A Writer's Blog That's Not.
Paul Mann did the handsome retro-flavored cover art for Brian DePalma and Susan Lehman’s Are Snakes Necessary? profiled in a prior post. The Salt Lake City, Utah artist is an old-school illustrator employing a master craftsman’s skills with figures in a distinctly 1960’s/70’s era movie poster montage style. His work graces a number of the Hard Case Crime series novels, reviving the look of so many Robert McGinnis and other’s covers from the latter days of the postwar paperback era.
Mort Kunstler – The Godfather Of Pulp Fiction Illustrators by Robert Deis & Wyatt Doyle (and Mort Kunstler) was the first book to arrive as I replenish my woefully empty to-be-read spot on the writing lair’s endtable. Mind you, the actual reading went quick, this very handsome 130+ page 2019 hardcover being a little light on text. But the nine-page intro by Mort Kunstler himself (as told to Robert Deis) was an intriguing read nonetheless. As he explains right at the start, “The word Kunstler means artist in German”, his immigrant father (an amateur artist himself) kept the spelling, and the rest was probably destiny.
The book’s heavy on Mort Kunstler’s pulpy ‘men’s sweats’ and adventure magazine illustration work, filled with WWII combat scenes, Cold War era spies and exotic safaris, with only a few examples of the master’s crime pulp work included. But trust me, it’s worth it for that intro alone, even if you’ve already seen many of the illustrations included here at any of your favorite pulp, vintage illustration and retro-kitsch sites and blogs.
I posted about artist and illustrator John Duillo some time back (at the main site, not Tumblr) but never pointed out that Duillo was but one half of a powerhouse commercial illustration duo along with his wife, renowned romance novel illustrator Elaine Duillo.
Both Elaine and John were born in 1928. They met while attending the Manhattan High School of Music and Art, later marrying in 1949. From her start with Balcourt Art Service in 1959 through her retirement in 2003 (the year John Duillo sadly passed away), Elaine painted a broad range of magazine and paperback book covers, from mystery/crime fiction to science fiction and racy ‘sleaze’ titles, though she was most widely recognized as one of the premier romance novel artists, initially for gothic novels and later for Regencies and so-called bodice rippers. Duillo’s style was so popular it became known in the industry simply as “Elaines”. She sold her first cover for $150. At her peak, Elaine Duillo covers typically went for $8,000 or more. Elaine Duillo is an Illustrators Hall Of Fame inductee.
The mark she made on the romance genre is unquestioned. Still, you indulge me if I wish she’d squeezed in a few more crime fiction covers here and there, being certain that she’d have given that market’s greats some real competition.
See a following post for art and info on John Duillo…
Just ordered mine today from Auad Publishing: Austin Briggs – The Consummate Illustrator edited by Manuel Auad, text by David Apatoff, with a foreword by the artist’s son.
Briggs isn’t the first name that’ll come to mind when you think of so-called golden and silver age illustrators from the mid-twentieth century, at least among pulp, mystery and crime fiction enthusiasts. He worked primarily in the glossies (lucky fellow) and in advertising, but his enormous body of work included no shortage of dark and mysterious pieces from high profile magazine story assignments. Check out a previous post of mine on Austin Briggs (link below) for a few more examples of his work and more about the artist.
And try the link to Auad Publishing while you’re at it. What an interesting operation. I have a couple Auad books, so I know that Austin Briggs – The Consummate Illustrator will be a handsome piece. Manuel Auad produces a small but impressive list of titles, each a labor of love and honoring classic American and foreign illustrators. These are well made books done in short runs, most sold direct from the publisher, not in stores, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. There’s only so much to browse there, some of the titles already sold out. But the site’s definitely worth a visit for its Links page, with a great list of artists’ and illustration sites you’re bound to probe a bit.
