The Comics Journal Library 5 - Classic Comics Illustrators
(2005 - Fantagraphics Books)

In-depth studies of five artists; Frank Frazetta, Russ Heath, Burne Hogarth, Russ Manning and Mark Schultz, but Hogarth & Frazetta together get two-thirds of the book to themselves. Almost all of the text is old interviews and essays that originally appeared in the periodical THE COMICS JOURNAL, which here have quite a bit of particular examples, discussed in the bodies of the documents, actually added into the presentation. 88 of the book's nearly 160 pages could be said to be dominated by the collected art with 56 of those being focused on single large reproductions and the rest multiple-image pages. Another 32 of the text pages are adorned with a smaller image, or two, as well. The book is large, 12 x 12 inches, and thick enough to be a bit unwieldy in the perusing. Most art is captioned with the title or original use, along with the creation year and the artist's name, if other than the one of the five being featured at that moment - there is a healthy amount of other artists cited by these creators in discussing their influences, likes & dislikes and a good number of those examples get thrown into the mix. In fact, there is one small Japanese image that is clearly graphic in its depiction of adult themes, so it alone makes me put the book away from children. Anyway, I did notice that a handful of all the pieces that I was already familiar with were mis-captioned. The artists that got well-presented displays are: Hal Foster, Frank Frazetta (18)*, Russ Heath (5), Burne Hogarth (14), Russ Manning (7), Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt, Mark Schultz (8) and Wally Wood.

* - Note that one of Frazetta's pieces here is not found 'well-presented' in his own commonly available collections (though another two manage a better presentation here than anywhere else . . .).

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