Unearthed from the teetering piles of books in Voltaire & Rousseau, Otago Lane, Glasgow this weekend. See just one aisle from the shop at the bottom, proper archeology needed to get to some of these beauties. Found a couple of Richard M. Powers covers and a Brian Lewis cover from Science Fantasy that seemed to be channeling him. The Kirby cover at the bottom is similar in style, I’m a sucker from this abstract, psychedelic depiction of alien worlds and it seems to have been a fad for a while to paint like this. I’m pretty sure the Kirby there isn’t Jack but you never know, anyone who can identify the artist on the Analog cover will be most appreciated, maybe Mike Hinge?.
Art
Some lovely designs popping up on Andy Votel‘s twitter feed for festival appearances this summer, hope Jane tours that Belladonna rescore. There are still a load of radio shows I need to catch up with over on their Soundcloud.
Wish this was real, not sure who it was created by as I found it via Dave Taylor on Facebook and he didn’t know either so please leave a comment if you know as I can’t tell from the signature – there are a few good ones floating around the web including this one below by Paul Hostetler. UPDATE: the image above is by French artist Obion.
Here’s my new 45 Live image by Paul Trewin aka Sub2 – he’s certainly captured the likeness even if I do look a bit serious. Check his work out here and see the whole 45 Live roster below (including new member Jon More from Coldcut). There the start of a new night in Plymouth on the 26th of this month too with myself, Boca 45, Pete Issac and Francois Parker if you’re in the area. There’s be a new mix from me next week to go with it…
Sad to learn from Jim Thirlwell that artist The Pizz has passed away. He was of the Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth school of custom cars and monsters, very much in the vein of Robert Williams, Savage Pencil and the whole ‘Lowbrow’ movement. I’ll always remember him best for the Steroid Maximus and Garage Monsters artwork he did for Jim.
Cliff Robinson has been knocking out some stunning Judge Dredd pieces for 2000ad over the years and the cover of The Mega Collection #15 (on sale now) is another – a similar riff to a Mike McMahon cover for 2000ad back in the late 70s. He’s also recreated another McMahon, complete with surrounding graphics, below for a commission some years back. Keeping with the homages he referenced the poster for Clint Eastwood vehicle ‘The Gauntlet’ for the Lille Comic Con poster recently too.
Love the psychedelic background, the way Brian has signed ‘Lewis’ bottom right and just look at that 3D op-art typeface on the book cover below. I found this book for £4 in the Notting Hill Book exchange last week after being alerted to it by members of the Brian Lewis fan page on Facebook.
A real oddity of a book, cobbled together under different themes with random images from artists as diverse as Giger, Achilleos, Burns and Foss etc. held together with a narrative from Harrison. Several Star Wars concept paintings by Ralph McQuarrie feature as well for some reason and Lewis illustrates several weapons from the film as well. Here’s another image by Brian that was posted on the group, taken from David Kyle‘s ‘The Illustrated book of Science Fiction Ideas & Dreams’, Hamlyn 1977.
I found this the other day, Vortex #2 from February 1976. Lovely Rodney Matthews cover and there’s a 5 page interview with him inside as well as short stories from Michael Moorcock and others. The pages are all watermarked and the cover was filthy with all sorts of grime stuck to it, I’d wager that it had been skinned up on many a time over the years. Still a thing of beauty and I love that Vortex typeface.
A very productive weekend of digging uncovered these sci-fi paperbacks among others including three with covers by Richard M. Powers to add to the collection (I’m not so interested in the content, just the covers). The SF-18 cover artist is uncredited but a quick web search reveals that it’s by Dean Ellis and the original art is actually available to buy from this site if you have $5.5k! I’ve screen-grabbed the original below.
The Harlan Ellison book is an oddity as I noticed it shares a version of the same image on the cover of the Elektriktus album Electronic Mind Waves.
UPDATE: It seems that the image used on both the Ellison and Elecktriktus albums was originally by Rayment Kirby, entitled ‘Watch it’ and was printed as one of the first ever posters from the Big O Poster company. I contacted him and he shared his memory of making the piece,
“It was made by cutting out a B/W print after masking out the model’s hair and hand colouring it . It was laid on black polythene sheeting and the clock parts glued in position and the strands radiating from them were made from Bostick like glue. I think I shot the image in the late 1960s to early 70s so it was a long time ago. I don’t even remember who the model was. Having thought about the picture I think the poster rights may have been sold by an agent I had at the time. This would not have Included the other uses that (have) been made.”
I just made it in time to see the end of this exhibition at the 5th Base Gallery today, 12 classic scenes from the first three Star Wars films, each cut from a single sheet of A4 paper. The process is called Kirigami – rather than purely folding paper as in Origami it involves cutting as well – and artist Marc Hagan-Guirey has created these 12 dioramas over a period of three years.
Beautifully displayed in colour sensitive light boxes with mirrored surfaces they are quite simply stunning and are all apparently hand cut rather than laser cut. The circles are perfect the straight edges are perfect and the level of detail in such miniatures is nothing short of incredible. They are now going to be sold off to the highest bidders from the Kickstarter than Marc initiated to bring the exhibition to the public so this was probably the last time they’ll all be seen together.
Painted covers for the UK weekly magazine/comic Look-In from a huge online collection over at Comic Vine.
