In celebration of the Latest New Year, here is a selection of comic covers marking New Years from 1938-2024, featuring comic-book characters past and present from Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny through to Batman, Spider-Man and Dare Devil...
To mark the passing of the month of October and to welcome November's relentless autumnal onslaught, here are Joe Mugnaini's stunning cover illustrations for Ray Bradbury's books (above) The October Country and (below) The Halloween Tree.
I recently unearthed this old paperback copy of The Lord of the Rings (cover art by Pauline Baynes): a volume that was the Bible for the youth of my generation.
The edition is dated 1971 (when I was 22-years-old); fast-forward a decade, and this would be the copy that i used when adapting Tolkien's epic for the BBC's – now renowned – 1981 radio serialisation.
Today's cover-art is from Volume One, Number 1 of Fantastic magazine (Summer 1952). The spectacular, outrageously startling front cover is the work of Barry Phillips and L. R. Summers and is suffused with a wondrous eye-catching luridness.
The pages within contained stories by Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov (neither requiring introduction here) alongside other writers including Walter M. Miller, Jr., later author of A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) and – as is boldly announced on the cover – 'A Classic Novel by Raymond Chandler'. This novel was the previously serialised Professor Bingo's Snuff and is accompanied by illustrations from cover co-artist, L. R. Summers.
The back cover features (courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art) 'Danger on the Stairs', a decidedly disturbing image by the French surrealist painter Pierre Roy (1880–1950) about whom, I think, I may shortly be blogging further...
Fantastic, Volume One, Number 1.
Contents: Walter M. Miller, Jr., ('Six And Ten Are Johnny'); Sam Martinez ('For Heaven's Sake'); Paul W. Fairman ('Someday They'll Give Us Guns'); H. B. Hickey ('Full Circle'); Louise Lee Outlaw ('The Runaway'); Kris Neville ('The Opal Necklace'); Ray Bradbury ('The Smile'); H. L. Gold ('And Three To Get Ready'); Isaac Asimov ('What If') and Raymond Chandler's Professor Bingo's Snuff, illustrated by L. R. Summers and introduced with the following announcement:
We don't need to tell you who Raymond Chandler is, or what he has written. The man who, back in the Thirties, almost single-handedly lifted detective fiction out of the post-Van Dine doldrums, has a secure and lofty place in American literature. More than anyone he brought the hard boiled 'private eyes' story to popularity – and kept it there despite the swarm of imitators who have done their worst to wreck the genre. To our knowledge, Professor Bingo's Snuff is Mr. Chandler's second – and longest – fantasy. It will not at all surprise you that his talent brings added luster to the field.
The story had been earlier published as a three-installments serialisation in Park East, June-July 1951, and in: Go, June-July 1951.
The story's protagonist, Joe Pettigrew, grows tired of his wife Gladys cheating on him with their lodger Porter Green. With the help of some magical snuff which he buys from Professor Bingo he becomes invisible. Next Pettigrew creates the perfect 'locked-room murder'. However, the police have serious doubts and in the end shoot Pettigrew when he tries to escape.
As someone who is only a casual purchaser of comic books – new or vintage – but who, nevertheless, is a complete sucker for exceptional comic cover-art, I've decide to curate a personal collection of randomly stunning covers on this blog: beginning with Batman #135, cover 'H' by Jim Cheung (Special Foil Variant), May 2023.
This an occasional series of blog posts featuring what I consider to be great examples of book cover-art, starting with this copy (currently up for auction with a slightly battered wrapper) of Margery Allingham's 1955 detective story, The Beckoning Lady.
The splendid enigmatic dust-wrapper design is by the author's husband Philip ('Pip') Youngman Carter, who was himself both a writer of detective fiction as well as the artist responsible for the covers of several other detective writers.
