EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 26 © 2019 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

96 The Bookshelf: Fantastic Worlds, Biomechanoids, and a Dead Man Giger By H. R. Giger Hardcover 96 pages Taschen £11.70 (UK), $15.00 (US) Mort Cinder By H. G. Oesterheld and Alberto Breccia Hardcover 224 pages Fantagraphic Books £26.99 (UK), $29.99 (US) Fantastic Worlds–The Art of William Stout By Ed Leimbacher Hardcover 304 pages Insight Editions £56.00 (UK), $75.00 (US) Part of Taschen’s Basic Art 2.0 series of books to commemorate the 30th anniversary of their first incursion into art books, which, although full of beautiful colour reproductions and printed on thick matte paper, are readily available for everyone on a tight budget. This time the books are in hardcover, as opposed to the paperbacks from the 1980s, and the printing is just as good, if not better. This is an art book about Swiss artist H. R. Giger whose biomechanic world and creature-designs have been sought after in modern science-fiction movies. His first incursion into movies was with the aborted Alejandro Jodorowsky film adaption of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’, for which Giger was to design an entire planet and its evil inhabitants. Although the project fell through, Giger’s work got the attention of British director Ridley Scott who saw the potential of the artist—and his surreal world—and asked him to design the creature for his film ‘Alien’. The rest, as they say is history, since Giger won an Oscar for his design work in that film, and became a minor celebrity all over the world. Whoever has seen Giger’s original paintings will be taken back by their sheer size, all done in freehand with an airbrush, only occasionally using stencils but no masking film. If ever travelling to Switzerland be sure to visit the castle at Gruyères, in the Fribourg canton of Switzerland, where his museum is located. Or buy this book if you have no money to travel, and feast on his fascinating art. For those who are wealthier, there’s always the limited edition sumo book for only £650. l illustrators is also available in the USA from budplant.com Finally the English-speaking audience gets to read what Europeans and South Americans have long considered to be amasterpiece and one of the best comic book series of all time! Appearing for the first time in July 1962 in the Argentine weekly magazine Misterix , the serial Mort Cinder would set a new standard in comics and become one of the most celebrated strips in the field. First by the thoughtful and in- telligent scripts by Hector German Oesterheld, and secondly by Alberto Breccia’s innovations with his artwork. For this series Breccia decided to leave behind his comic book graphic style, and inked with a razor blade instead of a pen, and used strips of clothing, rags, and so on, to add textures to his inking. He even mixed his ink with either glue or soap to further add nuances on to the inking. His striking black and white artwork, bringing tomindGermanExpressionist films, would fur- ther add to the eerie ambience of the stories. Done as a serial with unrelated episodes, and complemented by Breccia’s absolutely amazing artwork, it captured the imagination not only of readers, but countless comic book artists around the globe. See where artists as diverse as Frank Miller, Brian Bolland, Bill Seinkiewicz, and Dave McKean, among many others, drew their influences from. Breccia changed his graphic style so many times that he kept his fans and followers on their toes. This series is probably the best work he ever did. The printing, with images scanned from the original artwork, is simply stunning! Long-overdue coffee-table art book on the extraordinary and jack-of-all-trades artist William Stout (whom we featured in issue 10). Stout is one of the ‘good’ artists whose work has appeared on underground comics, record sleeves, movie posters and in dinosaur murals inside museums. Early on Stout did covers and drawings for underground comics—where his artwork was vastly superior to that of any of the other underground artists—yet he never worked directly for any of the two major mainstream comic book companies. Having garnered many fans since, mostly among his peers, he also did cover sleeves for bootleg records—the artwork sometimes being superior to that on the official records—and movie posters (among others for the animated film ‘Wizards’ and the cult-classic ‘Rock’n’Roll High School’). He was assistant to Russ Manning on his ‘Tarzan’ newspaper strip, and worked onHarvey Kurtzman and Bill Elder’s ‘Little Annie Fanny’. Amultitalented artist, he has been production designer on various movie projects, including ‘Conan’ and most notably ‘Return of the Living Dead’. His interest in dinosaurs led him to become one of the foremost artists on the subject, also creating a series of murals about the Cretaceous period andprehistoric life for various American museums. His voyages to Antarctica and Patagonia further added to the imagery and the paintings he created depicting those regions’ wildlife serve simultaneously as a plea for their natural conservation. This hefty hardback volume is bound to last a lifetime.