Royalboiler is an oversized paperback with full-bleed art most of the time -- it's a great size and format for an art book, and really makes the covers (here presented without logos) show up well. That does mean, though, that text is minimal and mostly restricted to some captions on pages where they can be accommodated. The captions are also all in Graham's lettering font -- I can't say if they're all hand-lettered or not; does anyone actually still do that? -- so they look like they're part of the underlying art if you don't slow down and pay attention.
But the point of an art book is to slow down and pay attention, so I don't consider that a problem.
There is minimal text here, again: just enough to say what this piece of art is, maybe who worked on it with Graham or what year it was done. But there is enough, from those captions and a few semi-autobiographical strips and some collages of photos and artwork from conventions, to piece together a bit of Graham's life, or at least the parts of his life that he wants to present in his art in public.
So it starts out with covers from King City and Multiple Warheads and then goes into some of his odder, earlier, obscurer, or more collaborative projects -- Prophet and Perverts of the Unknown and October Yen and so on, and then into lots of art for conventions and covers for other comics. After that comes the Comic Lovers strip for Image Plus, other odd pieces about comics, and so on.
There's a lot in here -- the book has no page numbers, but informed sources claim it's 248 pages, and that seems about right. That's almost 250 big pages full of interesting art by a quirky creator -- the one thing I would note is that his cover/sketch work is often less dense than his story pages, so there aren't as many buried jokes or puns in Royalboiler as there are in his narrative comics. Or, maybe, they're buried even more deeply, so I missed them....
4 comments:
I’m just gonna drop this here for you.
https://www.tor.com/2019/01/15/publicity-coordinator-job-listing/
Shane: Um, thanks?
I'm trying not to judge, but if you're serious, you just radically insulted my skills and experience, and if you're joking, you just insulted what I do here at Antick Musings.
So, yeah: thanks.
I want to sincerely aploglize. No insult was meant in any way. I’ve enjoyed your book recommendations since back in the old sfbc days and I check your blog daily. In retrospect, sharing the link was clearly a bad idea. I don’t know that much about your work except from stray lines here and there on the blog. When I saw publishing/marketing/SF&F, I decided to share it in case it was something amazing. I’m not in this field and have no way to gauge what’s an amazing opportunity and what’s not. So again, I apologize. Please excuse my ignorance and accept my assurance that no disrespect was intended. I’ve discovered more books from you over the years than I can recall right now, and I still remember how excited child me was the time you personally responded to an email I sent SFBC. You and your blog are awesome in my book, and I never meant to imply otherwise.
Shane: It's OK; I overreacted to your comment as well, since it wasn't clear what you meant.
That's very much an entry-level job, and I was overqualified for it by about this time in 1992. It will be a great opportunity for someone young who wants to get into publishing, though -- I hope that person finds it.
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