SQP's Fastner & Larson books
   The Fastner & Larson Gallery
   Fastner & Larson's Tricks & Treats
   Fastner & Larson's Beauties & Beasts
   Architects Of Fantasy
   Fastner & Larson's Little Black Book vol.2 [BELOW THE LINE]
   Fastner & Larson's Little Black Book vol.3 [BELOW THE LINE]
                                (SQP (Sal Quartuccio Publications))

Various SQP releases that gather the art produced by Steve Fastner & Rich Larson over the years, ranked here with the best presentation first, to least so on the bottom.

The Fastner & Larson Gallery (2002) A great book, collecting 88 whimsical paintings by this duo - Rich Larson creating the compositions in pencil and then Steve Fastner completing the images with his paints. More than half of these paintings are presented as full-bleeds or framed in black. They're no double-page-spreads. It's got a three-page list of captions that contain title, creation year, size (in metric as well), media and a short comment about what it was used for and maybe additionally something interesting or funny about it (the comment being delivered in German too). There are four pages that provide a short biography of the two artists (also accompanied by the German as well). There are some superhero glamour pieces with most being busty babes fighting, or alternatively being oblivious to, the looming fantasy threats. There's nudity, and costuming that would never actually work, but this book only comes up to the level of 'racy', rather than earning some kind of dire kids-hands-off warning. The fantasy milieus run the gamut - ancient Egypt & Meso-America, alien invasions, pre-history barbarism, future dystopias, punk rock, other worlds, underwater realms, the wild west, jungles, spaceships, graveyards, pirates, witchery, vampires & monsters.

Fastner & Larson's Tricks & Treats (2007) This book was marked on the spine and in the indicia as Volume One, but another volume has yet to be seen. A slim book at only 48 pages, but everything after the two pages of introduction is a full-page painting. There is a small portion of the book whose paintings play on the main tropes of Halloween - pumpkins, devils & people in costume and then the rest of them play in the usual monster sandbox that Fastner & Larson inhabit. There's quite a diversity, and some other holidays are touched on. As usual, most of the lovelies are un-self-concious (or clueless . . .), but a few would fall into that area of knowing saucyness that this duo knows so well.

Fastner & Larson's Beauties & Beasts (2010) This book was marked on the spine and in the indicia as Volume One, but another volume has yet to be seen. 64 pages with more art on the front & back covers. 58 of those pages sport a featured large reproduction, with another six with multiple smaller images. There's one painting that grows over the central gutter (but is still o.k. in that presentation) and a small photographical tutorial on the creation & execution of one of the artists's collabrative works. The beauties are rarely the victims of these encounters, instead almost always armed and even sometime the beasts themselves. They are displayed as Victorians, astronauts, pilots, explorers, reporters, jungle women, cave girls, satyrs, angel-&-devilettes, warriors and fantasy fighters. Found here are a few Frazetta homages (swipes?) that are fun in the same way as finding manga versions of traditional American comic icons.

Architects Of Fantasy (1994) This book was marked as Volume One, but in the 20 years since, there has not been another. As much as I like the artwork of this partnership, I can't say that I'll miss another book in this format. Many of pages focus on different stages of the same images. Many of the black-and-white images are of color works or color studies. Many of the pages are displaying very rough early sketches. A 64-page book with 50 art pages, 20 of those being large full-page reproductions along with the paintings appearing on the front & back covers. Of interest are a number of drawings for music album covers, gaming packaging or t-shirt designs that are probably not all going to get pulled together in the artists' other collections.

Fastner & Larson's Little Black Book vol.2 (2004) [-BELOW THE LINE-] Another 48-page book (also utilizing front & back covers and inner leaves), but this time without a proper spine - just stapled up the middle and folded over. Despite that, this is still a fun book. After an 11-page sequential art story, there are 32 pages of their full-page art pieces (with 'celebrity cameos' by Vampirella, Conan, The Shadow, Dr. Doom, the Fantastic Four, ROM Spaceknight, Trapman, & Wu Fang) and then another seven pages with two or three images gathered together. The paintings seem to have been, at the time, previously unpublished or commissioned pieces, all of which were quite a treat.

Fastner & Larson's Little Black Book vol.3 (2005) [-BELOW THE LINE-] The next volume in this stapled-spine 'series'. It has a single 12-page sequential story which is interesting because it is told as 12 nearly full-page paintings, each with a couple of small inserted panels to tell the story as more of a narrative than it would be otherwise. There's two pages of introduction, five pages that each display three smaller images (sometimes just interim steps of larger pieces), all of which (along with the front & back covers and inner liners) leaves 33 pages for large painting reproductions. They are all in the fantasy vein, with celebrities like Tarzan, Vampirella, Judge Anderson, the Fantastic Four and a Mars Attacks double-page-spread satisfactorily laid at the book's center. All of them from independent projects or, for whatever reasons, unpublished at that time. As always, the duo walks right up the adult-theme line and stops just short of it.