Frazetta’s Krenkel-influenced Edgar Rice Burroughs covers will be familiar to many, but his Maza on the Moon cover is somewhat less well known, mainly because the book’s author, Otis Adelbert Kline, never achieved any lasting popularity:
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- ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Carson of Venus (New York: Ace, 1963), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
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- ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lost on Venus (New York: Ace, 1963), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
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- 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!
The old scale problem arises on MAZA OF THE MOON: if the woman is not a giantess, but normal sized (compared to the male), then she and the creature are closer to the viewer than he is, and he’s shooting at something behind them (out into space). Oops!