Pulp artist Norman Saunders

Norman Saunders (1907-89) is a pulp artist with a long career that included work for the pulps, slicks, men’s adventure magazines, and more. Including work for trading cards like Mars Attacks and Wacky Packs. I remember getting Wacky Packs as a kid. Wish I had saved those.

I wasn’t too aware of his work as a pulp artist mainly as I wasn’t that aware of the artists for a long time.  I have seen and enjoyed many of his pulp covers, being ignorant of who did them. It’s only been in recent years, due to works by his son, David Saunders, and reuse on other works, that I’ve become aware of who he is and what he did. It helps that David Saunders wrote an article on his father that appeared in Illustration #2 (Winter 2001) and was later expanded into a book from the Illustrated Press that runs nearly 400 pages, almost twice their other pulp artist volumes.

The book shows his early works: cover artwork and pen-&-ink illustrations that are surprisingly good for someone around 20 years old. Norman Saunders decided not to go to school to learn art, but instead got a job doing art. And considering the quality of his artwork already, I don’t think that was a mistake. He started work for Fawcett Publications, doing cover and interior artwork for their magazines. And I thought it interesting that someone who does the human figure so well, both male and female, that he also did some great artwork of mechanical devices, both real and imagined.

The section on pulps may be an eye-opener for people. As I flipped through, seeing all the covers he did, there are several that I had seen, either reprinted or reused for various purposes. It’s like, “Oh, I didn’t know he did that one.”

Saunders did action covers, detective covers, girlie and spicy, weird menace, western, science fiction, and more. As a hero-pulp fan, I should point out he did all the covers that featured The Domino Lady, Captain Hazzard, Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante, Angel Detective, and occasion covers with others like Ki-Gor.

He did work for slick magazines, and we get a section on those. He was drafted during WWII and sent to work on the India-Burma road, and we get a section of his work on China, which is interesting.

After the war, it was back to working for the slicks and pulps. For pulps, it was more work in the same lines, though girlie, spicy, and weird-menace pulps were no more.

He also did painted cover for comic books. People may be surprised, but several publishers over the years did painted covers for all or some of their comics. I was surprised as a few covers I thought had been from a pulp were really from a comic. He also did some covers for Classics Illustrated.

For a time, he did paperback covers, and we get several selections. One I’ve always thought strange was a cover for Conan the Conqueror that had Conan looking like a Roman centurion! And we get a section on his work for MAMs.

There is another section on trading cards, and he did quite a lot here. He did not just do the forementioned Mars Attacks and Wacky Packs, but several others including three Batman series, a Superman series, and much more.

There is a final section on his later work.

The volume is rounded out with several lists. We get lists of his early work, pulp covers, comic book covers, paperback covers, men’s adventure magazine covers, and trading cards. There’s nothing for slicks. To get an understanding of his output, almost all these lists are one page, but the pulp list is three pages and the MAM is one and a half.

This volume from the Illustrated Press is very impressive. It is out of print, so you may have problems finding it, but I recommend getting a copy ASAP before the prices start going up. I was lucky to recently get a used copy that is in very nice shape. It even had some insert cards from the publisher in it, so I don’t know if the last person even opened it! This is going on my art shelf with my other volumes from the Illustrated Press.