Ragged Claws Network

A nice variety of covers by Lehr this time around. I especially dig Lehr’s 1967 cover for Margaret St. Clair’s The Dolphins of Altair, even if the exact location of the dorsal fin on the central dolphin (who really looks like he is carrying a weight on his back) is slightly mysterious. I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to chalk this one up to artistic license… the fin is entirely hidden by the woman’s body and that’s all there is to it…

Click here to view all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted so far.

Here’s some more early work by Jeffrey Jones, scanned from the RC library, and I have a strong suspicion, dear reader, that at least one of these covers will be new to you:

Frankly, I don’t trust the publication date in The Unending Night… but until I learn different, I’m going to leave it as is…

These are the only two “Ace Science Fiction Classic” paperbacks with cover art by Roy Krenkel that I own, so enjoy!

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:

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!

More scans from the library of you-know-who:

This past weekend, I finally located (and purchased) a copy of Gordon R. Dickson’s Wolfling, with cover by Jeffrey Jones, so now, at last, I can post this comparison of two very similar images by Jones executed in two different mediums, oil vs. ink:

The “Conan” frontispiece was published in Savage Sword of Conan in 1975, but the style and the signature suggest to me that it was created around the time of the 1969 Wolfling cover. Anyone know if the “Conan” frontispiece was published anywhere else prior to its appearance in Savage Sword?

The “Make Beautiful Hair Blecch” ad parody, which featured Frank Frazetta’s classic portrait of Ringo Starr, was the back cover of issue #90 (October 1964) of Mad Magazine:

The story is, Frazetta’s “Ringo Starr” portrait caught the eye of United Artists films, which then commissioned Frazetta to do his first poster art for a movie, What’s New Pussycat?, a 1965 comedy written by Woody Allen. I don’t have a copy of that poster, but I did purchase an LP, in very good condition, of the What’s New Pussycat? Original Motion Picture Score, with music by Burt Bacharach, last month from a local Value Village store, and have been waiting for the right moment to post it. Now might be the time:

ABOVE: Although this scan appears to be the same width as the previous one, it is actually a bit larger/wider.

Guess it’s lucky for fans of Frazetta’s movie posters that the “Ringo Starr” portrait appeared in a beautifully designed fake advertisement on the magazine’s back cover, where it could be reproduced in “glorious technicolor,” because buried inside the magazine, where it would have had to appear in black and white, the portrait probably would not have attracted the attention from Hollywood that it did, and Frazetta’s lively and lucrative side-career as a movie poster artist would not have gotten off the ground.

BTW, sorry about the lousy image quality: the album wouldn’t fit on the scanner bed, so I had to scan in pieces, stitch together the panoramas, and touch up (very roughly) around the edges. The results aren’t the best, but I’m not scanning (or photographing) for print reproduction, only appreciation.

The following single-page comic, written by Don Edwing and drawn by Frank Frazetta, was the back cover of issue #106 (October 1966) of Mad Magazine:

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.

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!

One bare foot… hm… perhaps it’s a sign… a symbol of some sort… if only I could think what it means…

ABOVE: Robert Kyle, Kill Now, Pay Later (New York: Dell, 1960), with cover art by Robert McGinnis.

ABOVE: Robert Kyle, Some Like It Cool (New York: Dell, 1962), with cover art by Robert McGinnis.

Sorry about the iffy scan on the second one. The book is a little bit warped, so the scanner created and caught a bit of glare.

BONUS COVER SCAN (added 14 August 2010):

This evening, as I was absent-mindedly browsing the paperback shelves in our basement, I came across a cover by an uncredited artist that had something about it that made me want to include it here…

ABOVE: Doris Lessing, In Pursuit of the English (New York: Ballantine, 1966), with cover art by Robert Foster (uncredited/attributed).

BONUS LINK:

Flickr > Kyle Katz > Robert Foster Covers

In my growing collection of vintage books, I have quite a few paperbacks with Robert McGinnis art. I posted a few last time; now, here are five more, in no particular order:

I usually prefer to display paperback covers in order of publication, but these Fawcett paperbacks mostly don’t include the year(s) of publication, only the year the book was copyright.

The W. C. Fields Book (Brooklyn: Wonderful Publishing Company, 1973) is identified in the indicia as a “special issue of Witzend (No. 9).” Witzend was an underground comics magazine launched in 1966 by E.C. legend Wallace Wood and published and edited by him until 1968, when he sold the magazine, for a buck, to Bill Pearson/Wonderful Publishing Company. Here’s the cover with Jones’s painting of W. C. Fields, which, by the way, is reprinted at a small size but sans text and in full colour on page 64 of Jones’s first solo art book, Yesterday’s Lily (Dragon’s Dream, 1980):

And here — SURPRISE! — is an extremely obscure illustration by Jeffrey Jones, published in black-and-white in National Lampoon, vol. 1, no. 23 (February 1972), along with an article entitled “The Thoughts of Chairman Fu-Manchu”; the painting has never, to my knowledge, been reprinted:

The washy, rub-out style of the “Fu-Manchu” painting, which can be accomplished most easily with oil paints but is also possible in watercolour/gouache, was state-of-the-art in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Three of the best known practitioners were Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame inductees Bernie Fuchs, Burton Silverman, and David Levine, but many others tried their hands at it, too — including Jones, apparently. To learn how to do it in watercolour, all you need is a copy of Silverman’s Breaking the Rules of Watercolor, a selection of watercolour paints and brushes, a few rolls of good-quality paper towels, a large tube of white gouache, a stack of the heaviest weight Strathmore plate bristol you can find, AND THE PATIENCE OF JOB!

