EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 21 © 2017 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

79 Adventures , but also on other pulps of the era such as Weird Tales , Magic Carpet, Fate, and Mystic Magazine . Although many of these pulps were in the fantasy or science-fiction genre, St. John also did covers for many books of a different genre, mainly westerns. Had he not been so closely associated with the Chicago McClurg publisher and Edgar Rice Burroughs, St. John could have been considered one of the most important illustrators from the early twentieth century. St. John would influence countless artists, and in some way, may be considered the artist responsible for the modern fantasy illustration genre. It is pretty clear that the way St. John positioned his main figures, largely at odds against a ferocious animal predator/enemy, would be a great influence on Frank Frazetta and other fantasy artists. Like Frazetta, St. John knew how to position the figures at their most intense moment, with muscles rippling against the fur of a wild beast. There’s never a moment of respite in any of his paintings (for a Burroughs book). His knowledge of not only human FACING PAGE: Mo-Sar carries off Jane from ‘Tarzan the Terrible’, by Edgar Rice Burroughs and published in 1921. ABOVE: Illustration for ‘Erdis Cliff’, Amazing Stories , published September 1949. While the iconography remains the same, the artist’s later black and white work was executed primarily in pencil and charcoal with highlights added with white gouache, whereas his earlier work opted for a more painterly approach with tones being added with washes of ink.