Karen Haber

Don Punchatz: A Retrospective, Don Punchatz (Centipede Press 978-1-61347-196-8, $50.00, 240pp, hc) March 2019. Cover by Don Punchatz.

Don Punchatz: A Retrospective is a long over­due and richly deserved retrospective of this master surrealist’s illustration work. A limited edition hardcover from Centipede Press’s Artist Series, the book punches well above its size and weight class.

Jam packed with art from its cover flaps to its endpapers, it is a ...Read More

DC Comics Super Heroines: 100 Greatest Moments, Robert Greenberger (Chartwell Books 978-0-7858-3618-6, $24.99, 312pp, hc) September 2018.

Occasionally a book comes along that I wish I could send through the time-travel mail to my 13-year-old self. DC Comics Super Heroines: 100 Greatest Moments is one of them. Yes, it’s got lots of women in tights – about 100 – but they are busy doing cool superhero stuff.

This wants ...Read More

Fantastic Worlds: The Art of William Stout, Ed Leimbacher (Insight Editions 978-1-60887-865-9, $75.00, 333pp, hc) November 2018. Cover by William Stout.

From the small to the large: Fantastic Worlds: The Art of William Stout is a great big book offering great big fun in 331 pages filled with colorful and varied artwork. It’s the kind of retrospective that any artist would dream about. The artwork is well reproduced in ...Read More

The Thousand Demon Tree, Jeffrey Alan Love (Flesk 978-1-64041-010-7, $29.95, 93pp, hc) Au­gust 2019. Cover by Jeffrey Alan Love.

In The Thousand Demon Tree, Jeffrey Alan Love follows up his popular Notes from the Shadowed City (Flesk, 2017) with a powerful 96-page wordless graphic novel.

Love has painted an eloquent tale whose haunt­ing silhouettes and strange atmospheric effects create a timeless eerie story in which the reader is ...Read More

Yoshitaka Amano: The Illustrated Biography/Beyond the Fantasy, Florent Gorges (Dark Horse 978-1-50670-753-2, $49.99, 336pp, hc) November 2018. Cover by Yoshitaka Amano.

The illustrated biography of Yoshitaka Amano is another hefty, handsome volume, so large that it seems to have required two sub-titles besides its main title. The 335-page retrospective pays homage to the revered Japanese fine artist, il­lustrator, character designer, and scenic and costume designer.

Amano began his remarkable ...Read More

The Electric State, Simon Stålenhag (Skybound 978-1-5011-8141-2, $35.00, 141pp, hc) September 2018. Cover by Simon Stålenhag.

The Electric State is a fascinating work, an il­lustrated novel in which the art carries the burden of the narrative. The tale is one of an alternative reality in the recent past in the western US where the accelerated development of AI and VR in the wake of a civil war has led ...Read More

Beyond Science Fiction: The Alternative Real­ism of Michael Whelan, Michael Whelan (Baby Tattoo 978-1-61404-018-7, $25.00, unpaginated, tp) July 2018. Cover by Michael Whelan.

“Here I Am”, Shaun Tan (I Feel Machine, Krent Able & Julian Hanshaw, eds., SelfMadeHero London 978-1-910593-55-4, $22.99, 128pp, tp) September 2018.

The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey, Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon 978-1-61696-308-8, $19.95, 166pp, tp) November 2018. Cover by Thorsten Erdt.

In ...Read More

A Middle-earth Traveler: Sketches from Bag End to Mordor, John Howe (HMH 978-1-328-55751-3, $28.00, 193pp, hc) October 2018. Cover by John Howe.

Just when you thought another high quality tie-in book to the Tolkien Universe wasn’t possible, A Middle-earth Traveler shows up. This attractive volume, with wrap-around cover art, offers glossy paper stock, sewn-in binding, and first-rate image reproduction of the well-featured art, especially the linework. This is ...Read More

Spectrum 25: The Best In Contemporary Fantastic Art, John Fleskes, ed. (Flesk, 978-1-64041-007-7, $45.00, 304pp, hc) November 2018. Cover by Paul Bonner.

Spectrum 25 is up to its usual standard of excel­lent production values and varied, fascinating fantastic artwork from around the globe. Spec­trum honors artists in its respectful reproduction and placement of their work throughout the book. Art is crammed in every inch, including on jacket flaps ...Read More

The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling, illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger (Arthur A. Levine 978-1-338-26218-6, $34.99, 159pp, hc) October 2018. Cover by Lisbeth Zwerger

An unexpected pairing of author and artist has yielded a big payoff in The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling with illustration by inter­nationally acclaimed illustrator Lisbeth Zwerger. This is surely one of the most impressive tie-in products to the Harry Potter ...Read More

The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, Ursula K. Le Guin, illustrated by Charles Vess (Saga 9-781481-4655-88, $59.99, 993pp, hc) October 2018. Cover by Charles Vess.

The Books of Earthsea is a staggering achieve­ment, the first time the entire Earthsea cycle has appeared together in one illustrated omnibus. Saga has expended lavish production efforts on this statement-making book celebrating the late Ursula K. Le Guin’s beloved Earthsea ...Read More

Tales from the Inner City, Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine 978-1338298406, $29.99, 224pp, hc) September 2018. Cover by Shaun Tan.

Cicada, Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine Books 9-781-338-29839-0, $19.99, unpagi­nated, tp) June 2018. Cover by Shaun Tan.

It’s always exciting to open a new book by Shaun Tan – you never know what you’ll see. Recipient of many awards, including an Academy Award for the animated film The ...Read More

The Art of Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Steampunk, Hi­roshi Unno (PIE 9784756249753, $49.95, 360pp, tp) June 2018.

The Art of Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Steampunk is a delightful book crammed full of beautiful im­ages and surprising artistic connections that will take you on an art history journey through the precursors of fantasy, sci-fi, and steampunk art. It’s a pleasure to flip through, dip into, and use for inspiration. At the very ...Read More

Hâsib & the Queen of Ser­pents: A Tale of a Thousand and One Nights, David B. (NBM Graphic Novels 978-1-68112-162-8, $24.99, 112pp, hc) June 2018. Cover by Da­vid B.

The brilliant French cartoonist and comic artist David B. (David Beauchard) has switched gears, moving away from black-and-white linework and personal stories to create a full-color fantasy tour-de-force in Hâsib & the Queen of Serpents.

Co-founder of L’association, the ...Read More

Aliens: Past, Present, Future, Ron Miller, ed. (Watkins Pub­lishing 978-1-78028-968-7, $32.50, 224pp, hc) October 2017.

The somber, dignified cover and design of Aliens: Past, Present, Future gives no indication of how much fun this book really is. Perhaps, given the colorful, flamboyant depiction of extraterrestrial life in popular culture over, say, the past 70 years, the design decision naturally embraced the oppo­site. That is not to say that his ...Read More

Line of Beauty: The Art of Wendy Pini, Wendy Pini (Flesk 978-1-933865-88-1, $50.00, 304pp, hc) June 2017. Cover by Wendy Pini.

Wendy Pini is a remarkable outlier who, from a very early age, seemed destined to pursue a career in art and illustration. Despite a lack of support from her adoptive parents, and growing up without art instruction or role models in the pre-digital age, she taught herself how ...Read More

Weinberg Tales: Collecting Fantasy Art, Doug Ellis, Bob Garcia & Phyllis Weinberg, eds. (Amer­ican Fantasy Press 978-0-99078466-1, $25.00, 269pp, pb) April 2017. Cover by Douglas Klauba.

Weinberg Tales is an affectionate memorial to the late, great, fantastic art collector and authority Bob Weinberg. Designed to echo the look of an old pulp magazine, printed on pulp paper, it provides surprisingly good image reproduction. The charm­ing, old-style cover by Douglas ...Read More

Celtic Faeries, English De­luxe Edition, Jean-Baptiste Monge (Goblins Way Pub­lishing 978-2-9815289-1-9, C$30.00, 144pp, hc) July 2016. Cover by Jean-Baptiste Monge.

French artist Jean-Baptiste Monge is an award-winning practitioner of time-honored handskills whose crowdfunded book Celtic Faeries: The Secret Kingdom is filled with color and black-and-white illustrations of dwellers in faerie.

From his studio in Canada, home of his Gob­lins’ Way Press, Monge depicts characters who are by turns whimsical, ...Read More

Infected by Art, Volume 5, Todd Spoor & Bill Cox, eds. (Art Order 978-0-69291-194-5, $49.99, 326pp, hc) November 2017. Cover by Rob Rey & Jeremy Deveraturda.

This year’s Infected by Art annual, the fifth juried volume of Imaginative Realist artwork, is considerably improved over last year’s book, IBA 4. Attention has been paid to margin treatment, proofreading, and general appearance, with a defi­nite payoff. This year’s volume has ...Read More

Timeless: Diego and the Rangers of the Vast­lantic, Armand Baltazar (Katharine Tegen 978-0-06-240236-3, $19.99, 607pp, hc) October 2017. Cover by Armand Baltazar. Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction, Grady Hendrix (Quirk 978-1-5947-4981-7, $16.95, 256pp, tp) September 2017. Flora & Fauna, J.A.W. Cooper (Flesk 978-1-933865-96-6, $25.00, 80pp, tp) October 2017. Cover by J.A.W. Cooper. Familiars, J.A.W. Cooper (Flesk 978-1-933865-95-9, $25.00, 80pp, ...Read More

Spectrum 24: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, John Fleskes, ed. (Flesk 978-1-933865-99-7, $45.00, 304pp, hc) November 2017. Cover by Iain McCaig & Emily Chen.

Spectrum 24 is remarkable in its consistent excel­lence in production values, design, and selection of art, all the more impressive when you consider that the roster of judges changes with each annual, as does the art submitted for consideration.

John Fleskes’s masterful editing and ...Read More

The Art of the Pulps, Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse & Robert Weinberg, eds. (IDW 978-1-68405-091-8, $49.99, 240pp, hc) October 2017.

Pulp magazine lovers should be delighted with The Art of the Pulps: An Illustrated History, the first definitive visual history of the genre magazines that provided popular “literary” entertainment before the birth of paperback books, circa 1900-1949. The Art of the Pulps is a treasury of pulp ...Read More

Above the Timberline, Gregory Manchess (Saga 978-1-4814-5923-5, $29.99, unpaginated, hc) October 2017. Cover by Gregory Manchess.

Master artist Gregory Manchess’s fiction debut is a fascinating combination of art and storybook. Above the Timber­line is an illustrated tale of adventure that verges on a painterly graphic novel or movie treatment. More than 120 paintings by the much-acclaimed and -awarded artist – GoH at World Fantasy Con 2017 – do the ...Read More

Norse Myths: Tales of Odin, Thor, and Loki, Kevin Crossley-Holland, illustrated by Jeffrey Alan Love (Candlewick Studio 978-0-7636-9500-2, 226pp, hc, $27.99) September 2017. Cover by Jeffrey Alan Love.

When the combination of writer and illustrator is just right, the result is a memorable book both to read and to look at. Norse Myths: Tales of Odin, Thor, and Loki by Kevin Crossley-Holland & Jeffrey Alan Love is a happy ...Read More