Customer Reviews

Fastner & Larson's Little Black Book, Vol. 2

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As a fan of 30's and 40's detective, adventure, and spicy pulps, the art of Fastner and Larson has always had a special appeal to me. No modern artists have managed to capture that devious and sexy pulp look like these guys have been able to do now for some thirty years. This is the second of their "Little Black Book" collections that feature a sampling of their work both new and old as well as a nine page story.

Included are several pieces that are inspired by, and are a tribute to the legendary Weird Tales artist Margaret Brundage. One of these is entitled "Last Kiss" depicting a typical Brundage-style damsel dressed in a whispy pink silk, kissing a demon. In "Shadow Creeps" a woman recoils in horror from a shadowy hand as the threatening fiend is just out of view.

"To the Rescue" is a classic, pulp-inspired piece with a mad doctor about to inject a woman with a needle as the hero crashes through the window, flying with the aid of a rocket pack. In "Devil take Wing" a great, bat-winged demon flies off with his captive female while a mob of angry villagers tries in vain to saver her. "Ticklish" finds a gorgeous blonde in a negligee, tightly bound while another female playfully tortures her by tickling her backside with a feather. This is a wonderfully humorous piece and so typical of their work.

More great pulp-art items include the fantastic back cover with the ubiquitous Oriental, yellow-menace fiend preparing to torture his beautiful captive. "The Devil Wore Evening Clothes" is a magnificently rendered, classic Shadow painting. In addition to these pieces, the book also features a sampling of their comic book related work. The Thing Battles Doctor Doom high atop the Baxter Building, Captain Marvel fights the evil demi-god Thanos, and Iron Man battles a classic beast from the early 1960's, Fin Fang Foom.

The book also shows off a lot of their older work from the late 1970's and early 1980's and you can see how the pair's work has evolved over the years to the near perfection they reached today. As mentioned, the book also contains a 9 page, full color strip called "Cursed Kiss", a saucy tale of 1920's Egypt. The Little Black Book collections serve as a great introduction to the marvelous work of Fastner & Larson.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

I love the way these guys draw! The women are beautiful with lovely (and often scantily clad) bodies! Most of the drawings seem to be book covers and such, although there is a short "comic book" at the end about a beautiful female mummy who has a taste for other girls! The girl/girl illustrations are, in fact, my favorite parts of this book, with pages 19 & 20 particularly nice. I only wish there were more drawings like those two!

Fastner and Larson may never rank up their with Royo or many others in my opinion but their art is just so much fun and a joy to look at. Whereas Royo and others are by turns disturbing, frightening, disgusting (yes, at times) the artwork that these two wonders produce is fun, sexy, scary (in an almost cartoonish way) and just a vast relief from so much of the darker stuff being produced these days.

Plus, the women are just plain sexy.

A good collection of their work. I enjoyed it a lot.