An excellent daily with an even better description.

Hi Gary. Yes, as was pointed out to me in the above comments, the page is from the late 90's. I hadn't noticed that and thought it was a new page. Last I heard, Rick was doing fine but that was a few years back. Best wishes for your own health!

Non-comics illustration art is dirt cheap compared to mainstream comic art, so stop praying and keep buying more. Oh, and I'm not sure how you slide from Men's Magazine illustrations like this over to Gothic paperback covers, but yes, stop praying and keep buying!

Speaking as an expert in the field of vintage paperback artists, including the art of Robert McGinnis, I can assure you that this cover was absolutely NOT illustrated by Robert McGinnis. The actual artist remains unknown.

One of my favourite of all the J. Frederick Smith originals that came onto the market i nthe last 12 years or so. Kudos!

Congratulations, Ben, a Mozert pastel are so beautiful. Her ability to smooth out the chalkiness and blend it to create different textures was unparalleled. One of the absolute best of her era!

How very apropos, that his final painting is of a rocket ship pointed towards the heavens. Like a phoenix rising from the flame, this can be seen as Lehr's soul, getting ready to ascend to the stars, one final time. Thanks for sharing the process and especially the story, Glynn!

Fantastic color and I adore the texture on the ship!

Wow, another fantastic color scheme. I love it!

While I've never been a fan of reading or watching the Science Fiction genre, I HAVE always loved looking at the visuals of the genre, and Lehr is without question one of the top two or three artists to ever work on Science Fiction paperback covers. Your story is equally bittersweet and heartbreaking at the same time, Glynn, but wonderful memories to have.

Now THIS is a color comp! Stunning use of color. Magnificent!

I love the color scheme, beautiful greens an yellows on this one.

I love how he pulled off the "partial invisibility" effect. Nice addition, Glynn!

A gorgeous Ron Lesser, Johnny, I love it!

Very reminiscent of the style of certain 1950's American Science Fiction paperback covers, which of course makes sense, as the European publishers loved what the American ones were doing and therefore told their artists to emmulate the American artists. This is the very first Jacono original I've ever seen from this genre. Really great!

A lovely 1952 DeSoto cover!

Looks as nice and fresh as the day it was painted!

This is such an outstanding Western cover example. Saunders came up with a fabulous, slightly upshot perspective which really helps emphasize the dramatic nature of the moment, and the lighting effect is superb. The fact that the paint looks as rich and fresh as the day it was painted certainly adds to the overall strength of the piece. Kudos, Doug!

So sad that some of the highest level work is the stuff that has remained uncredited so many decades later.

I like the great color and wonderful contrast on this one.

Okay, my favourite Vietnam war movie of all time and I haven't seen it in many years, but I don't remember this image of Mickey Mouse in the movie. Was it just a part of the dialogue? Either way, such a bizarre decision to put it on the movie poster, and so large!

I own the Ron Lesser version of this photo that he painted for a paperback cover in 1968. So cool to see the Macario Gomez original poster!

Love this piece. Who wouldn't love Kong?!

Wow, that's interesting. I've never heard of Willie, his magazine or these pages, so I appreciate knowing the back story on it.

Hah! Maybe that's it! "Shaddup, ya noisy dame or ya'll wake Brian up!"

Great 2nd panel, no doubt! What exactly was this serialized in?

Wow, these pages are sure to get all those "sexy bondage" collectors all hot and bothered!

I love this one! What a gorgeous female model. The guy's face always bothered me though. I just find it disappointing that Kane wouldn't change the facial expression so he actually looks like he's attacking the woman rather than just looking for direction from the photographer.

I only know Accornero as a Romance cover artists, so this Horror cover is really fun to see!

I've always loved this cover. It's such a fun concept!

Yup, it was Craig. Although I do see what you mean by "in the same vein", it's similar to those other two, but definityely not the same artist. I've spent a lot of time  studying Marchetti art and I pegged those 2 covers you mention as Marchetti immediately. But this one, nope.

Hah ha ha, awesome!

I considered buying this one around 8 years ago or so. I really like it, but I couldn't figure out who painted it and after spending so much time researching other unidentified paintings I owned by that point, I just didn't want to take on another project nor did I want to keep acquiring unidentified pieces. Cool though, as Ace covers often are!

It's amazing how different the color scheme is from the published version. I love the impasto at bottom and the nice texture it gives. Her face is really well done, too. You couldn't really tell by the paperback itself, as it's so blurry.

Nobody will ever question you about whether you like getting head, Brian! 😆

Yeah, I don't know. It's so intriguing though. Is the frame open at the back, or covered? Just wonder if you've seen the back ofthe board and know whether it's a standard Bainbridge type illustration board. Oh, and I'm thrilled to hear your father-in-law has such great taste! Though on further reflection, I have to say that both of my Chinese in-laws were also very impressed when they first came over and saw all the paintings covering the walls, especially my mother-in-law. Over the years, every now and then when she'd visit, she'd comment again about how "very nice, very nice" it is!

Binger's the man! I love this portrait, absolutely gorgeous. Brian, is it painted on a naturally colored brown board, or is the brownish background actually paint?

I love that Dragon Lady look the girl has. I could never hang this one up though, unless someone first painted over the pudgy looking incel doing a terrible job of hiding in the reeds! 😅

So were these girls the midwest version of the little cholas from East Los? Great art, classic cover!

If you're gonna go Pulp, go Saunders! Or H.J. Ward. Both of them always deliver, and this one is a beaut!

Hmmm...Harlot Killer, Jack the Ripper...sounds about right. More importantly, it looks great!

Hah! You know why that's funny? My entire bedroom wall is still empty after all these years due to that same fear!

Ha ha! Those are definitely NOT the crumbs I'm looking for!

Oh, no apology needed. Thsis was auctioned back at a time when I was going crazy and bidding on any and every paperback/digest cover that looked cool. But several years ago I took stock of my collection and decided that if I wasn't going to put them up on my walls, then I would part with them and no longer buy anything new unless I knew I'd hang it. As cool as this one is, and with wall space being at a premium, this one wouldn't have made the cut and I'd likely have sold it by now anyway! Great story of how you ultimately got it though. As to who did this? No guesses, unfortunately.

Yup, Belarski has always been the one guy it looked like to me, the background characters in particular. This one has been tricky because it appears as if it's Belarski doing Belarski on all the backgrounds, but then trying to throw us off the scent by using something like a George Gross approach on the two foreground characters.

My eyes got as big as bowling balls when I read the eBay comment! Though to be fair, I stopped looking/searching for illustration on eBay years ago, so it wouldn't have bothered me. Thanks for taking the time to post all these great pieces over the last few days, by the way. I haven't really seen any great paperback covers that get me jazzed about the hobby over the last few years, so this has been a really fun way to end 2020 and begin 2021!

Hah ha! For god's sake, you've had a multi-decade head start on me as it is. Please leave me some crumbs!

Honestly? I wasn't going to say it but since you did, I will admit that Belarski has always been the guy whose work I felt Beach Party looked like!

As for this one, and the other two? It bothered me for years until I finally stopped spending all my time trying to identify every cover in existence. I'm still curious though!

Whether the art itself is a great example or not, I always get a kick out of seeing originals from books written by famous authors. This being the author's first novel makes it twice as cool!

I've never been high on Levine's art, but every now and then I liked one that would cross my path. This is one of them. I love that like all mid 20th century covers, this is a cool snap shot in time and great for its historical value. But due to the fact that he appears ready to close his fist and clock her, I personally could never have this one on my wall! One of my favourites of this type is the cover to "Kiss My Fist", which I also would never hang up, but would still love to have for its shocking imagery.