Frank Kelly Freas: A Separate Star
(1984 - Greenswamp Publications)

This book could be considered a sequel to an earlier collection, FRANK KELLY FREAS - THE ART OF SCIENCE FICTION, presenting the artist's work in much the same format - same bounty of full-bleed paintings, same storytelling about each (and same hard-to-read cursive. . .). However, this book has more pages and indeed more of them are dedicated to the art (though do know that it is his drawings that fill most of this 'increase'). 89 art pages to be exact, with only five of those 'cluttered' with multiple images. 12 art pieces are allowed to spread over the book's gutter and three-quarters of them do so acceptably. All the paintings are story illustrations and each is captioned with the story's title, author and publication year (and sometimes the original's private owner). Again, like the previous book, the text is sometimes generally autobiographical, but more often focused right into a anecdote about the art that accompanies. Between the covers are aliens, spaceships, robots, fairies, devils, demons, dinosaurs and dragons, as well as some art from Robert Aspirin's fantasy parodies. Also notably, Freas made two revisions of his famed "The Gulf Between" painting for the covers of an album by the rock band Queen and both appear here. While this book placed a bit higher than its progenitor, in turn, the later collection of Freas paintings, AS HE SEES IT, placed even slightly higher. I say you will ultimately want to have all three.

The Kelly Freas Collection (Heritage Auction Comics Catalogue supplement (2004 October - # 813-C))

The Astounding Fifties [BELOW THE LINE]

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