Customer Reviews

GRAND MASTER OF ADVENTURE PB: THE DRAWINGS OF J. ALLEN ST JOHN (Edge)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

What a genuine disappointment! This book had potential, but it is such a rip-off of earlier work that it is nearly pointless to possess.
Exactly half of this book is lifted straight from Russ Cochran's EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS LIBRARY OF ILLUSTRATION VOLUME ONE, which is ninety percent St. John artwork, and therefore, the first major collection of the artist's work. If you check the acknowledgements in this book, Cochran's name is offensively absent.
If you are going to literally STEAL the hard work and efforts of another publisher, especially one who cared about the quality of his book, you could have at least thanked him for it.
Much of the rest of the reproduction of this book is not even taken from the original published source, but rather from reprints, so the loss of quality is all too obvious.
This book also claims to be the first major collection of St. John art ever published. Cochran's book from which this book is lifted, was the first major collection of St. John art. A dozen years ago, Darrell Richardson's illustrated bibliography of St. John included exactly 200 illustrations (some of them lifted for this volume) and a month before this book came out, the first volume of the full color J. ALLEN ST. JOHN COMPLETE LIBRARY OF ILLUSTRATION appeared for sale at lulu.com.
If no previous works had been done on J. Allen St. John, this book might have had some merit, but as it is, with all the lifted material (art and text), this book is no more than a low end second rate RIP OFF.

Don't waste your time or money.

Some seem to feel this book is valueless because it is similar in content to the earlier "The Edgar Rice Burroughs Library of Illustration, Volume One." Although this may be the personal opinion of one that already owns the earlier collection, I feel there are reasons why this books still deserves a high rating.

Let me start out by saying that I do own the Library of Illustration Vol. One, and that it is a superior product, with high quality reproductions including, color versions of limited color pieces and full color paintings. It is also out-of-print and expensive on the collectors book market.

I payed $150.00 for my copy, and was only able to get it that cheaply because it was being sold as an isolated volume rather than as a full set. I purchased this one volume specifically because it was the only book I could find at the time that contained a collection of J. Allen St. John's art.

Although I grew up as a Burroughs fan and a fan and collector of fantasy art, I had never heard of St. John until just a few years ago. Once I saw a few samples of his art and realised the tremendous debt that artists like Roy Krenkel and Frank Frazetta owed to his pioneering illustrations, I became obsessed to find more of his work. At the time I found that to be nearly impossible.

I just received my copy of "Grand Master of Adventure Art: The Drawings of J, Allen St. John" a few days ago and am quite happy with it. The paperback is perfectly priced for those that want access to a collection of this under-rated master's work.

There are a number of illustrations in this collection that are not in the earlier volume. This alone might be enough to convince many to pay the very reasonable price of this book.

The second reason to support and laud this book is that it exists at all. St. John has not been given his due in the history of illustration, and very few still even have heard his name. Vanguard is practically doing a public service, in my opinion, to get a collection of this man's art back in print, and at a price anyone can pay.

The biographical information provided is sparse, but one can still hope that the upcoming edition of St. John's paintings will contain more.

Personally, I'm just happy to see this great artist back in print and hope that because of that many people will learn about him and the influence of his work on the field of heroic fantasy art.

As a longtime ERB fan who considers St. John one of the all-time greats, I eagerly awaited the publication of this volume since previous St. John tributes are long out of print. I welcome a book that serves to introduce new generations to this grand master illustrator - and it occupies a prominent place in my personal library. Apparently my enthusiasm over this collection is shared by ERB's grandson Danton of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., to whom the book is dedicated:

"It was with great anticipation that I opened Vanguard's new book, Grand Master of Adventure: The Drawings of J. Allen St. John -- and I wasn't disappointed. To see so many of St. John's drawings collated into one volume, and reproduced so magnificently, is a real treat.

It's been a long time since I've been so impressed with an art book! I am proud of the fact that it was my grandfather's great imagination that produced the stories that inspired St. John to create many of these unforgettable images"
~ Danton Burroughs ~ Tarzana, California

It's great to have a nice collection of St. John's drawings in print, but I was hoping that the book would contain more biographical material. Two pages of an introduction in fairly large print, plus a photo, is all that we get.

