Friday, July 30, 2010

Monsters!



Frankenstein painting by Jeff Jones, n.d.




King Kong door hanger, promotional item. 1933




Monster From the Ocean Floor movie poster, 1954.




Elsa Lanchester as The Bride of Frankenstein, 1935.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Thursday Night Assortment



One of my favorite pictures of Bettie Page.




Shadow sketch by Michael Kaluta, 1976.




Toy figure of Little Orphan Annie's dog Sandy. Marx Toys, n.d. Arf!




Cover for Four Frightened Women by George Coxe. Unknown artist, 1950.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Two by Al Parker

Below are a couple paintings by Al Parker (1906-1985). Some more on Al Parker and his ads for American Airlines here at the always awesome blog Today's Inspiration.






"Roadside Chat," n.d.




"Lucy Liverpool," illustration for the Saturday Evening Post, August 12, 1944.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Gray Morrow

Gray Morrow (1934-2001) drew just about everything and worked for just about every comic book publisher who was around during his career. He drew Spiderman in the late 1960's and was well-known for his renditions of Zantanna for DC Comics. He also drew lots of newspaper strips such as Tarzan and Flash Gordon. Morrow also produced lots of covers and illustrations for science fiction digests. Below is a selection of his art:



Cover art for Worlds of Tomorrow magazine, March 1966.




Cover art for Red Circle Sorcery #7, 1974.




Cover art for Red Circle Sorcery #9, 1974.




Page 5 of the story "Zatanna...Kill or be Killed" from Adventure Comics #415, 1972.




Page from How to Draw Comic Book Heroes and Villains, 1995.




Frankenstein painting, n.d.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Henryk Siemiradzki (1843-1902)

Henryk Siemiradzki (1843-1902) was a Polish painter who specialized in scenes from the Bible and Greek and Roman mythology. A couple of examples below...




Dirce, 1897.




Nero's Torches, 1877.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

A Look Back Cover Print



This a print of the cover to the Bernie Wrightston book A Look Back. It was released in a signed and numbered edition of 350.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Harvey Pekar, 1939-2010

Writer Harvey Pekar was found dead at home by his wife on Monday, July 12. Here's the obit from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. And here's a nice write-up from comic book scribe Mark Evanier.

Pekar was most famous for his autobiographical comic book American Splendor. He became more well known after his mid-1980's appearances on the David Letterman show. Then the 2003 movie exposed his work to an even wider audience.

I met Harvey at the San Diego comic con back in the mid to late 1980's. He was perfectly nice, he didn't seem to have a whole lot of patience but that was fine. He thrust a postcard promoting back issues of American Splendor into my hands and some photocopies of a New York Times review of the anthology. "Here, here, my publisher gives me this crap, I'm supposed to give it away I guess, take it."

I had him sign the first anthology:





The Pekar Project. A series of web comics authored by Harvey.

The Harvey Heads. Portraits of Harvey Pekar by 90+ different artists.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Crime Does Not Pay!

Some classic covers from the granddaddy of crime comics:


Crime Does Not Pay #44

March 1946.


Crime Does Not Pay #43

January 1946.


Crime Does Not Pay #42

November 1945.


Crime Does Not Pay #34

July 1944.


Crime Does Not Pay #36

November 1944.


Crime Does Not Pay #54

August 1947.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

1971 Comic Art Convention Art Portfolio

I recently picked up a copy of the 1971 Comic Art Convention program. In addition to a transcript of Bill Everett and Joe Kubert being interviewed by Gil Kane and Neal Adams it contains a small portfolio with some good art (and some bad art). Below is the good art. Other guests at the convention included Jim Steranko, Gardner Fox, and James Warren.




Gil Kane




Michael Kaluta




Jeff Jones




Frank Brunner




Al Williamson




Frank Frazetta