Born in Minnesota, (unbelievably, in a railroad car parked on a spur!), Austin Briggs (1908- 1973) spent his childhood in Detroit, then moved to New York City as a teen, during the Depression, no less, to purse a career as an artist and illustrator. He began with low end ad agency work, his talent for figurative work quickly spotted, and was assigned to paint men and women into completed car ad illustrations. He began doing spot interior B&W’s for the burgeoning pulp magazine marketplace, which led to a job as the assistant to successful comic artist Alex Raymond, working on the Flash Gordon and Secret Agent Corrigan strips.
After WWII, Briggs hit the big time, doing both paintings and B&W pencil illustrations for the highly competitive ‘glossies’: Redbook, Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Evening Post, and along with illustration luminaries like Norman Rockwell, Robert Fawcett and Jon Whitcomb, was one of the founders of the Famous Artists School. You won’t find Austin Briggs work adorning 1940’s – 1950’s crime paperbacks or sleazy pulp mags, and his 1930’s pulp interior spots are largely lost, mostly unsigned and uncredited. But leave it to the ‘stiletto gumshoe’ to root up a few mystery and crime story illustrations done for the highbrow set nonetheless, for tales like “The Counterfeiters” and “The House Of Terror”.
I’ve looked, and unless I’m misspelling the artist’s name, I can’t find a thing about Adriano Rocchi. Not just online, mind you. I have several long bookshelves crammed with books on vintage paperbacks, pulp magazines, U.S. and European illustrators and sundry sleaze artists. But…nothing. Now lets guess from the examples I stumbled across that Rocchi is one of the many post-WWII era Italian pulp artists working in Giallo paperbacks, crime/horror/sleaze digests and film posters. If you know more, I’m all ears!
No one’s passing is good news. But when beloved or talented people leave us at a young age, it’s doubly painful. We can’t help but wonder what else they’d have created if granted more time.
Canadian artist, illustrator and animator Darwyn Cooke was just such a case. The master stylist was born in Toronto but grew up in Nova Scotia, where he learned to draw at an early age by ‘deconstructing’ comics, attempting to replicate the style of the illustrations…and in doing so, developing his own very distinctive style. Know him for his stunning comics work on Batman, Catwoman (that’s where I first discovered his work) and Richard Stark’s Parker, or for his animation work for The New Adventures Of Batman and Batman Beyond, or know him for winning thirteen Eisner Awards. But know that, sadly, he succumbed to cancer in 2016 at age 53. But his work lives on…
Cecil Calvert Beall (1892 – 1970), better known as C.C. Beall, isn’t a big name among vintage paperback and retro pulp magazine illustrators. Actually, his reputation is mostly due to a series of high profile WWII era war loan drive posters.
Beall learned under master figure drawer George Bridgeman, surely a familiar name to any former art student, and studied at the Art Students League and Pratt Institute. While most contemporaries worked in slow drying oils or fast drying (but extremely tricky) gouache, Beall worked primarily in traditional (transparent) watercolors, though in a distinctive heavy manner, only ocassionally combining them with charcoal or gouache for selected commercial assignments. His patriotic war era propaganda ad and poster illustrations were so successful that he was temporarily made an employee of the U.S. War Department, and was present at the final Japanese surrender on the USS Missouri in 1945, where he painted the official portrait of the event.
But like many working artists of the time, Beall did all kinds of work, from glossy magazine illustrations to advertising, film studio assignments and book covers, including his darkly gorgeous painting for Bruno Fischer’s 1950 House Of Flesh from the preceding post. Some more of his non-military work is shown here. And heck, I’m throwing in the cover art from House Of Flesh one more time for good measure.
The name Basil Gogos (1929 – 2017) is inextricably linked to Forrest J. Ackerman’s beloved monster kidz magazine Famous Monsters Of Filmland, Gogos responsible for so many of the cover illustrations of classic monster characters, all done in his own striking color schemes. But like most postwar illustrators, Basil Gogos did all kinds of work, from prosaic advertising assignments to paperback book covers, pulp magazine covers, interior illustrations even work for the so-called “Mens’ Sweats” magazines.
