Comics Watch
Slick collection uncovers giant leap for technology

By Mark Rahner
Seattle Times staff reporter

COLLECTORS PRESS "Galaxy Science Fiction's" doctor tuning an android is chronicled in "Worlds of Tomorrow: The Amazing Universe of Science Fiction Art."

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Think of this as more of a Comics Ancestor Watch:

If you marveled at the images from the hit movie, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," get a load of the artwork from Yesterday that inspired them. "Worlds of Tomorrow: The Amazing Universe of Science Fiction Art" (Collectors Press, $39.95) is a gorgeously garish coffee-table book that features more than 175 covers from pulp magazines and books of the '30s, '40s and '50s.

Animals filing into an "Ark of Space" on a 1939 "Startling Stories" as they do in "Sky Captain." Terrified Earthlings fleeing a bulbous automaton that looks like TV spare parts in 1951's "Freaks Against Supermen." Amphibious planes attacking in a 1945 "Super Science and Fantasy Stories." The longstanding preoccupation with destroying New York City exemplified by the giant on a 1942 "Startling Stories." And plenty of robots and bug-eyed monsters.

Sure, there's colorful kitsch and preposterous prescience between the covers. Images from just a single year show the astonishing range: 1954's silly "The Human Bat v The Robot Gangster" and a provocative "Galaxy Science Fiction" depiction of a doctor fine-tuning a female android — whose partial undress consists of artificial skin taken off to reveal naked wiring.

But there's also a sense that technology's caught up with the artists' imaginations around the time popular (and critical) tastes have caught up with their talent. As the recent Independent Film Channel documentary on the aging master, "Frank Frazetta: Painting with Fire," also shows, many of these artists had the skills to match their peers in galleries and museums, but used them on subject matter then considered as cheap as the paper it was printed on.

	COLLECTORS PRESS From "Worlds of Tomorrow: The Amazing Universe of Science Fiction Art."

There's no shortage of volumes that contain pulp cover reproductions. But between the "Worlds of Tomorrow" pictures, Forrest J. Ackerman (the legendary collector who ran "Famous Monsters of Filmland" mag) and science-fiction author Brad Linaweaver shoehorn amiable discourse on architecture, space ships, movies, the history of the genre — and each other.

Ackerman and Linaweaver praise the work of Frank R. Paul, who died in 1963 after creating some of pulpdom's most immortal and influential images. But good luck hunting for Paul's pieces, because none of the artists are credited with the reprinted covers! The publisher says it was for consistency's sake, because many of the names weren't available. Where's my death ray?

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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