Covers Unbound

The animals march, two-by-two, into an Apollo-era rocket, as the skies grey and pour behind. The image is cover art by Alex Schomburg for Fantastic (October 1961), illustrating Robert Young's novella of a new Flood, Deluge II . Schomburg, born Alejandro Schomburg y Rosa (1905-1998), was a Puerto Rican commercial artist of remarkable precision and fineness of line; and his artwork here entirely encapsulates Young's tale, cutting through the early sections (‘the ancient stresses were ready to tear the earth apart, and only Anton Burke was ready. He planned to choose his passenger-list with care. But when the time came, his space-ship Ark was empty—save for the strangest friends a man could have on a journey to the stars’) to the Noahic revelation at the story's end, that Burke will be accompanied to safety and the stars by Earth's beasts rather than its human population. By angling the scene ten degrees to the right, Burke adds dynamism and verve to what might have been a...

The cover illustrates Ray Cummings’ ‘The Man on the Meteor’ in Future  (October 1941). The artist is Hannes Bok, pseudonym of American artist Wayne Woodard (1914 –1964). His teachnique involved glazing his colour-work as he built up his work, and the shimmering, textural effects of this are evident in this image. The story concerns a human astronaut who crash-lands on a meteor. Despite there being no air (‘Air, you say! Air on a meteor like that! Do you call yourself an astronomer? If so, you show your ignorance by such questioning! Yet at least something that served my purposes of breathing was there and that I am here alive to tell it must be your proof.’) He survives, mates with a local woman, starts a family, and experiences various garish and improbable adventures, which Bok's art well captures.   Here is one of the many covers from DC Comics' Mystery in Space series, that ran from 1951 to 1966 (this is issue 40, November 1957). Art by Murphy Anderson (1926–2015). The sp...