Boris books
   Boris Vallejo:   Boris Book Two
   Boris Vallejo:   Boris   [Book One]   [-BELOW THE LINE-]
                                                                  (Book Two published by Anaconda Press)

Boris Book Two (1978-Anaconda Press) You might also see this volume as BORIS II. In this follow-up to their stapled magazine-style first effort, Mark A. Feldman, Philip J. Libraro & John A. Taylor produced a more substantial square-bound volume that I'm surprised is not better known. It's 84 pages, with 38 of them being well-presented paintings and drawings. Aside from the checklist of the artist's posters and book & magazine covers to-date, all of the other pages are given over to sequential art, cartoons, photos of the artist (usually acting as his own model) and, most frustrating, black-&-white photos of more of his paintings (and even several as full-page). The reason I'm surprised at its relative obscurity is that 21 of the well-presented pieces aren't seen in any of the other Boris collections that The List recommends before this one and the shame of it is that among those black-&-white pictures are *another* ten-odd pieces not seemingly collected higher up. Among the good stuff are a large number of barely-clothed barbarians & savages, but you'll also find spaceships, aliens and other monsters. Conan and Doc Savage have a strong presence in the works and there's also interesting renditions of J.F.K. and Clint Eastwood.

Boris [Book One] [BELOW THE LINE] (1976) (edited & self-published by Mark A. Feldman & John A. Taylor) 52 pages and no spine, except for the fold where the staples join the book together. The cover is Boris' "Amazon's Pet" painting (which can be found in his better collections) and everything else is black-&-white (or amber-tinted), including photographs of several painted posters, book and magazine covers. There are 25 other full-page images that encompass earlier advertising work, pencil preliminaries for recognizable paintings and several finished drawing pieces. Interweaved through the publication is a long interview with the artist, mixed in with family photographs, as well as some personal model shots to be compared to the book covers they originated. There's also an early checklist of his work to date, probably not more than a page and a half altogether.