Astounding, Mysterious, Weird and True: The Pulp Art of Comic Book Artists

To be honest I was expecting more. The art I felt wasn't that good , but then again a lot of the artists did their best workafter the pulps. I did learn interesting information about the pulps and the artists. If I had to do it again I would see ifthis book is available at the local library or Interlibrary loan. You can request loans thru Interlibrary loan and get booksand dvds from all over the country----once I got a book from the Fairbanks, Alaska library and I live in St. Louis !!Usually you get three weeks to read/view a loan from the day you check it out when it comes in to your local library--there are no charges for this service most of the time. I've requested ILL over 100 times and only two libraries wantedto charge me. If a library wants to charge you, you have the choice to pay or decline. Hope this was helpful.

Once upon a time, literacy was almost universal in the English-speaking world. A determined push to educate all and sundry took reading out of the hands of a moneyed intelligentsia and made it a tool of the working class, just as print technology was finding cheaper, more effective ways for creators and purveyors to disseminate their wares.Moreover, what everybody in publishing knew was that hardworking folk needed more than anything was entertainment - the less wholesome and salutary the better...In Britain we had newspapers, a burgeoning comics sector, "blood and thunder" periodicals and story magazines. In America they had "The Pulps"...As well as spectacular colour covers, most pulps had black and white interior illustrations and some even had their own comic strip serials.There were pulps for every possible topic from romance to mystery to all-out action - including racier "men's adventures": 2-fisted exotic thrillers heavy on fetishism, with Rugged American men rescuing white women from thugs and foreigners, saving them (the white women, of course) from "fates worse than death", but only just in time and never before losing lots of clothing (the girls, and often the Rugged Americans too...).The story of how Max Gaines turned freebie pamphlets containing reprinted newspaper strips into a discrete and saleable commodity (launching an entire industry, if not art-form) has been told elsewhere, but undoubtedly the influence of attention-grabbing pulp pictures as much as reformatted cartoons shaped the tastes of a generation.Moreover, with thematic similarities and often the same publishers hiring illustrators (and writers), naturally the artisanss of one market frequently worked in both and sometimes all 3 arenas.Now with comicbooks the indisputable major player in today's illustrated fiction, comes a superb collection of images gathered together by writer/designer Steven Brower and novelist Jim Simon which shines a welcome light on those artists whose talents could be seen in all areas of popular fiction...This superb gallery includes an efficient and studious overview of the history and characters that thrived in those bygone days before the sublime and stunning panoply of pictures - all accompanied by incisive and revelatory potted biographies - commences.The images are culled from such lauded titles as Astounding, If, Weird Tales, Galaxy, Nick Carter, Detective, Detective Short Stories, Planet Stories, Adventure, World's News, Speed Detective, Sky Fighters, Dime Western and many more.The artists featured can be broken into roughly three categories: pulp masters who also worked in comicbooks such as Edd Cartier, Charles Coll, Virgil Finlay, Kelly Freas, Roy G. Krenkel, Gray Morrow and Alex Schomburg whilst the second is jobbing artists equally at home in newspapers comicbooks, pulps and eventually commercial art.Those include Benjamin "Stookie" Allen, D, Bruce Berry, Jack Binder, Jon L. Blummer, J. C, Burroughs (son of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs), Harry Campbell, Paul Cooper, Harvey Eisenberg, Elton Fax, Harry Fisk, Dan Heilman, Ray Isip, Jeff Jones, Jacob Landau, D.H. Moneypenny, Lou Morales, Leo Morey, Norman Nodel, Neil O'Keefe, George Olesen, Paul Orban, H.L. Parkhurst, Louis Ravielli, Rod Ruth, John Styga, Riley Thomson, Elmer Wexler, Chuck Winter and Cedric Windas.Finally there are examples by legendary comics stars like Dan Adkins, Murphy Anderson, Dick Ayers, Matt Baker, Dan Barry, C.C. Beck, Pete Constanza, Stan Drake, Bill Draut, Will (or Bill) Ely, Creig Flessel, Dick Fletcher, John Forte, Matt Fox, Dick Giordano, John Giunta, Jerry Iger, Graham Ingels, Jack Kirby, George Klein, Alex Kotsky, Alden McWilliams, Mort Meskin, Irving Novick, Rudy Palais, Alex Raymond, Paul Reinman, Syd Shores, Joe Simon and Wally Wood.There even some British superstars included - Norman Petit (creator of Jane and Susie), Brian Lewis (Dan Dare, Suki) and the inimitable Don Lawrence, artist on Storm, Trigan Empire, Marvelman, and many more...Also included here is an intriguing selection of Prototypes, displaying potential pulp antecedents of such comics characters as the Joker and Mr. Mxyzptlk...If you're of a nostalgic bent or simply love of magnificent fantasy art, Astounding, Mysterious, Weird & True is a compendium to amaze and delight you.

