Wednesday Covers: The Expendables

No, not those Expendables. These Expendables were a group of rogue space adventurers created by author Edmund Cooper (under the pen name of "Richard Avery") back in the 1970s. The four book series was published by Fawcett, and all the volumes sported terrific cover art by Ken Kelly. Enjoy!

Wednesday Cover: The Lost Continent

This week, we've got another terrific Frank Frazetta cover - this time for an Ace paperback edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs' science fiction novel, The Lost Continent (a/k/a Beyond Thirty). Enjoy!

Wednesday Cover: Maza of the Moon

The artwork of the great Frank Frazetta graces the cover of Maza Of the Moon, an interplanetary adventure by Otis Edelbert Kline. I just acquired this vintage Ace paperback and have added it to my already formidable "To Be Read" stack...

Wednesday Covers: Xenozoic Tales

One of my favorite comic book series of all time is Xenozoic Tales by Mark Schultz. The series was alternately known as Cadillacs & Dinosaurs after the title of this collection and the subsequent Saturday Morning animated series (still not on DVD, dammit). Set in a wild post-Apocalyptic future where dinosaurs have been reborn and humanity struggles to maintain a balance between the new natural order and its pre-holocaust technologies, Schultz's series is gorgeously-drawn and cleverly written.

Schultz's artwork is classic, echoing the great illustrators of the past, while exhibiting a dynamism and romanticism all its own. I love it.

The writing is sharp, too, a genre mashup packed with adventure, intrigue, politics, mysticism, and great characters, topped off with satisfying helpings of dinosaur mayhem.

These covers are from the three oversized collections published by Kitchen Sink Press in the 90s. They're the ones I own, and don't quite collect the entire saga. The series has been re-issued a few times since, and I hope one day to acquire the complete collection.

Wednesday Cover: BLOODTHIRST: THE NIGHTFALL CONSPIRACY

For this week's return to my occasional "Wednesday Cover" feature, I present the Joel Adams (talented son of comics legend Neal Adams) cover for the 1994 comic Bloodthirst: The Nightfall Conspiracy... one of my earliest efforts as a comics writer and one of the few that I'm not completely embarrassed by! 

The Bloodthirst comics (there were three: a one-shot and this two-issue miniseries) were about a vampire secret agent (think Emma Peel with fangs). The Nightfall Conspiracy featured interior art by the talented duo of Delfin Barral and Chuck Bordell. The snazzy logo was created by my pal Darren Goodhart.

Wednesday Cover: QUARRY IN THE BLACK

Here's the cover for the upcoming Max Allan Collins "Quarry" novel, Quarry In The Black, from Hard Case Crime books. The stunning illustration is by the late Glen Orbik, a true pulp art master who passed away last May. Reportedly, it was his last completed cover painting. Quarry In The Black is the 12th(!) "Quarry" novel, and is due to be published in October, to tie-in with the Quarry television series on Cinemax.

Wednesday Covers: Gullivar Jones On The Loose!

At one point in the 1970s, Marvel Comics, unable to secure the comic book rights to Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars" stories (which were being published at rival DC), began adapting author Edwin Lester Arnold's 1905 sci-fi novel, Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, in the pages of Creatures On The Loose!

Arnold's novel was a precursor to Burroughs' interplanetary fantasies, with a number of story similarities to the first few John Carter adventures. Marvel drafted their top cover artist, the legendary Gil Kane, to play up those similarities, leading to a pretty amazing run of swashbuckling, action-packed cover illustrations.Here are a few of them:

Wednesday Cover: Wonder Woman '77!

Considering DC Comics' recent-ish success with their Batman '66 comics, which presented new adventures of the mid-Sixties Adam West & Burt Ward television versions of Batman & Robin, it was inevitable that they'd try a Wonder Woman comic based on the Seventies TV show that starred the stunning Lynda Carter as the star-spangled heroine. Originally serialized online, the publisher has recently collected a couple of the period adventures as the Wonder Woman '77 Special!

As a fan of the 70s Wonder Woman series, I felt I had to pick this up when I saw it at a local store, despite the hefty cover price. It was a fun read, although I felt the writers and artists did an only "adequate" job evoking the TV series.  In fact, reading it, I got the impression that no one involved actually was alive in the 70s!

Wednesday Cover: QUARRY'S CHOICE

The amazing Robert McGinnis, nearly 90 years-old and not missing a trick, provides this gorgeous cover for Max Allan Collins' latest "Quarry" novel from Hard Case Crime. I just got this book and it's right on top of the reading pile. Collins' "Quarry" novels, which chronicle the life of a hardboiled professional killer, are among my favorite books - and Quarry one of my favorite protagonists - in the genre. 

Wednesday Cover: THE SPIRIT - THE NEW ADVENTURES

Back in 1997, Kitchen Sink Press published several issues of Will Eisner's The Spirit - The New Adventures, for which they invited a number of the comic industry's top talents to contribute original stories featuring Central City's masked crimebuster. A lot of great names were involved, and many of the stories were extremely good, sometimes rivaling the master's own tales. They sported some terrific covers, too - including this Brian Bolland masterpiece from Issue #3. It was also released as a limited edition print (shown below).

