The Fantastic Art Of Arthur Suydam
(2005 - Vanguard Productions)

Arthur Suydam has a couple of books on The List here and this one scores as the best collection available to get. It has 127 pages with five chapters after the introduction - Legacy, In The Beginning, A Renaissance In Comics, Beauty In The Beast, and Flying In The Face Of Tradition. There's 74 pages that feature some large reproduction, 53 of them in full-bleed fashion. Nine double-page spreads are all o.k. There's another 27 pages that have gatherings of smaller images, including eight pages that introduce chapters and are just crowded montages of excerpts from the pieces to come. This, along with some displays of the covers of the books using some of the same illustrations and a bit of actual duplication in display, may result in a repetitious perception. 17 pages feature photos or examples of his sequential art. There are some pages devoted to the other artistic members of Suydam's family line and they display just a few small examples, but then there is a single healthy-size one by Edward H. Suydam. There are a number of pieces of fantastical whimsy and there's no short supply of art he did for Marvel and DC Comics, as well as characters from Aliens, Aesop's Fables and The Wind In The Willows, along with Tarzan, Death Dealer and the artist's own creations, Cholly & Flytrap. Note that Deluxe Hardcover Edition has an additional 16 full-bleed paintings as an 'extra' portfolio (there were only 400 copies of those, but finding one of them didn't seem too hard . . .).