BONUS CONTENT:

Here’s an album cover, not by Jeffrey Jones, with a portrait of W. C. Fields that appears likely to have been based on the same photo reference of Fields as Jones used for his painting; the accoutrements are slightly different in the two portraits, but the face, I think, is a dead giveaway:

I suppose it’s also possible that one portrait was based on the other (though it seems to me unlikely). Either way, however, Jones’s W. C. Fields genuinely looks like the kind of man who keeps a supply of stimulant handy in case he sees a snake, which he also keeps handy, while the other Fields looks like he has been living for days on nothing but food and water. Can you guess which one I like best? Wrong again. I prefer Jones’s version.

Here are two more strips by Rod Ruth, from our slowly expanding collection of original art; the first is from 2-20-58, and the second, from 3-12-58:

Rod Ruth is by no means a well-known figure in the history of comic strips, but I, for one, find his work terrifically appealing. Ruth’s character designs are distinctive, and the expressions always appropriate to the action: look, for instance, at the way Ann’s expression changes from panel to panel in the first strip as she struggles to stand up for the man she loves in the face of her parents’ stern expressions of disapproval, and then retreats into sullen silence as her mother pointedly puts her father in his place. Ruth’s staging of the action is also first rate: in the first strip, notice how he changes from a three shot in the first panel, with the father on the left, facing right, to a closer two shot of mother and daughter, back out to a three-shot, with the father close on the right, facing left — which, taken together with the first two panels, I read as a sign that the father has been pacing back and forth while the women have been talking — and then ends with a lovely low reverse angle that not only maintains spacial continuity between the three but also places the now visibly weary Ann, both compositionally and symbolically, right in the line of fire between her domineering mother and her stuffed-shirt father; and I especially like the bits of business the artist gives to Ann in the second strip — panel one, she files her nails; panel two, she pumps a bit of moisturizer into her palm; and panel three, she absently rubs the moisturizer into her hands as she wistfully contemplates lost love. Finally, Ruth’s handling of clothing, furniture, props, etc., is always economical and convincing: notice, for instance, the way he uses little dabs and checkmarks of ink to give dimension to the quilting on Ann’s jacket in the second strip, or the way he suggests the folds on the nurse’s overcoat with a few deft strokes of the brush.

To see all three of the “Toodles” strips I’ve posted so far, click here.

BONUS LINKS:

The Haunted Closet: Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures (illustrated by Rod Ruth), posted by Brother Bill

The Haunted Closet: Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures: The Patchwork Monkey (illustrated by Rod Ruth), posted by Brother Bill

The Haunted Closet: Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures: Nightmare in a Box (illustrated by Rod Ruth), posted by Brother Bill

The Haunted Closet: The Rest of Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures (illustrated by Rod Ruth), posted by Brother Bill

The Haunted Closet: Album of Dinosaurs (Tod McGowen, Rod Ruth, 1972), posted by Brother Bill

From the pages of Strange Stories of Suspense #12 (December 1956), here’s a four-page story with a banal script that is partially redeemed by the vivacious Frazetta-influenced art of Angelo Torres:

The lowest point in the story has to be when Lee says to Dora, “Besides, you’re much too lovely a girl to be so brilliant and absorbed in your work!” That’s casual sexism offered up as a compliment, Holmes. Apparently, whether they’re from the past, the present, or the future, men will be men will be men, all mentally mired in the 1950s.

But wait! Did Lee just say future human civilization has “scanners, to look back into time and send men like me, trouble-shooters of the future, back to the past to take care of things like this”? Hm… now that’s interesting… I wonder who was the first to use the term scanners in SF in connection with time travel and surveillance… and I also wonder if Philip K. Dick ever read this story… LOL!

I purchased the following Andre Norton paperbacks with covers by Jeffrey Jones on Monday from a small shop in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. I found the shop totally by accident. My wife, our son, and I were en route to Dauphin, Manitoba, but since we were ahead of schedule and had some time to kill before lunch in Yorkton, we decided to drive around a bit and see what stores were open in the downtown area. We went up and down a couple of streets, and then we noticed a shop called “Thrifty Mama’s” that had a display of books in the window. Being a trio of bibliophiles, we couldn’t resist checking it out — and discovered that at least half of the floorspace in “Thrifty Mama’s” is dedicated to used books, mostly paperbacks. Score!

Now, I know I’ve posted the cover of Uncharted Stars before, but the book this time around is in much better condition. In fact, all four are really glossy and tight. And they all sport excellent Jones covers. Enjoy!