Wednesday Covers: WINTERWORLD

Winterworld was a 3-issue miniseries by Chuck Dixon and artist Jorge Zaffino, originally published in 1987 by Eclipse Comics. A post-Apocalyptic tale of survival, set in an unspecified future where the world is covered in ice and snow, the series featured some pretty savage action and brutal storytelling by Dixon & Zaffino.

The original miniseries - along with a previously unpublished sequel, Wintersea, by the same creative team, was recently published in trade paperback form by IDW Publishing, and Dixon has followed  that collection with a new, ongoing Winterworld comic book series. I've only read the first issue, but it was terrific, and I wouldn't hesitate to highly recommend both the trade collection and the new series to fans of hard-hitting action and adventure tales.

Here are the original Eclipse miniseries covers by Zaffino.

Wednesday Covers: DANGER TRAIL

In 1993 DC Comics published a 4-issue revival of their 1950 spy comic, Danger Trail. The '93 miniseries was written by Len Wein, and illustrated by Carmine Infantino and Frank McLaughlin. The story was a fairly shameless rip-off of various James Bond movies, and featured DC superspy King Faraday in an adventure pitting him against the supervillain Kobra.

It was enjoyable stuff, but highly derivative. Fortunately, DC had the good sense to hire comicdom's premiere spy artist, Paul Gulacy, to draw the dynamic, eye-catching covers. Check them out:

Wednesday Cover: FLASH GORDON

This one is cool. It's the fourth volume of Tempo Books' late 70s paperback reprints of the Flash Gordon newspaper strips, and its cover features a rare, non-painted cover illustration by Boris Vallejo. I have several of Vallejo's art books, and I always thought that his freehand line drawings were more dynamic than most of his paintings, which often have a very "posed" quality. Since, according to those aforementioned books, he frequently painted using posed photos of models, that's probably not too surprising.

Wednesday Covers: AIRBOY ARCHIVES

One of my favorite comics of the 1980s - in fact, one of my favorite adventure comics ever - is Eclipse comics' revival of Forties WWII hero, Airboy. Under the guiding hands of editor/artist Timothy Truman and writer Chuck Dixon (who wrote all 50 issues of the series), the book built brilliantly on the legacy of the Charles Biro character, updating the concept for the Regan era.

IDW is currently re-issuing the series in handsome archive editions, and Truman - always one of my favorite comic book artists - has created striking new covers for the collections.

Wednesday Cover: VAMPIRELLA #2

And... here's the second Adam Hughes cover for Harris Comics' 1992 revival of the Warren classic, Vampirella. Nobody drew sexier women in the 90s than Hughes.

You know, I think I bought a tee-shirt with this image on it.

Wednesday Cover: VAMPIRELLA #1

Back in 1992, Harris Comics revived the classic "Good Ghoul" character Vampirella, with a new, full-color series that was a far cry in style and tone from the legendary B&W Warren magazine originals. And of course, since it was 1992, who better to render the covers than the hottest "hot chick" artist of the time, Adam Hughes?

I admit it. I bought it because of the cover, too.

Wednesday Cover(s): Chaykin's BUCK ROGERS

So, Hermes Press has just collected their Buck Rogers miniseries by Howard Chaykin. I didn't read the individual comics, but I pre-ordered it in trade, and expect it to arrive in a week or so. I don't always like Chaykin's comics, but when I do, I tend to like them a lot. In the 80s, I adored American Flagg, and the writer/artist is responsible for creating one of my all-time favorite comics characters - Atlas Comics' The Scorpion. I also dug his 80s Shadow miniseries (and will probably pick up his recent return to the character eventually), among many other titles.

I've read online that this version of Buck Rogers hews more closely to the original Philip Francis Nowlan pulp novellas, Armageddon 2419 A.D. and The Airlords Of Han.... and I think that's a great approach. Hey, I love the 70s TV series as much as anyone (and more than most), but it's about time to get back to the character's roots.

Here are Chaykin's covers for the four issue miniseries.

Wednesday Cover: The City Outside The World

The City Outside The World is one of Lin Carter's Mars Novels, a four book cycle of  homages (or pastiches, if you prefer) of Leigh Brackett's own stories set on the Red Planet. It's also the only one in the series I don't yet own. Still, I'm featuring it here because I find this cover painting (by an artist I haven't identified as yet) quite handsome and evocative of the Interplanetary Romance genre.

Wednesday Cover: Abandon Galaxy!

 

Abandon Galaxy! is the second of two "Commander Craig Galactic Adventures" by "Bart Somers," one of the countless pseudonyms used by the prolific Gardner F. Fox. 

Although published in the late Sixties, the "Commander Craig" books (the first tome is called Beyond The Black Enigma) harken back to 30's-styled space opera pulp, and are outrageously plotted. Great fun. I'm not certain who the cover artist is, but it's been suggested to me that it might be the work of Jack Gaughn.

Wednesday Covers: Cap Kennedy

I don't know much about DAW Books' "Cap Kennedy" series, written by British sci-fi scribe E.C. Tubb under the pseudonym of "Gregory Kern." Nor do I know the name of the artist (I'm now told that it's Jack Gaughan) that painted these covers. What I do know is that the series was published in the 1970s and ran for at least 17 volumes.

I've never read any of these, but being as the tagline "Secret Agent of the Spaceways" appears to combine at least two of my favorite genres, I suspect that I'll hunt down a copy or two one of these days.