Thank you Mr. Simon, thank you Mr. Brower. Fantastic collection, hope there are more volumes planned. I loved, still do, the black illustrations with old science fiction digest magazines. I would thumb through the issue, examinging both the art at the start of the story, then the larger middle illustration, all of it, increasing my interest as to where this tale might take me. I loved this book.Both known artists and lesser known ones. I'll be on the watch out for volume 2.

Here is a book that is both an enjoyable read and an historical record of a very American art form, namely, comic book art and the mostly unknown artists that created their masterpieces while going mostly unnoticed. The book itself contains wonderful illustrations of comic art that appeared in pulp magazines from the end of the nineteenth century to well into the 1950's. Well known comic artists as Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, and J.C. Burroughs are chronicled here, but so are the lesser knowns like Matt Fox, Rod Ruth, Wally Wood, and many, many more. In total, there are well over 70 artists presented here with their illustrated work. I recommend this volume fully to comic book enthusiasts and even the casual fan. The Pulp Art of Comic Book Artists is a volume that everybody should include on their bookshelf.

Images are of excellent quality, however, I was totally bored by reading the text.

Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde. Und die Erde war wüst und leer, und es war finster auf der Tiefe; und der Geist Gottes schwebte auf dem Wasser. Und Gott sprach: Es werde Licht! und es ward Licht. Und Gott sah, daß das Licht gut war. Da schied Gott das Licht von der Finsternis und nannte das Licht Tag und die Finsternis Nacht. Da ward aus Abend und Morgen der erste Tag.Und Gott sprach: Es werde eine Feste zwischen den Wassern, und die sei ein Unterschied zwischen den Wassern. Da machte Gott die Feste und schied das Wasser unter der Feste von dem Wasser über der Feste. Und es geschah also. Und Gott nannte die Feste Himmel. Da ward aus Abend und Morgen der andere Tag.An diese Passage aus einem bekannten Prosa-Buch musste ich denken, als ich "Astounding, Mysterious, Weird & True" durchblätterte. Der Band versetzt uns zurück in eine Zeit, als die Schöpfung noch im Werden und nicht alles fein säuberlich voneinander getrennt war. Die Comics sollten sich noch erst als eigenes Genre etablieren und aus dem Schatten der Pulps treten. Viele der später in den Pantheon aufgenommenen Zeichner waren bereits da (z.B. Jack Kirby, Wally Wood, Alex Raymond), aber auch eine Vielzahl heute vergessener Künstler begegnen uns. Künstler, die Schwarz/Weiß-Zeichnungen für die Innenillustrationen der Pulps fertigten, aber auch Comicstrips zeichneten."Astounding" beginnt mit einer leider doch sehr kurzen Einführung zu diesem Thema, die aber deutlich aufzeigt, wie die Künstler für die verschiedenen Genres tätig waren. Auf den folgenden ca. 170 Seiten werden lexikalisch dann ca. 70 Zeichner alphabetisch vorgestellt. Es findet sich jeweils ein sehr, sehr kurzer biographischer Abriss, dazu der Abdruck einer oder mehrerer Zeichnungen des Künstlers.Woran es liegt, dass manche Künstler mit mehreren, teilweise seitenfüllenden Wiedergaben ihrer Zeichnungen gewürdigt werden, während andere nur Raum für ein einziges kleinformatiges Bildchen zugebilligt bekommen, hat sich mir nicht erschlossen. Und genau hier sehe ich das große Manko dieses Bandes: Die Idee, eine Art Pulp-Illustrationen-Lexikon vorzulegen finde ich großartig, aber das Buch kratzt mit seinem schmalen Umfang nur an der Oberfläche.Es trägt den Zusatz "volume 1", ob ein zweiter Band aber überhaupt geplant ist, konnte ich nicht herausfinden.Mir haben die Informationen und Bildchen nicht gereicht, um mir einen Eindruck von den vorgestellten Zeichnern zu verschaffen. Ich hätte gerne detailliertere Informationen gehabt; insbesondere die Wiedergabe eines einzigen Bildes ist nicht geeignet, einen Künstler vorzustellen.Wer allerdings einfach nur ein Buch sucht, in dem er blättern und die herrlichen alten Pulp-Illustrationen bestaunen kann, ist hier gut bedient. Die Wiedergabequalität ist in Ordnung und die Illustrationen vermitteln auch einen Überblick über die verschiedenen Genres (Science Fiction, Western, Krimi).