Reassembled Man (New York: Fawcett, 1964), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
The lesson here is: don’t swipe holus-bolus from a masterwork of illustration art unless you’re certain you have the chops to transform what you’ve swiped into a new image that doesn’t make viewers shake their heads in dismay not only at your lack of originality but also at your shaky grasp of the basic skills of a professional artist:
ABOVE: Frank Frazetta, cover and interior illustration, Tarzan and the Castaways (New York: Canaveral, 1965) by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
ABOVE: Brent Anderson, cover illustration, Ka-Zar the Savage #13 (April 1982).
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:
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Carson of Venus (New York: Ace, 1963), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lost on Venus (New York: Ace, 1963), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Otis Adelbert Kline, Maza of the Moon (New York: Ace, 1965), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
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.
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.
ABOVE: Lance Horner, Rogue Roman (New York: Fawcett, n.d.), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Louise Cooper, The Book of Paradox (New York: Dell, 1975), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Moon Maid (New York: Ace, 1978), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mucker (New York: Ace, 1974), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tanar of Pellucidar (New York: Ace, 1982), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
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.
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