Synopses & Reviews
Edited by former Comics Journal editor Tom Spurgeon, the fifth volume in the acclaimed Comics Journal Library series celebrates five of the great all-time comic book artists. Frank Frazetta, Burne Hogarth, Mark Schultz, Russ Manning and Russ Heath are the modern masters of illustration, here collected in their own words under one gorgeous, wrap-around cover.
Together, these artists bridge almost 70 years of comics and fantasy art tied to tradition, craft, and an emphasis on the human form. Frank Frazetta is unquestionably the preeminent fantasy and science fiction painter and illustrator of the second half of the 20th century. He began his career in comics, and from there he revolutionized the paperback cover aesthetic with his paintings that graced the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and other sword & sorcery and fantasy authors. In his longest and last great discussion recorded for posterity, the painter and cultural touchstone throws down the gauntlet to interviewer Gary Groth and a generation of adventure painter wannabes.
Burne Hogarth is well known as the visionary illustrator of the Sunday Tarzan series from 1939 to 1950, and the innovative educator who founded New York's school of Visual Arts in 1947. His educational books Dynamic Anatomy, Dynamic Light & Shade, etc. have become staples of colleges and universities all over the world. Hogarth gives one of the most charged interviews by any artist in any art form over the last 30 years, passionately and decisively explicating the value of great art and the moral foundations upon which all great art rests.
Also included are defining interviews with Russ Manning, best known for his work on Tarzan and Magnus Robot Fighter, and Russ Heath, the great EC (Mad, Frontline Combat) and war comics artist (Sgt. Rock, etc.). The Great Comics Illustrators is also proud to present an extensive interview with one of the next generation artists who continued the tradition of men like Manning, Heath, Hogarth and Frazetta into a well-known entertainment property Mark Schultz (Cadillacs and Dinosaurs), caught at the apex of his work's influence within the field and providing an altogether different set of perspectives on great art's role in great comics. Copiously illustrated throughout with much rare art.
Synopsis
Edited by former Comics Journal editor Tom Spurgeon, the fifth volume in the acclaimed Comics Journal Library series celebrates five of the great all-time comic book artists.
About the Author
Tom Spurgeon lives in Silver City, NM. His previous book, Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book, a biography of Marvel Comics pioneer Stan Lee, was nominated for an Eisner Award.