Michael Whelan: Wonderworks
(1978 - The Donning Company) 
(edited by Polly & Kelly Freas) With some caveats, this first collection of Whelan's works (subtitled SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY ART) scores behind only the book BEYOND SCIENCE FICTION as the best singular presentation of them (there are only 3 repeated images here from the better volume). This book's high score seems to be wrapped up in its more un-assuming manner, and numerically giving so many pages, percentage-wise, to the art itself. The downside is that the reproduction-quality is not top-notch, as is found in all the collections to follow. But here's the deal, this early gathering of the artist's work, to that date, captures all of these first images that suddenly seemed to stand head-&-shoulders over most of the rest and brought him to everybody's attention. Finally, with but a small handful of exceptions, none of them are repeated in the later volumes, so if you like Whelan's paintings, you have to have this book too. Now, I don't mean to really disparage this book, but I guess I can say that, overall, few of the reproductions 'pop' in the same way as in the later books, where more attention was lavished on the particular image-reproductions they featured. This book is colorful and eye-catching, with the understanding that some of the pages appearing ever-so-slightly washed-out - 'muddy' in one commentator's parlance. You'll find here 42 full-color plates, most presented as full-bleeds, with another four double-page-spreads (that do remain acceptable in that fashion). Then there is another 45 accompanying pages with drawn preliminaries, grey-tone works and sketches. The featured works are captioned with their titles, the use they were put to, medium, copyright-info, and frequently commentary from the artist about the pieces. The book titles its major divisions as Science Fiction, Sword & Sorcery, Romantic Fantasy, Horror, Heroines, and Aliens. There are more text pages for biographical information, and material from Whelan and the editors.
Related Books
Beyond Science Fiction - The Alternative Realism Of Michael Whelan
Ballantine/Bantam's Michael Whelan books
other releases from The Donning Company
Frank Kelly Freas - The Art Of Science Fiction
Imagination - The Art & Technique Of David A. Cherry
The Fantasy Art Of Stephen Hickman
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