Hey, comic fans! If, in these Plague Days, you’re able to get out to your local comic shop, on sale today is Marvel Masterworks: Dazzler, Vol. 1, a hardcover collection of the mutant songstress’s early adventures from X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, and her own 1980s series. But what’s got our interest is that cover: a reproduction of Dazzler #1’s iconic image, painted by our friend Bob Larkin!
For StarWarp Concepts, Bob has provided cover paintings for my Saga of Pandora Zwieback novels Blood Feud and Blood Reign, and also did the frontispiece illustration for my latest book, From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures. Outside of SWC, Bob painted the covers for my X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy novels, back in the early 2000s.
It’s not just his painting skills that are impressive—Bob’s also one hell of a pencil artist, as you’ll see if you order a copy of SWC’s The Bob Larkin Sketchbook. It’s a collection of some of Bob’s incredible pencil drawings, and what you’ll discover when you see them is how wide-ranging his subjects are. Sci-fi, horror, Westerns, pulp adventure, crime fiction, movie merchandise, even wrestling stars—as we say on the book’s back cover, there really islittle that he hasn’t painted. And the sketchbook features three pieces created especially for it: the Pandora Zwieback cover art; a portrait of Patricia Savage, the fightin’ cousin of pulp fiction’s top-tier adventurer, Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze; and a two-page spread in which Doc faces off against another Golden Age crimefighter—The Shadow!
The Bob Larkin Sketchbook is available in print and digital formats. Visit its product page for ordering information, as well as sample pages.
And to see more of Bob’s stunning work, pay a visit to his art blog, Bob Larkin: The Illustrated Man.
