Comic Series
Sundry Comix
Da Boids
Nora Talbot
Larry Lagoon's
Fanzine Blues
Larry Lagoon's
Comic Dreams
Larry Lagoon's
Funny Pages
Suzy
by Richard O'Brien &
Bob Vojtko
Low Budget Funnies
by Bob Vojtko
The first few issues that included my spot illustrations were simply samples I sent to Gordon that he matched up to his existing content. My first real assignment came with #48 for a play by Douglas Derek Roome called Arthur Rampant.
Arthur Graf Pell was an albino boy with a knack for encountering the supernatural. These illustrations were created for Douglas Derek Roome's Arthur's Contest that appeared in Space and Time #50 about Arthur's encounter with a were-snail.
The last Arthur Graf Pell story (by Douglas Derek Roome) that I illustrated was called Cat's Paw! Cat's Paw? It ran in Space and Time #54. During this period I was employed as a technical illustrator, so I used those skills to produce this illustration using technical pens, french curves, and drafting templates. The original was drawn on frosted mylar which holds a very crisp line and is easy to clean up. You can scratch off any minor imperfections using an X-Acto blade.
D.M. Vosk wrote a short story called Dread Assistance for Space and Time #55. I used a cartoony approach to illustrate this tongue-in-cheek yarn. During these early days of Space and Time before desktop publishing, all of the stories were typed out on a typewriter. Running the story title in the typewriter font always bothered me, so I usually included the story title and credits with the artwork. In this case it was hand lettered, but I often used Chartpak transfer lettering or phototypesetting when I had ready access to it.
Michael Abrash's story called True Romance was published in Space and Time #61. Due to increased production and distribution costs, editor Gordon Linzner moved to a double-issue page count beginning with this issue.
Like the artwork I did for issue #54, these illustrations were drawn on frosted mylar. I used technical pens and drafting templates for the house.
In most of my cartooning work during this period I used adhesive-backed zip-a-tone sheets to add gray tones. But in this house illustration the windows and roof tones were added with technical pens.
Backstory
Space and Time magazine has published fantasy, science fiction, and horror stories for over 40 years. The first 100 issues were edited and published by Gordon Linzner who, along with the stories, featured artwork from a long list of illustrators and cartoonists. This list is just a fraction of the artists he included from 1976 through 1981: Mark Gelotte, Dan Osterman, Dan Frolich, Ken Landgraf, Gene Day, Gary Kato, Ron Wilber, Charles Vess, Bruce Conklin, Bob Conway, Allen Koszowski, Michael Roden, Rick McCollum, Michael Trull, David Heath, David Mowry, Randy Moore, Fran Trevisani, John Charette, Tim Lynch, Joe Erslavas, Ken Raney, and Herb Bresky.