Ragged Claws Network

Click here to view all of the Paul Lehr paperback covers I’ve posted so far.

In the comments section of a previous post here at RCN, frequent commenter on this blog, Chris A, writes:

Just happened to see that someone posted scans of Jones’ “Harry” in glorious black and white! It originally ran in VAMPIRELLA #32 in 1974 with garish colors by Rich Corben (whose work I quite like, but this was a bad pairing), and was reprinted in a later VAMPIRELLA in black and white (which these scans came from). Enjoy!

http://atomic-surgery.blogspot.com/2009/10/harry-by-jeff-jones.html

Thanks for the link, Chris. No doubt about it: stripped of Corben’s day-glo colours, “Harry” is a real stunner!

For easy comparison, here is the colour version, which (as Chris A notes) appeared in Vampirella #32 (April 1974):

Anyone prefer the colour version?

The cavalcade of covers by Jeffrey Jones continues, though the pace is slowing…

Click here to view the entire collection (so far).

From the pages of Devilina, volume 1, number 1 (January 1975), here’s the unfortunately named, but expertly illustrated, “Lay of the Sea,” with story by Gabe Levy and art by Leo Duranona (1938-):

The original reproduction on many of the following covers by Jeffrey Jones, all from the library of yours truly, was very poor, so my scans are sometimes not the best here. One exception is the last cover, Twilight of the Serpent, which actually showcases Jones’s artwork in more detail and with more lively colour than does the rather dour reproduction on the back cover of publisher Underwood-Miller’s lavish hardcover, The Art of Jeffrey Jones.

My favourites this time around are the covers for The Curse of Rathlaw (1968), an early effort in which Jones’s attractive design for the vignette is nicely reinforced by the typography, and Twilight of the Serpent (1977), a later cover which displays Jones’s hard-won skills as a draftsman (or draughtsman, if you prefer), mastery of lost-and-found edges in oil painting, and increasing willingness in the 1970s and early 1980s to produce images that went against the grain of traditional heroic fantasy.

The following cover by Jones is from the Skywald horror magazine, Nightmare, volume 1, number 6 (December 1971):

The 1964 edition of The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke with the cover by Paul Lehr is a pretty cool find, I think. It’s a pity the artwork is obscured by the title, etc., but the book is in excellent condition, so it scanned fairly nicely, and of course, it is instructive to compare it with Lehr’s later covers, which, unlike The Deep Range, typically combine highly saturated colours with a strict adherence to traditional colour schemes.

Jones’s Scheherazade graced the cover of the Styx #2 back in 1973 (37 years ago!):

Styx was published by Winnipeg’s own Joseph Krolik, who was very active in fandom beginning in the mid-to-late 1960s, when he and a buddy, Andris Taskans, both in high school at the time, started a club called “The Science Fiction Fans & Comic Collectors of Winnipeg” and published a “clubzine” called Universe that ran for seven issues.

On 05 March 2010, Glimmer Graphics, known to readers of this blog as the publisher of an ongoing series of first-rate prints and posters by Jeffrey Jones, will release Poetry (see above image), a lush new 22 x 15 inch limited-edition giclée print by Barry Windsor-Smith. Each of the 375 prints that make up the edition will be signed and numbered and will be presented in a foil-stamped linen folder with a tipped-on colour plate. The unit price is US$135, shipped and insured, and you may pay in full or with installments. To place your order, click here.

This is NOT a paid advertisement. If the money BWS makes from the print enables him to complete work on his long-awaited Monsters graphic novel, that will be payment enough. The previews on BWS’s site are gorgeous!

BONUS LINKS:

The Barry Windsor-Smith Conan Archives Volume 1 HC (Publication Date: 13 January 2010) — “now presented as they were intended, remastered using the original color palette!”

The Barry Windsor-Smith Conan Archives Volume 2 HC (Publication Date: 19 May 2010) — “The two Barry Windsor-Smith archives collect all of the historic and influential Conan the Barbarian comics drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith,” including his adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails”!

Even though I don’t much care for any of the above covers, I have decided to include them here anyway for what they reveal about Jones’s slow but steady development as an artist.

From the pages of Comix International #4 (Warren, 1976), here’s “The Believer,” with story by Budd Lewis and art by Richard Corben:

That makes 16 covers by Paul Lehr displayed here, with more to come…

Note that the first two paperback covers below are from early in Lehr’s career as a cover artist while the third one is from fairly late in Lehr’s career: