Illustrators #48 — Summer 2025

It has been a couple of years since I last saw Illustrators, so it's good to be able to say that it hasn't lost any of its design or quality aesthetic and there are still major names to be covered in depth, this issue highlighting three in the shapes of Mark Schults, Chris Moore and Graham Humphreys.

Schultz I recall from his early days as the creator of Xenozoic Tales (aka Cadillacs and Dinosaurs); he was definitely one of the artists I wanted to interview for Comic World back in the early 1990s, but I think he was writing more than illustrating at the time. I've always admired the more realistic school of artwork, figures that you feel could walk off the page and not collapse under the weight of their own breasts. ANd, yes, I mean men or women.

Schultz wrote tie-ins (Alien, Predator, Star Wars) and was on Superman: The Man of Steel for almost 50 issues (1999-2003), since when he has been the writer of the 'Prince Valiant' newspaper strip. The interview published here is heavily illustrated with Schultz's Conan artwork, but also has a few illustrations from an unfinished Xenozoic graphic novel, which I would buy in an instant! Come on, Mark!

Chris Moore painted science fiction and thriller covers, but that doesn't mean his artwork wasn't realistic. I grew up on Moore's air-brushed spaceships during my peak SF reading period in the late 1970s and early 1980s. And, thanks to his domination of the SF Masterworks, I've probably seen more of his artwork than that of any other artist since the turn of the Millennium. His work has appeared on the covers of everyone from Frederick Forsyth and Thomas Harris to Hammond Innes and Jackie Collins and just about every major SF author out there. Sadly, Chris died in February 2025.

Graham Humphreys has painted iconic horror images since the early 1980s when he produced a poster for the Amicus horror anthology The Monster Club. His poster artwork for The Evil Dead and A Nightmare on Elm Street set the benchmark for horror posters in the mid-1980s, Humphreys' use of colours inspired by the bold use of colour he had seen in Thailand. (If you can get hold of a copy of The Amazing Movie Posters of Thailand by Neil Pettigrew and Philip Jablon you'll see what I mean.)

He has since designed and painted Video and DVD covers, posters, prints, LP and CD covers, specialising in horror images. I can't say I was especially aware of his work (I'm more SF than horror), but the attraction is easy to see. Indeed, Humphreys is one of the artists highlighted in Anthony Taylor's Classic Monsters, Modern Art (Insight Editions, 2025), which is discussed in the final few pages of the latest issue.

As ever, For more information on Illustrators and back issues, visit the Book Palace website, where you can also find details of their online editions, and news of upcoming issues. Issue 49 will feature Gregory Manchess, Frank Cho and Hannah Gillingham, plus a complete Wes Slade story.  Looking further ahead, issue 50 will have features on David Palumbo, Mike Noble and Ron Embleton.

Illustrators #37 (Spring 2022) [April 2022]

The latest issue of Illustrators spans the American continent, from Canada to South America.

The issue kicks off with an interview with Cuban (but now living in Montreal) artist Antonio Javier Caparo. Kaparo (as he signs his work) has worked widely as an illustrator of children's novels, as well as working in animation and film as a concept and background artist. Inspired by local and Russian artists, he studied at the Institute of Design in Havana when he discovered the works of Boris Vallejo, Chris Foss, Syd Mead and others in the pages of Masters of Fantasy Art in the Institute's library. After spending most of the Nineties doing graphic design, he moved into digital illustration and book covers, specialising in fantasy and science fiction, but has also illustrated history projects and retellings of Shakespeare.

Kaparo makes an interesting point when he says that digital art is still in its early stages, with things changing greatly over the past thirty years. "[W]e frequently see people who lost their files due to changes, but I visualise a future where digital supports are going to be so good that continuous change won't be necessary so frequently and transferring files from a previous format to a new one will be easier with time." I was thinking the other day about NFTs and how many older digital images are trapped on a floppy disc that nobody can access. (This was prompted by a problem I had translating a very old file from Word Star to Word. I had a programme to do it, but had completely forgotten how to use it. It took half an hour of Googling to find some instructions!)

Russ Heath was a master of realism. Growing up in New Jersey, he read the four colour funny pages, and began drawing his own comic strips at school. By the age of 16 he was already working professionally on Captain Aero Comics during summer breaks before being drafted. Finding work after the War in advertising agencies, he began drawing comics again during lulls and, in 1947, joined the Timely Bullpen, drawing western, war and romance comics.

In 1954 he began working for DC, drawing mainly war comics. He didn't like superhero comics, but some of his work had fantastic elements (e.g 'Sea Devils') and he later assisted Harvey Kurtzman with 'Little Annie Fanny' for Playboy. His work also encompassed humour (for Cracked, Frantic!, National Lampoon, etc.) and horror (for Warren Magazines).

George Gross began painting for pulp magazines and made his name with images of muscular men in ripped shirts and leggy blondes in danger. His earliest work ranged through westerns and detective pulps but settled famously on Jungle Stories, featuring the Ki-Gor, although the covers tended to feature Ki-Gor's shapely companion, Helene.

With the demise of the pulps, Gross turned to men's magazines and paperback covers, chiefly westerns, but returning to his pulp roots in 1972 with a series of covers for 'The Avenger', reprinting stories from the 1940s. For these he used Steve Holland (not that one) as a model, who was also James Bama's model for Doc Savage. Gross also produced covers for more men's adventure paperbacks, including Don Pendleton's The Executioner and the Nick Carter series.

The issue concludes with a look at the work of Arturo Del Castillo, the Argentinian best known here in the UK for 'The Three Musketeers' and various westerns. It is a measure of his talent that his fame in the UK is out of proportion with the number of stories that appeared, dotted around the pages of Top Spot, Film Fun, Knockout, Lion, Ranger, Look and Learn, etc. Using some original art pages adds greatly to this all-too-brief feature.

For more information on Illustrators and back issues, visit the Book Palace website, where you can also find details of their online editions, and news of upcoming issues. Issue 38 will be a John Watkiss special, comic and film concept artist. The issue will be introduced by Neil Gaiman.

Illustrators #35 (Fall 2021)

Alex Raymond was one of the most influential comic strip artists of the 20th century, a fact I don't think many would deny; he was certainly the most regularly named talent amongst the artists I especially like, from Mike Western to Jesus Blasco. His 'Flash Gordon' had first appeared in the UK, I believe, in the pages of Modern Wonder, a beautifully produced boys' paper, in 1939-40. Post-War, the Daily Mail began printing the syndicated adventures of 'Rip Kirby', admired by many young artists such as Ron Embleton and Ron Turner, who were just seeing their earliest efforts appear in print.

In a way, Raymond influenced my own preference as a boy for more realistically drawn and painted strips. When I first encountered American comics I wasn't impressed by over-muscled figures, the lack of depth offered by shadows and cross-hatching, and the awful flat colours. I much preferred Don Lawrence.

All of which rambling brings me to the opening essay in the latest issue of Illustrators, a lengthy look at the artist who co-created 'Flash', 'Rip' and 'Jungle Jim', a strip I'm less familiar with. Raymond began his career assisting Russ Westover ('Tillie the Toiler'), Chic Young ('Blondie') and Lyman Young ('Tim Tyler's Luck'). Raymond struck out on his own with the Sunday Page that combined 'Jungle Jim' and 'Flash Gordon' before adding 'Secret Agent X-9', written by Dashiell Hammett. Hammett's huge fee ($500 a week) dwarfed the $20 earned by Raymond for six daily panels.

Eventually he bailed and continued with Jim and Flash until World War 2, in which he served as a marine. Returning to King Features in 1946, he was offered a large incentive to create a new strip, out of which came bespectacled, pipe-smoking Rip Kirby, the antithesis of the usual hardboiled private eye characters. Raymond's beautiful artwork was enhanced by his ability to tell a story in the daily 3-panel format (a skill Hammett lacked on X-9).

Sadly, Raymond was killed in 1956 when the car he was driving left the road at high speed and smashed into a tree. His passenger, Stan Drake ('The Heart of Juliet Jones') was severely injured and spent months in hospital. Raymond was killed outright.

Peter Richardson's look back over Raymond's all-too-short career is enhanced by numerous illustrations of original artwork. You can really see how skillfully Raymond wielded a brush.

Bob Eggleton grew up reading science fiction and watching monster movies in the 1960s and 1970s. These were also the days of NASA and the early space missions that culminated with man's first steps on the Moon... but even the Saturn V rocket was disappointing compared to the spaceships Eggleton could see on book and magazine covers.

Artists like Frank Kelly Freas, John Schoenherr and Ed Emsh inspired him to enroll in art college. A desire to find work caused him to leave early and before long he was painting book covers. Since then he has also worked on character design and concept art for movies, won eight Hugo Awards and nearly a dozen Chesley Awards. There is also a fantastic book of his work, Greetings From Earth, if this article inspires you to find more of his paintings.

Jacques Terpent is a comic strip artist and illustrator who arrived alongside a group of young new talents who brought their schooling in figurative art at Saint-Etienne Fine Arts School to the pages of Metal Hurlant in the late 1970s. When the magazine folded in the late 1980s, most artists moved away from comics, but Terpent was able to subsidise his comics through advertising work.

A fascination with the historical novelist Jean Raspail led to a six-volume series adapting Sept Cavaliers (2008-10) and Le Royaume de Boree (2011-14). He has recently been working with Jean Dufaux on further literary adaptations.

The winner of the Prix Saint-Michel in 2011, Terpent is an artist I knew nothing about, so Diego Cordoba's article is especially interesting. Illustrators is a great place to discover new artists and this issue will hopefully inspire its readers to explore the works of this trio of incredibly talented pen- and brush-men.

For more information on Illustrators and back issues, visit the Book Palace website, where you can also find details of their online editions, and news of upcoming issues. Issue 36 will have features on Thomas Fluharty, Arantza Sestayo, Caran d'Ache and Jose Luis Salinas.

Illustrators #34 (Summer 2021)

In this latest issue, Illustrators brings together features on four artists, two Spanish, one Italian and one Argentinean. Three are well known names to fans of comics in the UK, while one, although also a comic artist, will probably be unfamiliar.

The issue leads off with a look at the work of Jesus Blasco, of whom I am an unashamed fan and have been since childhood when I discovered a tiny signature in the corner of a panel of The Steel Claw, which I mistakenly read as Blascot.

For over twenty years, Blasco helped fill British comics with his masterfully suspenseful images when drawing Dick Turpin, The Steel Claw, The Indestructible Man or Invasion, or with whimsy in a series of delightful fairy tales and series like Edward and the Jumblies and The Wombles.

When Blasco's artwork began appearing in the UK, he was one of only a handful of foreign artists introduced into British comics as expansion meant that more artists were required to fill the pages of a wider range of titles. Although only arriving six years later, F. Solano Lopez debuted in a very different field.

After making his debut in comics in his mid twenties, Lopez had worked with Hector Oesterheld drawing for Hora Cero and Frontera, most famously on the science fiction epic 'El Eternauta'. When Oesterheld's publishing company collapsed in 1959, Lopez travelled to London and established himself with Fleetway, drawing war pocket libraries. His first was chosen as the launch issue of Air Ace.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Lopez was kept incredibly busy, clocking up a number of strips that would run to hundreds of episodes, including 'Kelly's Eye', 'Galaxus', 'Raven on the Wing', 'Nipper' and 'Adam Eterno'. His artwork is unmistakable.

Eugenio Sicomoro is well known in Italy and France, but unknown in the UK. Bruno Brunetti began using the pen-name Sicomoro because his break came with a rival to the publisher he was unhappily working for. Sicomoro is known for his realistic painted illustrations, using ecoline (liquid watercolour) to create the impression of airbrush. He was the co-founder of the Scolo Sperimentale del Fumetto in Rome where he also taught for a while.

Sicomoro's most notable works include the series Rouletabille (later Marc Jourdan), with Claude Moliterni for Dargaud, SIDA Connection for Bagheera and Lumière Froide with Pierre Makyo for Glenet. The examples of his illustrations and covers displayed here makes me wish that his books were available over here in translation.

The fourth and final artist this issue is another whose best work appeared in the UK for many years. Victor de la Fuente was almost unknown in Spain until he began drawing 'Haxtur' in 1971 after a decade of drawing mostly war stories in the UK. After another thirty-five years working for Spain, France and the US (the Warren magazines), Fuente gave up comics in favour of painting. Thankfully, some of his comics remain in print, and he will be featured in a Rebellion Treasury of British Comics some point in the future.

A brief interview with fantasy artist Arantzazu Martinez wraps up another superb issue.

For more information on Illustrators and back issues, visit the Book Palace website, where you can also find details of their online editions, and news of upcoming issues. Issue 35 will have features on Alex Raymond, Bob Eggleton and Jacques Terpant.

Review: Illustrators #31 (January 2021)

Jason Edmison, who features in the opening article of the latest issue, is the kind of discovery I enjoy making in the pages of Illustrators. Where else would you find a feature on a talented artist who paints monsters, often with a humorous twist? Or screen prints of new movie posters of old movies, ranging from The Creature of the Black Lagoon to Nightmare on Elm Street.

The Canadian artist began selling illustrations in Toronto and building up a portfolio which eventually earned him work with Hasbro on their Star Wars toys line. This brought him to the attention of other manufacturers, magazines, including Famous Monsters in Filmland, and pop art galleries where much of the work used here has been exhibited.

Mel Crawford was another Canadian artist whose work was chiefly humorous and involved bringing film and television characters to print. Crawford (1925-2015) worked in comics (Western Publishing, Dell) and the Little Golden Books series, drawing The Flintstones, Rocky & Bullwinkle and others. In the Sixties, for Gold Key, he also worked in a more realistic style on Doctor Solar and Star Trek.

Crawford drew some of the most famous animated characters, from Mr Magoo to Top Cat , but never worked in animation.

French artist Luc Cornillon has also worked in a cartoony, linge claire style. After co-creating a fanzine with Yves Chaland, Cornillon worked for Metal Hurlant in a variety of genres. He and Chaland put together Captiivant, a parody of Fifties French comic magazines, which allowed him to draw in a variety of styles. He has gone on to work widely in other comics, book illustrations and other commercial art.

My favourite feature in this issue is unrelated and, I suspect, concerns an artist few will have heard of—and here I repeat that Illustrators is a great place to be introduced to new talents. Hannes Bok is well known among collectors of SF and horror pulps, but little was known about him, Bok having died in 1964, aged only 49. Bok was not even his real name—he was born Wayne Francis Woodard.

After a troubled childhood, Bok began drawing for science fiction and weird fiction magazines, having befriended Ray Bradbury and discovered SF fandom in the late 1930s. He would contribute to Weird Tales, Unknown, Planet Stories, Future, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Imagination, Other Worlds, etc. He also wrote poems, short stories and a novel ('The Sorcerer's Ship' for Unknown Worlds).

Bok's painting technique was slow and meant he did not always hit deadlines and he argued over payments which did not endear him to editors or commissioners. In the late 1950s he left illustration behind, and lived in near poverty until his death—rumored to have starved to death.

Rowena Morrill is a rather more modern artist, whose richly painted fantasies began appearing on book covers in the late 1970s and she quickly developed a style that caused her to be dubbed "the female Boris Vallejo". She was, in fact, a late bloomer, already in her mid-thirties when success came in art after years travelling with the military, first with her parents, then her husband.

She found work as a cover artist through the Yellow Pages, contacting Ace Books who published romance, horror and SF illustrations. She was nominated five times for Hugo Awards and had two collections of her work published before retiring in the 2000s.

For more information on Illustrators and back issues, visit the Book Palace website, where you can also find details of their online editions, and news of upcoming issues. Issue 32 will have features on Oliver Frey, George & Jerome Rozen, Alberto Breccia and Marcela Bolivar.

Review: Illustrators #30 (November 2020)

This issue is definitely at the pulpier end of the artistic scale, with articles on Mort Künstler, Earl Norem, Norm Saunders and men's adventure magazine illustrations.

Künstler makes his second appearance (previously in #17, reviewed here) with an interview about his years of illustrating adventure magazines. Born in 1927, Künstler began freelancing in 1950 and found work on periodicals that replaced the pulps in the aftermath of the Second World War, slick magazines with tough tales of adventure and action, where fiction often masqueraded as "true adventure". They published some of the best writers (Hemingway was a contributor) and artists around, and had  circulations that reached as high as two million readers an issue, attracted by story titles like 'Hitler's No. 1 Sex Castle' and 'Saigon Sally's Sin Barracks'.

Künstler's main employer was Martin Goodman of Magazine Management, but the uncertainty that commissions would come through meant that artists would always take on more work. So prolific was Künstler, in fact, that he was also able to work for Harry Steeger's Popular Publications using the pen-names Emmett Kaye and Martin Kay.

Given a brief by an editor, the writers of these magazines (among them Mario (The Godfather) Puzo) would then write a story around his artwork. One daft idea from an editor was to have a German tank launching itself over the gap between the rising bascules of a bridge. Another tank has already dropped through the gap and has hit the water. Künstler argued against the stupidity of the idea, but he was proved wrong when the magazine outsold all others that month.

Robert Deis explains in his article that over 160 different titles battled for space on newsstands. With competition fierce, editors demanded more sex and violence from cover artists as an endless stream of Nazis fought busty girls in their lacy undies, and muscled men fought every creature on the planet, from squirrels to the infamous 'Weasels Ripped My Flesh'. Deis offers a tribute to the masters of these kinds of thing: Wilbur Hulsey, Norm Eastman, Basil Goger, Norman Saunders and James Bama.

Earl Norem  is another master of that era. A self-taught artist who went into illustration after his military career ended in Italy when he was wounded, Norem's time in the sweatshop of men's magazines made him the perfect choice for Marvel's Savage Sword of Conan and other black & white comic magazines which required a realistic cover.

Finishing off the issue, Norman Saunders left the men's adventure mags behind when he started working for Topps where he painted the infamous Mars Attacks and the barmy Batman based on the TV series.

As ever, this issue is superbly illustrated with some especially fantastic images due to the subject matter.

For more information on Illustrators and back issues, visit the Book Palace website, where you can also find details of their online editions, and news of upcoming issues. Issue 31 will have features on Jason Edmiston, Hannes Bok, Luc Cornillon and Rowena Morrill.

Illustrators #29 (Spring 2020)

Issue 29 is Illustrators in a lighter mood than usual. From its cover illustrations – Charles Addams on the front and Lawson Wood on the back – through most of its 96 pages, the latest outing offers a bit of comic relief from the daily stresses of the lockdown.

"Chas" Addams was a master of the darker side of humour, which he depicted with ghoulish delight. His most famous creation, The Addams Family, and his macabre sense of humour made Addams the subject of several odd rumours and he could not live up the expectations of what he was like in real life. Tall and well-dressed, Addams was thin-lipped and had a bulbous nose and small eyes – nothing like Gomez or Morticia or even Uncle Fester, although they shared the large nose and prominent ears.

His cartoons appeared in The New Yorker, Collier's and TV Guide, but it was the two seasons of The Addams Family (1964-66) that made him a household name. The TV series was dropped after only two seasons; a similar fate befell another family of monsters, The Munsters, at the same time, both black & white shows losing out to the popularity (and colour) of Batman. His editor felt that the TV series was too low brow for The New Yorker and wanted no more of the family in his pages.

While Addams died in 1988, his characters survived, through syndication and in animation, feature films and a recent (2019) CGI animated movie.

The work of Lawson Wood couldn't be more different. His fame rests on the shoulders of monkeys, chiefly those of Gran'pop, an elderly monkey, and his family who became the star of The Sketch and, in America, Collier's, appearing in colour and quickly establishing an audience that went out and bought Gran'pop postcards, posters, calendars and Gran'pop Annuals.

Wood was trained at a specialist school of animal painting in London where he followed in the footsteps of Alfred Munnings, Cecil Aldin and George Studdy. From illustrating popular magazine stories in the pages of Pearson's, The Strand, Boy's Own Paper and The Captain, Wood turned to illustrating books and leading illustrated magazines The Graphic and The London Illustrated News. His talents were recognised by galleries and even the Royal Academy.

Another change of pace brings us to Roy Wilson, although Wilson, too, had the talent to bring animals to life in his watercolour covers for annuals. Wilson's ability to depict motion and movement was unequaled in comics in the 1930s. He began his career in comics as an assistant, but had surpassed the abilities of Don Newhouse by the time he went solo in 1933. Wilson was often tasked with producing the front covers of Amalgamated Press's comics – Butterfly, Merry and Bright, Sparkler, Puck, Golden and, most notably, 'At Chimpo's Circus' for the beautifully gravure printed Happy Days.

Post War, he brought life to the adventures of Morecambe and Wise and Terry-Thomas and other celebrities, never skimping on the detail and always including little visual extras ‐ a cat clutching its sides at the antics of the star of the strip, a rat sniffing a flower, a startled dog peering around a fence, etc., etc.

One of the earliest creators of bizarre caricatures was the French illustrator J. J. Grandville, who was one of the most influential fantasy and science fiction artists, drawing whimsical images of animals in human clothing and remarkable futuristic cityscapes. His series Les Metaphorphosis du Jour brought him fame and ran to 70 prints and led to a new law censoring cartoons and caricatures in France.

Grandville's Un Autre Monde (1844) explored social and scientific advances combined with surreal dreamscapes. The artist continued his depictions of human-animal and flower-human hybrids until his death in 1847.

Another darkly comic cartoonist wraps up the issue. Ersin Karabulut is a Turkish digital illustrator and graphic designer who co-founded the prestigious satirical weekly magazine Uykusuz in 2007, although he now lives in Los Angeles.

For more information on Illustrators and back issues, visit the Book Palace website, where you can also find details of their online editions, and news of upcoming issues. Issue 30 will have features on Mort Kunstler, Earl Norem, Norman Saunders and men's adventure magazines. There are two specials also due shortly: a Crime Comics special, featuring the works of Sean Phillips, Jordi Bernet and Charles Biro, and The Art of John M. Burns.

Illustrators #28 (Winter 2019)

Issue 28 of Illustrators is an international delight, with artist from America, England, Belgium and Germany.

Frank Kelly Freas has been a favourite cover artist of mine for years as he was very active in the 1970s when I began exclusively reading science fiction. The W. H. Smiths shop at Chelmsford railway station stocked American SF magazines and I was picking up Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction regularly. This was long before Amazon, so you had to visit Fantasy Centre and Dark They Were and Golden Eyed if you wanted to see American paperbacks and other monthly US magazines, of which there were plenty, even in the 1980s and 1990s.

Frank Kelly Freas was one of the few artists whose work was reprinted in book form. The cover of Illustrators shows the same Martian as Frank Kelly Freas: The Art of Science Fiction (1977), originally painted for Astounding Science Fiction to illustrate Fredric Brown's 'Martians Go Home' and subsequently used by Ballantine on the collection that featured that story.

It exemplifies Freas's whimsical approach to his work, the Martian squinting (perhaps winking) at the reader, resting his chin in his hand. It is a commonplace, nonthreatening pose and typical of Freas, whose strength was somehow to make the alien everyday. Another famous Astounding cover featured an elderly man, sharpening a knife while wearing a pink bonnet.

This is not to say that his work was always intended as droll. His work had power, too, as seen in his Astounding cover for 'The Gulf Between' by Tom Godwin of a robot holding up the body of a bloody human. Freas recreated the image for Queen on their album News of the World, the single human replaced by the band members falling from the robot's hand.

Raised in the US and Canada, Kelly Freas studied art on the GI Bill and had his first illustration accepted in 1950 by Dorothy McIlwraith of Weird Tales, an image of Pan painted as an experiment in two colours which a friend suggested he try to sell. Thereon, Freas became a prolific contributor to magazines, MAD Magazine, and book publishers until his death in 2005.

Yvonne Gilbert's colour pencil art is astonishing in its detail. Her most famous picture, originally drawn for a men's magazine, was used on the cover of 'Relax', the single by Frankie Goes to Hollywood which was banned by the BBC, thus guaranteeing its success. Gilbert has also produced illustrations for the Daily Telegraph Magazine, children's books and stamps over the years and here, in a Q&A, offers some useful advice for people wanting to go into illustration as a career.

Laurent Durieux was a Belgian graphic designer and teacher before achieving success as a silkscreen poster artist specialising in creating posters for classic 20th century movies from Metropolis to The Godfather. Durieux acknowledges the influence of comics, especially the work of Moebius and François Schuiten, with whom Durieux has subsequently collaborated.

Wrapping up the issue is Heinrich Kley, a highly influential artist who was active before the First World War. His pen and ink drawings for the satirical magazine Simplicissimus brought him to a wide audience in Germany and beyond. Collections of his sketchbook work made their way to America where they were discovered by animators working for Walt Disney. His influence can be seen particularly in Fantasia.

For more information on Illustrators and back issues, visit the Book Palace website, where you can also find details of their online editions, and news of upcoming issues.

Illustrators Special #6: Brian Bolland

Brian Bolland should need no introduction. He made his name in 2000AD drawing Judge Dredd, including some of Dredd's biggest hits: Judge Death, Judge Death Lives and episodes of The Judge Child and Block War. Then, a stroke of fortune... Joe Staton was in the UK for a convention and needed to find somewhere to complete some work. Bolland's had a drawing table spare at his flat and Staton told his editor on Green Lantern that he knew an artist who was interested in doing the cover.... and Bolland was offered his first US work.

Camelot 3000 (1982-85), The Killing Joke (1988) and hundreds of covers have followed, all exquisitely drawn. While you may disagree with some of the sentiments in his Mr Mamoulian strips, and think that perhaps his seeming obsession with bondage is a bit much, you will never find a bad page by Brian Bolland.

Reading the interview that threads through this current volume, you can see why. He had diverse influences as an artist, but you can see from his work that he took most of his influence as a comic strip artist from the likes of David Wright (Carol Day), Sydney Jordan (Jeff Hawke) and Jesus Blasco (The Steel Claw). All three strove for realism even when faced with alien characters and weird, menacing enemies. His main American comic influence was not Jack Kirby but Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino.

The book begins with his first creative efforts working in collaboration with Dave Harwood, the elder brother of a schoolfriend, and takes its readers through early professional work (Powerman), into 2000AD and beyond. A comprehensive look at Bolland's work appeared a few years ago from Image, but there's plenty here that is new—pencil roughs show how Bolland is able to nail an idea, to the point where you could almost publish the rough. Over time and with the advantage of nowadays drawing and colouring on computer, he has even more control, especially of the colour palette that he uses on more recent covers for  Jack of Fables, Zatanna and Dial H.

There are glimpses of Bolland's much-anticipated autobiographical book made up of montages of illustrations, images, drawings and photos which promises to be very revealing. In the meantime, the interview here is a delightful and tasty aperitif ahead of the main course, and the artwork a trip down memory lane for old fogies like myself who have been around for as long as Bolland has been active in comics. That some is taken from original boards and the printing is superior to anything IPC or DC managed in the 20th century means you can look at it with fresh eyes and appreciate its beauty all the more.

Illustrators Special #6: The Art of Brian Bolland is available from Book Palace now. For more information on Illustrators and back issues of the regular quarterly title, visit the Book Palace website, where you can also find details of their online editions, and news of upcoming issues. The latest issue of Illustrators (#28) will feature articles on  Frank Kelly Freas, Yvonne Gilbert, Laurent Durieux and Heinrich Kley. During 2020, issues will feature Charles Addams, Lawson Wood, Roy Wilson, JJ Grandville (#29), Mort Küntsler, Earl Norem, Norman Saunders (#30), Jason Edmiston and Cornillon (#30), with specials on Pirates, Warren artists and John M. Burns also coming up in Spring.