EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 31 © 2020 Book Palace Books * 96 PAGES in FULL edition

96 Crime Book Covers, Screwball Comics, and Advert Illustrations The Hooded Gunman - An Illustrated History of Collins Crime Club By John Curran Hardcover 400 pages Collins Crime Club £40.00 (UK) They say you should never judge a book by its cover. However when the jackets are on publications from the Collins Crime Club — the HarperCollins imprint which, over the course of 65 years, issued more than 2000 titles by such liter‐ ary thoroughbreds as Nicholas Blake, Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh—it’s hard not to be lured in by some of the most exquisite artwork to have ever graced the face of genre publishing. From its inception in the early 1930s to its demise in the 1990s the Collins Crime Club—with its discreet emblem of the ‘Hooded Gunman’ —promised an army of loyal readers the best in murder mystery, with an endless array of arresting artwork cloaking the sinister contents of the books within. Taking inspiration from atmo‐ spheric titles like Murder Among Friends by the prolific author Elizabeth Ferrars—its cover depicting an open skull in which sits a group of people engrossed in animated conversation—Collins Crime Club cover- art was renowned for distilling the essence of their stories in punchy, evocative style. Author John Curran’s doorstop tome— succinctly named The Hooded Gunman — is a majestic celebration of this art, which brought life to the books that no self-re‐ specting crime aficionado’s bookshelf was without during much of the 20th century. By Cleaver Patterson Before ‘screwball’ became a movie genre, it was a staple in other forms of American culture, including newspaper comic strips. Beginning at the time of America’s darkest hour, the Great Depres‐ sion, comic strip artists sought refuge from the dour times among absurdist humour, putting a smile on their readers and indeed a belly laugh as well. Oddly enough, what began in newspapers soon caught on within themovie industry, or rather among its comedians such as the Marx Brothers (who took their names from a popular comic strip), W. C. Fields, Spike Jones, Ernie Kovacs, the animated cartoons of Tex Avery, and eventually MAD magazine. This book offers a wealth of previously never reprinted comics unleashing fresh views of some of America’s greatest and most-loved cartoonists, including George Herriman ( Krazy Kat) , E.C. Segar (creator of Popeye ), Rube Goldberg ( The Inventions of Professor Lucifer G. Butts, A.K. ), Bill Holman ( Smokey Stover ), and Frederick Opper ( Happy Hooligan ). In addition, readers will be delighted to discover previ‐ ously “lost” screwball masters, such as Gene Ahern ( The Squirrel Cage which would later inspire Robert Crumb’s Mr. Natural ), Gus Mager ( Sherlocko the Monk ), Boody Rogers ( Sparky Watts ), Milt Gross ( Count Screwloose ), George Swanson ( $alesman $am ) and many others. Screwball! The Cartoonists Who Made the Funnies Funny By Paul C. Tumey Hardcover 304 pages Library of American Comics $59.99 (US) Austin Briggs The Consumate Illustrator By David Apatoff Hardcover 160 pages Auad Publishing £39.99 (UK) Manuel Auad has been a comic critic, writer, editor and, now, publisher. Having published books on diverse artists such as Jordi Bernet, Alex Toth, Robert Fawcett, Al Dorne, Frank Brangwyn andAlexNiño, he now presents a book on Austin Briggs. Briggs (1908-1973), who is best known as the artist who followed Alex Raymond on the Flash Gordon newspaper strip, was born in a railroad car and grew up on a farm with no books and no art. He moved to New York as a teen and his talent was quickly spotted: he did car ads, pulp black and white illustrations, and, as mentioned earlier, was assistant to Alex Raymond on Flash Gordon and Secret Agent X-9 . After World War II, his work appeared in Redbook , Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Evening Post . With Norman Rockwell and Robert Fawcett, he founded the Famous Artists School. Nowwe get a view on Briggs’ work as an illustrator, with text courtesy of David Apatoff. Briggs had a way of bringing the most mundane situation into a fully-ren‐ dered document of the times. Although re‐ membered best for his Flash Gordon stint, he also did movie posters, travel ads and magazine illustrations, many found inside this book.