Ragged Claws Network

Look Here: Four more SF covers with art by Paul Lehr

RC — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:51:47 +0000

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.

Look Here: Four more paperbacks, all with cover art by Jeffrey Jones

RC — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:07:53 +0000

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…

Look Here: Two Ace SF Classics, with cover art by Roy Krenkel

RC — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:12:39 +0000

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

Look Here: Three Ace paperbacks, with cover art by Frazetta

RC — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:12:42 +0000

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!

Look Here: Four Ace SF Specials, with cover art by Leo & Diane Dillon

RC — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:13:32 +0000

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

Look Here: “Wolfling”/”Conan” art by Jeffrey Jones

RC — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:37:11 +0000

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?

Look There: Sir William Russell Flint illustrates “The Odyssey of Homer”

RC — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:14:30 +0000

Yesterday, Thom Buchanan over at his blog, The Pictorial Arts, posted scans of Sir William Russell Flint’s colour illustrations for The Odyssey of Homer. Click the image below to jump to Thom’s post:

Click here to view ALL of the work by Sir William Russell Flint that Thom has scanned and posted so far. It’s a real treasure trove.

Look Here: “Make Beautiful Hair Blecch”

RC — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:50:53 +0000

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.

Look Here: “Early One Morning in the Jungle”

RC — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:33:19 +0000

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:

Heads Up: Another Corben Art Sale

RC — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 14:52:53 +0000

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: