With the recent passing of James Bama (1926-2022), I realized I never posted on the only book on Bama’s work that includes his Doc Savage paperback-cover artwork. That is James Bama: American Realist by Brian M. Kane with an intro by Harlan Ellison and a foreward by Len Leone.
For those still not aware, Len Leone was the art director at Bantam who came up with the look for Doc on its paperback covers, as well as the logo typeface.
Published by Flesk in 2006, James Bama: American Realist has been out of print for some time. I think its overdue for a reprinting.
For those not aware, while we may know him best for his Doc covers, Bama is best known for his photo-realistic artwork of Western subjects, of which there have been a few books that reprinting this work. His career started in the 1950s doing commercial artwork: covers for paperback books and magazines of the time.
Then Len Leone picked him in 1964 to do the cover for The Man of Bronze, the first Doc novel. It was Leone who came up with the look for Doc, not just the ripped shirt, but also the hair. I think many have seen Bama’s first go at Doc’s hair, which I saw for the first time in American Realist. He would go on and do 62 covers — we get every one shown here!
Bama did many other covers, several using Steve Holland, who modeled for all the Doc covers. You get to see many of these. Also, Bama did some of the covers for a western series at Bantam that was referred to as a “western Doc Savage”: Nevada Jim.
Bama continued to do covers through the 1960s, toward the end of which he moved out west and dropped that work, changing to doing his Western subjects.
But for many of us, it will be his Doc covers for which we remember him.
If you can find this book at a reasonable price, get it. Again, I hope that Flesk will bring it back into print. I would love to see one that has the Doc covers in larger size without the text.
