Bradbury - An Illustrated Life
(2002 - William Morrow / HarperCollins)

(by Jerry Weist) While being, art-wise, mostly pieces associated with Bradbury's works, it isn't *only* those. There's a healthy section of what the young Ray Bradbury saw & experienced when developing the poetical imagination that would serve him so well as he matured. Know that this book takes the 'illustrated' from its title and uses the word much more broadly than you might otherwise think. There is a large section devoted to the film & theatrical representations of his writings which uses photographs as the visual aids. For that matter, there are a large number of photos featured on other pages detailing the parts of this biographical journey (not to mention included sequential art covering the comic adaptations). With all that said, the book still does provide enough painted & drawn images to be counted as an art-book on our List. Namely, 111 pages of the book's 221 could be said to be dominated by that art. Of those, 32 carry large featured reproductions while the rest of them have gathered together multiple smaller images (another 18 of the text-dominated pages also sport a smaller image or two). Let me detail the chapters here: Early Life-Early Fandom, From Pulps To Slicks, To Hardcovers And Paperbacks, EC Comics And Ray Bradbury-The Untold Story, The Modern Renaissance Man-Bradbury On Radio And Television-And In The Movies, The Theater And Ray Bradbury-From Private Passions To Public Performances, Drawing Metaphors-The Art Of Ray Bradbury, and finally Bradbury At The Millennium-Poetry-Later Books-And Marginailia. Found in there is an interview of a few pages with artist Al Feldstein. Anyway, the artists that get 'well-presented' here are: Charles Addams, James Bama*, James R. Bingham, Ray Bradbury, Dean Ellis, Al Feldstein, Virgil Finlay, Gray Foy, Frank Frazetta (2)*, Frank Kelly Freas (2), David Grove, Arthur Lidov, Stanley Meltzoff, Ian Miller (4), Joseph Mugnaini (6), Frank R. Paul, Lawrence Sterne Stevens, Peter Stevens, Michael Whelan*, Ren Wicks, Doug Wilday, and UNKNOWN (2).