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2010 SKETCHBOOK (60 pages, black/white/tone, print run 100 copies)

Editions

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Frank Bellamy

The art of Frank Bellamy is fairly new to me. A long time ago, I have read the book called Masters of Comic Book Art that had a chapter on Frank Bellamy, but at the time I only cared about one artist in that book…Barry Windsor Smith. Years later I re-read the book because of the chapters on Wally Wood and Richard Corben, and just recently I revisited the book once again because of Frank Bellamy.

A big chunk of his work was done for British comics in the 1950-70’s and consisted of one page or two page spreads printed weekly for such stories as Dan Dare and Heros The Spartan. Wonderful sense of color and design are couple with great drawing ability and interesting storytelling ideas.

It is kind of hard to find his reprinted material here in US, but just this week I was able to purchase a new book from amazon.co.uk collecting some of his art-work depicting a re-telling of WWI. Samples of the pages can be viewed at Peter Richardson’s blog "HERE".

The book can be ordered here: "FRANK BELLAMY"
(Norm, I know you want one :))

6 comments:

Jack Keefer said...

Those are some nice illustrations of the Great War. I really like his style.

Peter Richardson said...

Great Blog you have here Alex - glad to have found you1

I'll be reviewing another Bellamy Book by Book Palace Books "The Complete Swift Stories" over at the Cloud 109 Blog shortly. The book is a truly sumptuous production and includes complete runs of "Robin Hood" and "King Arthur and his Knights".

Lovely production although it is very expensive.

Alex Sheikman said...

Jack,

As a history buff and an artist I am sure you would have enjoyed looking at the pages. Once I get the book, I'll make sure to scan a few more pages for your enjoyment. Do you remember when we were going to do an anthology of war stories? As I recall you did a couple of pages of a story about Stalingrad...I think I even inked a few panels...I am going to look through my files and see if I can find that :)

Peter,

Truly a pleasure to see you here sir. I have visited your blog a number of times and very much appreciate your insight. I am also looking forward to seeing your book, Cloud 109.

I am also looking forward to reading your review of Complete Swift...I actually ordered a stand alone copy of "Robin Hood" and a stand alone copy of "King Arthur". Both are in black and white...were they in color when they were originally printed?

norm said...

Alex,
Yup...you know me.
I also found out about Bellamy through The Masters of Comic Book Art. (another thing you know)
And you know about the Heros pages I bought and still have to bring by your place (soon!)
In fact, you know pretty much anything I'd say on the subject....so, I'll go click on the link for this book now (Is it the Happy Warrior?)

norm said...

Wow...I didn't read your (or Jack's) post carefully enough. I assumed it was WWII and the Happy Warrior that you were talking about.
I don't remember hearing about this before at all.....very cool!

Alex Sheikman said...

Norm,

Have you ever thought about scanning the Heros artwork that you got and putting out a reprint? I know a printer....:)