Being a fan of Frank Frazetta and Edgar Rice Burroughs, I thought this book would be a natural fit for my library. J. Allen St. John contributed covers for ERB's books in the early part of the last century and I've enjoyed the dynamism and romance of his painted work. His black-and-white work - showcased in this book - however, leaves something to be desired; the life and energy of his paintings seems to be lacking here, and I wasn't overly impressed by the work in this book. Those of us with only a passing interest in St. John would probably be better served by picking up RGK: The Art of Roy G. Krenkel to better satisfy our interest in ERB stories.

Seeing the drawing of J. Allen St. John will always make one think of ERB novels. The selection of his pulp illustration work is also interesting.

Small note for future editions: p. 106--Author states"....and H.G. Wells'
Journey to the Center of the Earth..." might wanna check that again with Jules Verne.

Good illustration series. Also have the RGK volume.

I purchased this item as a christmas present for my 21y old grandson but
I did flick through it first and thought the art was very striking and I
know my grandson thinks it is very cool.

While it's great that a publisher decided to put together a collection of St. John's stellar artworks it's a shame that it delivers so little new for those who are familiar with his work. If I were a first time viewer of his work I might be more impressed, and for those who just discovered this man's work, through this book, I'm sure you're dazzled by this man's incredible renderings of illustrations for novels and pulp story cover art. He was also an instructor for many years. For those of us familiar with his work, forgive us for camplaining but we've been waiting a long time for something other than what amounts to as a re-run. We're looking for the work that has yet to see print in such a collection, particularly more of his incredible paintings in full color. I have an undying appreciation for drawing and this volume does point out the fact that it is a collection of drawings, but too many of these are from a previous collection of St. John's work. What's worse is the way they present a lot of paintings in this volume but reproduce them in black and white.
Anyway, while it's not what I was hoping for it is not terrible and there are a few rarities. However, I hope another volume is pending.

The name J. Allen St. John may be unfamiliar to a lot of people but St. John was one of the first great adventure artists and would influence countless others that would come after him including Hal Foster, Margaret Brundage and Frank Frazetta. St. John was a professor of drawing and painting at the Chicago Art Institute and a contemporary of N.C. Wyeth and Howard Pyle. St. John was already an accomplished illustrator but it would be his work on Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan, John Carter, and Pellucidar books where he would become a legend.

This book from Vanguard Productions, takes an overview of St. John's career including a brief, but informative, biographical sketch. Examples of his work are broken down into sections by subject: John Carter, Tarzan, Adventures on Venus, Pellucidar, as well as his works in the pulps. St. John's work combined the look of classical illustration of the Art Deco period with the fantastic. The pieces in the book range from pencil sketches, ink washes, and even charcoal. His use of subtle light and shading techniques is masterful and nearly a lost art on many modern illustrators. What really grabs you when you look at his work is the realism of bodies and body movement. His subjects were real people...not products of steroids and breast implants. His characters had a gracefulness to their movements and were not exaggerated as we see so often today. St. John also was able to capture the exotic locales of Burroughs' work magnificently.

I was struck by a number of pieces in the book. Tarzan stands upon a thick tree limb, a spear poised ready for battle as a panther tried to gain a foothold on the limb to attack. In another example, from "Tarzan the Terrible", Tarzan finds himself in a desperate battle for his life with a monstrous reptile that looks like something out of "The Land that Time Forgot". Still another piece from a Pellucidar story shows Dian the Beautiful holding off a sabre-tooth tiger with a spear. This clearly was an influence on a similar painting by Frazetta entitled "Savage Pellucidar".

The last section deals with St. John's work in the pulp magazines where we worked for Fantastic Adventures, Amazing Stories, and Weird Tales, among others and illustrated stories for some of the top pulp writers of all-time. For any fan of Burroughs' work, pulp or fantastic art, this is a marvelous work by a talent who doesn't get enough notoriety. This is a 176 page, soft-cover book and another winner from Vanguard Productions.


Reviewed by Tim Janson