Miller & Undwerwood's Stephen E. Fabian books
   Ladies & Legends
   Women & Wonders
                                                                  (Underwood // Miller)

Stephen E. Fabian's Ladies & Legends (1993-Underwood-Miller) This book was first released by Underwood-Miller books, an imprint that Miller co-founded before his own company. Including the cover painting, there are 131 images on display, along with five others that are Fabian's special creations of a main scene combined with a smaller complementary one, usually pulled together by an complexly-articulated frame. Two additional pieces were color paintings presented here in black-&-white (one was then later used for the cover of the following WOMEN & WONDERS). There are two short text pages of introduction. The literary characters from Robert E. Howard's Conan tales appear more than any others, but the many illustrations also include those from the works of Clive Barker, John F. Carr, L. Sprague deCamp, Gordan R. Dickson, Brian Lumley, Arthur Machen, Seabury Quinn, Jack Vance and Jack Williamson. I should mention that all of the eight drawings from Fabian's CONAN-THE QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST PORTFOLIO are reproduced here. There is nudity found sporadically throughout. The book seems less than it should and I believe it's because page after page of finished drawings begin to pale on the white backgrounds. A full-bled black border present on each, albeit more expensive, I think would be a step in the right direction, but I would propose that borders of various dark, saturated, colors instead of the black would give the eye the diversity it is unconsciously looking for, while then letting the piece sing in its semi-isolation. Having written that, I realize that the same problem doesn't seem as evident in Gerry de la Ree collections - perhaps there is something in the selection or the reproduction that I'm missing to account for that. Those collections are recommended before this pair and there are a number of repeats from them to here, but there are still 111 new 'well-presented' drawings found in this particular volume.

Stephen E. Fabian's Women & Wonders (1995-C.F. Miller) A great volume of Fabian's drawings. 148 pages when counting the covers and liners, 135 of which are great presentations of his work. It's all black-&-white drawings inside, mostly story illustrations or stand-alone SF/Fantasy imaginings (unfortunately, one was a black-&-white presentation of a painting). There are 5 pages of text serving as an introduction to the artist and his career. Each art piece is captioned, with the title of the story it illustrates, plus the author's name. There's but two double-page spreads - one works, one doesn't. Conan leads the pack of the many barbarians, male & female, that romp through the book, but you'll also find the attendant wizards, castles & dragons, along with haunted houses, spaceships, vampires, mermaids and knights. It's no surprise that there is some nudity in a book entitled WOMEN & WONDERS. The List here is recommending Gerry De La Ree's collections FANTASY BY FABIAN and MORE FANTASY BY FABIAN before these Underwood books and indeed there are a lot of repeats, but this book has 74 new 'well-presented' images not found in the better ones.