Dare to Judge This Book:
Great Paperback Cover Artists

JAMES AVATI

Considered by some to be the "greatest cover artist of them all," Avati was born in Bloomfield, New Jersey in 1912. He was a Fifth Avenue department store window display designer, a soldier in World War II, and an illustrator for magazines such as Collier's and The Ladies' Home Journal before breaking into paperback illustration in 1948. He produced dozens of covers for New American Library, notably for the Signet (including many well-known works of American authors) and Bantam lines.

Medium: His realistic, often emotionally-charged paintings were based on photographs which he took himself, done in oil on prepared hardboard, heavily influenced, he claimed, by the films he saw as a youth.

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RUDOLPH BELARSKI
(1900-83)

Belarsky was originally a quite-in-demand artist for the pulps, who made his big move up the food chain to become a very well-known and respected paperback illustrator, only to return, in 1952, to pulp digest and magazine illustrations in 1952. Belarsk was already a well-known and respected paperback illustrator who had retired, only to return, in 1952, to pulp digest and magazine illustrations in 1952..

Look for: Eccentric and dramatic points of views, and peculiar perspectives. His distinctive work was said to have influenced the entire Popular Library line, far beyond the fifty or so covers he did for them.

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RUTH BELEW

Of all the interesting features of early Dell paperbacks, one of the most striking was the back-cover map or diagram. These cartographic fantasies have given the books their nickname "mapbacks." Belew was a Chicago artist who is credited with producing at least 150 maps, probably many more, between 1942 and 1951. She prepared the maps twice size in black ink on white cardboard, complete with banners and lettering. Then she sent them to Dell for approval. The maps were checked against the text for accuracy, changes were made, and a litho artist colored them.

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EARLE K. BERGEY

More a sci-fi guy than a mystery guy, Earle K. Bergey nonetheless left his mark on the whole field. He started his career in the 1940's, producing covers for pulp magazines such as Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories. He moved up, from pulp magazines to the Popular Library publishing company and drew 16 covers for that firm between 1948 and 1952. After leaving Popular Library, he painted covers for Pocket Books.

Look for: lots of reather big-chested women. Yep, Earle was a tit man.

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RAFAEL De SOTO
(1904-87)

Born in Spain, Moved to Puerto Rico, and eventually New York City, where he studied to be an archaeologist, though he would have preferred to be apriest, de Soto was one of the most respected of the pulp cover artists, workinh for Street & Smith, Pines publications, Ace Magazines and, most notably, Populat Publications. He did over 800 pulp covers, and his covers were so good stories were often written about them, instead of the other way around. In later years, he eventually turned to religious art, and teaching the Bible using art.

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GERALD GREGG

The Dell Mapback Airbrush Guy! Gregg was born in 1907 in Lamar, Colorado and graduated from the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee in 1928. He was hired to do cover illustrations for Dell paperbacks in 1943, and often used secretaries and stenographers as models. Gregg's highly-distinctive Dell mapback covers (he did over 170 of them) are unique among mass market paperbacks, and are among the most coveted mass-market collectibles.

Look for: Extraordinary airbrush technique and an often-abstract approach, stylistic contrasts of light and shadows, with a few bright colors used to accentuate particular features of his characters. Gregg called his style "a combination of graphic design and stylized realism."

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MITCHELL HOOKS

One of my favorite artists, his covers for Bantam's late-seventies reissues of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer novels acted as the visual counterpoint to my descent into this literary obsession of mine. Imagine my glee to discover that, years later, Hooks illustrated (in a completely different style) another of my favorite series, Fawcett Gold Medal's printings of Peter Corris' series featuring Australian P.I. Cliff Hardy. One of the relative newcomers to these ranks, Hooks did illustrations for book covers and magazines from the late 1950's to the 1980's.

Works include

ROBERT JONAS

Born in New York in 1907, Jonas attended the Fawcett art school in New Jersey and New York University. Influenced by artist William de Kooning and other members of the "Abstract-Expressionist" movement. Went to work for Penguin, and remained there even after the departure of Ian Ballantine and several illustrators who left to found Bantam. When the New American Library arose out of Penguin Books in 1948 Jonas acted as art director for their new Signet Imprint until a permanent director could be hiredbut continued his work as a paperback illustrator until the mid-1950's, when he turned to hardcover work. His distinctive approach makes his work some of the most collectible.

Look for: deceptively simple, often quite abstract work that offers little insight into the subject matter of the books themselves.

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RONNIE LESSER

Lesser was the man who did the covers for many of Frank Kane's Johnny Liddell P.I. thrillers.

ROBERT MAGUIRE
(August 3, 1921 - February 26, 2005

In Maguire's half-century-plus career, he painted over 1000 covers for such publishers as Pocket, Dell, Ace, Harper, Avon, Silhouette, Ballantine, Pyramid, Bantam, Lion, Berkeley, Beacon and Monarch -- virtually every mainstream publishing house in New York. He began his education at Duke University, but left to serve in World War II. Upon his return, he joined Art Students League, and graduated in 1949. His career took off almost immediately with his first work for Trojan Publications, doing covers for their line of small pocket pulps, such as Hollywood Detective Magazine (Oct. 1950). Maguire did three of the eight covers for this legendary series, and he never really looked bac. His speciality was babes, and he painted some of the best and most memorable femme fatales of the 50s and 60s -- his women are, according to his web site, "passionate yet somehow down to earth, approachable, though sometimes at your own risk. These images compel one to wonder what led up to that instant in time and where it will lead next, the very stuff of timeless art." Dames, Dolls, And Gun Molls, a long overdue tribure by art historian Jim Silke, was released in 2009.

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LEO MANSO

The most distinctive artist to work for Pocket Books between 1943 and 1945, Manso had a tremendous impact on the company's look. His version of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, although not very exciting-three hands reaching for the black bird against an orange background-is one of the rarest and most collectible of all paperbacks.

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