I used to get this in the late 70s and early 80s although I’m not sure I had many of these issues. The mag was full of tie-ins with TV, film and music with features, comic strips, interviews and posters. They sure had favourites as well, Steve Austin – The Six Million Dollar Man was on so many covers and DJ Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart seemed to rule for a period in the 70s (check for two of him inside the gallery below).
The fantastic Augustine Kofie released a book out of his work in June that totally passed me by. Via ZERO+ Publishing it’s a 164 pg hardcover with 100 colour plates in an edition of 1000 and you can get it here.
I’ve been away for the last four days at Camp Bestival with the family but it looks like biggest news of the weekend is this monster. The Rammellzee ‘Cosmic Flush’ project just gets better and better and is shaping up to be release of the year if it continues like this. Here’s the blurb: “Part 4 in Rammellzee‘s Cosmic Flush project brings together Doze Green and Edan, two heavyweights who need no introduction. Pre-orders are now live, limited to 500 copies with 250 signed print editions.”
(Above) A rare Brian Bolland image for Forbidden Planet sans the “People Like Us Shop At…” line. (Below) An even older advert when FP was in Denmark St.
UPDATE: Martin Ward just sent me several snaps of original bags he still has. The one of the old man in the circle is one of my favourites, would love to have that on a T-shirt. That bottom one of Zirk for Eternal Comics may well be Garry Leach actually, not Bolland.
Further Update: I found this in an old sketchbook and in an effort to keep these things together, have include it below 
Here’s a late 80s oddity that I was turned onto recently by Steve Cook – he of Secret Oranges fame. A 1988 Acid House 12″ made by the late, great Brett Ewins among others that comes with an 8pg B&W ‘lyric sheet’ featuring the art of Brendan McCarthy, Steve Dillon, Jamie Hewlett, Shaky Kane, Philip Bond, Jamie Hewlett and more.
The tracks themselves are primitive attempts to make Acid House (without the aid of the all-important Roland 303 by the sound of it) but have a period charm to them. Brett intones creepily over the top of the A side sounding like a riled up Timothy Leary on speed. The B side houses two instrumental cuts with ‘The Church of Acid’ coming on like Bam Bam with a sledgehammer and there IS a snatch of 303 but it sounds sampled and slightly out of time.
‘Dr. Microdot’ is a shorter version of same with the addition of an unidentified voice asking you to relax (we’ve all been there) and both tracks suffer from a lack of a decent arrangement, stumbling along with samples and effects being randomly thrown in and out of the mix. I’m being unkind but it’s fair to say they haven’t aged well although the fact that they were made in the middle of the second summer of love gives them a certain kudos. I’m wondering if the Ken Thomas credited with producing this fascinating artifact is the same one who has worked with everyone from Queen to the Cocteau‘s?
There’s even a video for a shorter version of the A side featuring Brett spouting his gobbledegook lyrics.
The artwork is the gold here and the free comic is basically of lot of the early gang of artists responsible for Deadline taking a page each and letting rip with whatever they feel is appropriate. Brendan, Philip and Shaky come up with some crackers but I’m not sure where Jamie’s contribution is exactly unless he collaborated with someone and isn’t credited. Ron Merlin, an early Deadline character, makes an appearance but it’s not clear if he is supposed to be the voice on the A side. There’s very little about it on the web but I love these musical comic crossovers (the Madness off-shoot ‘Mutants of Mega City One’ is another) even if the sounds often play second fiddle to the artwork.
Really chuffed for my friend Sarah J Coleman who has been lucky enough to illustrate the cover of a Korean edition of Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set A Watchman’ which is released today. She also did the 50th edition of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ a few years back, read more about it and see her extensive working process on her blog.
A beautiful 2001 poster by Kilian Eng that I came across today whilst looking for something else. Two years old, long gone from Mondo like so many of his others, there are three variants and some unused versions that are just as nice. I also found a Heavy Metal one too that’s of a similar ilk – I don’t always like his images, usually down to the colour choices he makes, but these are superb.
RIP Shusei Nagaoka – not a name I was familiar with but all of us must know at least a handful of these album covers? ELO, Earth Wind & Fire, Maze, Deep Purple, Boston and more. Big respect.
Notice how this poster for The Humanoid uses one of his images and flips it, I doubt the added characters are by him.
I’ve spent most of the evening looking at the work of Kája Saudek – a Czech artist and designer who worked in comics and created film posters – after being tipped off about him by Markey Funk. Markey had just visited ‘Batalion’, a bar and museum in Prague dedicated to the man and thought I would like the work. He was right, check out all that amazing detail and hand drawn typography – what a find.
I’d seen the Barbarella poster before but never checked on the name, the rest was new to me, a mixture of Rockin’ Jellybean, Robert Williams with shades of Moebius in places. Sadly, upon checking the wikipedia entry it seems that Saudek died the same day that I discovered him after spending nine years in a coma at a hospital in Prague. Art like this can never die though, he left a huge body of work for us all to enjoy.
I found this Carl Oglesby album with a cover illustrated by Dave Sheridan, the comic artist who worked on titles like Dealer McDope, The Leather Nun and some of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Now sadly deceased, Dave’s work is always hyper detailed and tripped out, I featured another of his covers some years back, an Impulse Jazz compilation – I wonder if he ever did any more record sleeves?
