Sunday, March 2, 2014

Inspirational Image: Basil Wolverton's Spacehawk


In my dreamworld version of Crawljammer, Basil Wolverton provides the illustrations for every issue. Okay, maybe I'd let David Trampier and Erol Otus in too, but Wolverton would set the tone for the space madness that goes on beyond the stars.

I wrote a piece about the Fantagraphics collection of his "Spacehawk" series a while back at Comic Book Resources, and that book remains one of the most ridiculously insane and wonderful books ever published by Gary Groth and friends, and considering that Fantagraphics has released some amazing books over the years, that's no small accomplishment. Wolverton's spongy, elastic crosshatched spacemen and his Willy Wonka nightmare landscapes are what I picture most often when I picture strange, unsettled alien planets.

You should read whatever you can find of Wolverton's work. Particularly the pre-war Spacehawk installments, when things were silly and weird and uniquely Wolvertonian.