"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 1997, here’s Richard Corben’s original marker-on-vellum cover art for Aliens: Alchemy #1, along with scans of all three covers in the Alchemy mini-series:
From Grim Wit #2, published in September 1973, here’s a rollicking six-pager with story by Doug Moench and art by the great Richard Corben:
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I first read “Damsel in Dragon Dress” in the trade-paperback collection, The Odd Comic World of Richard Corben, which I purchased new, back in high school, from a “Captain Company” advertisement in either Creepy or Eerie, I forget which… it was a long time ago… but I still have my original copy of that book, along with very nice backup copy that I bought on ebay years later…
From Slow Death #2 (Dec. 1970), here’s an underground classic by Richard Corben:
Next weekend, if you’ve got the bucks, and you’re quick on the draw, you could be the proud owner of the original art for a page like this:
According to a recent email announcement from Dona Corben, “Corben comic art pages will go on sale Saturday, November 20th, at Noon, Central time. The pages are up for ‘viewing only’ now. The prices will be posted when the sale goes live on Saturday, the 20th.” Included in the sale will be pages from Hellboy: Crooked Man, Rip in Time, and Swamp Thing #7 and #8.
That link again is http://www.corbencomicart.com/sales.html
[CLICK EACH IMAGE TO ENLARGE, or RIGHT CLICK > SAVE LINK AS… TO READ OFFLINE]
Corben has always had a knack for small-scale figurative sculpture, but in the thirty-seven years since the above interview, he has stayed true to his original impulse to use sculpture mainly as a means to an end, namely, the precise delineation of form in his comics, and has never seriously pursued sculpture as an independent art.
From The Mirk-Wood Times #4 and #5 (1973), here are the first two parts of an obscure interview with Richard Corben, who was then only 32 years old:
[CLICK EACH IMAGE TO ENLARGE, or RIGHT CLICK > SAVE LINK AS… TO READ OFFLINE]
Some interesting tidbits of information in there… if you’re a Corben fan… too bad I don’t own the issue with part three… it would help if I could find any evidence that part three was ever published…
Richard Corben turned 70 on 01 October 2010.
Where has the time gone?
The first illustration posted below appeared on the inside back cover of Barbarian Comics #2 (1972) and the second appeared in Barbarian Comics #3 (1974):
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
I wonder if the illustration from 1972 was one of the inspirations for the opening scene of Corben and Strnad’s New Tales of the Arabian Nights (New York: HM Communications, 1979), in which two brothers, Shahryar and Shahzaman, are blackmailed by a woman who was snatched on her wedding night by a giant jinni named Ifrit so that none might lay with her but him, and who takes her revenge on the beast by cuckolding him, whenever he sleeps, with whatever men happen to be available: “My lovers have numbered five hundred and seventy,” she tells the brothers with a leer, “and now I would count two more.” And since refusal means certain death at the hands of the jealous jinni, whom the woman has threatened to awaken from his sleep should she not get her way, the pragmatic brothers do what must be done to save their lives.
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:
The following interview-based article on Richard Corben from the June 1993 issue of Airbrush Action was published at a time when Corben’s creative energy was almost entirely focused on his own Fantagor Press. The article includes a brief overview of Corben’s career to that point, technical information about how Corben used Paasche H and V airbrushes in conjunction with other media, and cool tidbits such as Corben’s recollection that the celebrated Bat out of Hell album cover took him only two days to produce.
And as a bonus, at the end, I’ve included a pair of images that don’t appear in the interview.
Enjoy!
This morning, I received an email announcement that original black-and-white comic art pages by Richard Corben are now up for preview at the Corben Studios Web site and will go on sale on Saturday 29 May 2010, at noon CST. [N.B.: Due to technical difficulties with the secure cart service, the Corben art sale has been stopped today, 29 May 2010, and will be rescheduled. Please consult the Corben site for updated information!] Prices will be posted when the sale goes live, and pages will be allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis: “the first person to complete the shopping cart, gets the page.” The sale includes pages from Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Aliens: Alchemy, and Rip in Time. Here’s an example of a page you could own:
And one final thought: let’s all hope somebody somewhere has good quality digital scans of all of these pages, with proper backups, because reprints scanned from printed comics always show it, and I don’t mean in a good way!
Ragged Claws Network 