Lone Wolf cover artists - Help wanted

[lorddarkstorm]

Andy got back to me today, he has spoken to Pete Lyon who has confirmed he did the cover art for books 3 & 4 of the Beaver Grey Star. Which makes sense to me as his backgrounds are beautiful, just like the LW beaver 7-8's.

Also I confirmed Edizioni EL's book 24 was by PAJ. I was 99% sure it was but was planning to email him to confirm, but in the end it wasn't necessary. I was looking at the cover of my copy of "The Secret of Kazan-Oud", and I noticed that like McPheeters & Corben, PAJ tends to sign his art. I was lucky to check that one as it is *very* obvious there.

So now I knew what to look for I checked on Edizioni EL's book 24:



Couldn't see it straight away, but the area I ringed above looked kind of like it and yet the characters made no sense...then I realised they must have flipped his art! But flipping it back we can see PAJ's copyright.



I hadn't realised it initially as sometimes it can't be seen:



After knowing he did this, I worked out why it wasn't on Wolf's Bane thanks to noticing a listing for the full art which someone was selling on ebay:




It was covered by the "Gamebook of the Year Winner" banner lol!

[lorddarkstorm]

Added the bulgarian "cover artists" thanks to Bulletrider, who noticed they are all Dragonlance related art taken from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons novels or supplements.

For posterity:

Used in - Flight From the Dark
Artist - Jeff Easley
Taken from - Dragonlance Heroes Volume One - The Legend of Huma:


Used in - Fire on the Water
Artist - Keith Parkinson
Taken from - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - DL8 Dragons of War:


Used in - Caverns of Kalte
Artist - Clyde Caldwell
Taken from - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - DL10 Dragons of Dreams:


Used in - Chasm of Doom
Artist - Jeff Easley
Taken from - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - Monstrous Compendium: Outer Planes Appendix
For this one it is not actually cover art, it is used as a divider sheet as the appendix comes as hole punched sheets.
Cover:

Divider art that was used in the Bulgarian Lone Wolf cover:

[lorddarkstorm]

Just a quick note to say I emailed both Iain McCaig & Pete Lyon who were kind enough to give final confirmation that Iain did the covers of books 1/2 of Grey Star & Pete did books 3/4.

[lorddarkstorm]

I bought some prints from Pete Lyon - unfortunately he doesn't have the finals for the Grey Star books anymore, but does still have the rough pencil sketches. Does have them for book 7/8 and some of his companion work though!

[lorddarkstorm]

Updated with Gallimard 5th edition artists for books 3 & 30, Jean-Baptiste Reynaud (cheers black cat). Attribution:

3: www.artstation.com/artwork/9e484a
30: www.artstation.com/artwork/484rEn

In the links the name used is Jean-Baptiste "Djib" Reynaud, presumably Djib is his pen name as that is all they are attributed as on Gallimard:

3: www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD-JEUNESSE/Grand-format-litterature/Un-Livre-dont-vous-etes-le-Heros/Les-Grottes-de-Kalte
30: www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD-JEUNESSE/Grand-format-litterature/Un-Livre-dont-vous-etes-le-Heros/Au-bord-de-l-abime

Also updated with a new column, Gallimard CE. Pretty much just for their new edition of Flight from the Dark (cover by Paul Mafayon), probably won't get any more use but it keeps things clean. Attribution:

www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD-JEUNESSE/Grand-format-litterature/Un-Livre-dont-vous-etes-le-Heros/Les-Maitres-des-Tenebres2

[Black Cat]

You should update the list with book 21 of Vincent books while you are at it!

[Ofecks]

The style of Pacer FotW seems very similar to Pacer 4-6 so I would hazard a guess that it's by Richard Corben. I no longer have my copy so I can't check for sure.

[lorddarkstorm]

Aug 15, 2021 17:26:18 GMT Black Cat said:

You should update the list with book 21 of Vincent books while you are at it!

I should . Cheers again.

Aug 15, 2021 18:02:24 GMT Ofecks said:

The style of Pacer FotW seems very similar to Pacer 4-6 so I would hazard a guess that it's by Richard Corben. I no longer have my copy so I can't check for sure.

Corben tended to sign his art - example from his book 6 cover:



These are visible on all the books I've listed as by Corben in the first post (always at the bottom, usually on the right). There's a lovely hidef scan of book 2 on gamebooks.org, but unfortunately I couldn't see a signature there:

gamebooks.org/gallery/lonewolf/02ap2.jpg

So my instinct is that it's probably not, unless it was before Corben started signing his art or somesuch. I will see if I can find any art he did that year or before, to see if he was already signing it at that point.

--edit

Looks like he was signing his covers in the seventies:



www.ebay.ca/itm/193482169303

[Black Cat]

I was looking on the Internet, trying to find some info about your missing artists and I've stumbled on William Neal McPheeters' Facebook page, who did some covers for the LW series (sadly, I've not found anything new regarding this). However, I've found a post he did regarding his version of the cover for the Magnamund Companion and how disappointed he was that he was not given credit in the American version even if it was nearly 30 years ago: link

Sadly, I've also found out that he died last January: link

[Black Cat]

Doing a research on something unrelated, I discovered the name of the artist that did the cover of book 4 of the Beaver version: Danny Flynn! link

Funny that he called this illustration "Cat out of Hell", as singer Meatloaf just died...

EDIT: Apparently, the cover for book 3 from beaver is also from Flynn.

[Black Cat]

As for the covers of book 6, I think there is a mistake: you list Brian Salmon as the illustrator of the Beaver 3rd edition. According to Demian's Gamebook, Salmon did the "Original British (Beaver) edition - cover" (link). The third edition, with the new cover, was made by Fred Gambino: link

[lorddarkstorm]

Per BlackCat, this fantastic LW cover:



(Vincent Books variant) is by Francesco Mattioli - verified here: www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10210650012675712&set=a.1239301591889

Fred Gambino signed art of Kingdoms of Terror Beaver 3rd edition:

Jan 21, 2022 17:24:59 GMT Black Cat said:

Doing a research on something unrelated, I discovered the name of the artist that did the cover of book 4 of the Beaver version: Danny Flynn! link

Funny that he called this illustration "Cat out of Hell", as singer Meatloaf just died...

EDIT: Apparently, the cover for book 3 from beaver is also from Flynn.

An amazing find.

Confirmed for both 3 & 4:

www.dannyflynn.com/gallery-books.html

Jan 21, 2022 18:01:12 GMT Black Cat said:

As for the covers of book 6, I think there is a mistake: you list Brian Salmon as the illustrator of the Beaver 3rd edition. According to Demian's Gamebook, Salmon did the "Original British (Beaver) edition - cover" (link). The third edition, with the new cover, was made by Fred Gambino: link

Demian said that both Beaver covers are by Salmon: gamebooks.org/Item/1405/Show

And I always just assumed that was wrong as why would Salmon do two different covers so close together with the first not looking like his usual work...but with that signature at the bottom it's clear Gambino did the second cover. I'm a bit hesitant to go ahead and attribute the first cover to Salmon though, since it doesn't look like his other LW covers and Salmon was skipped for 7/9/11 too, so it would not have been odd for him not to do one for 6.

Will email Demain and see what info he got for that one.

[Black Cat]

You now have a lot of updating to do!

BTW, just to let you know that Gallimard will have yet another new cover for book 1 as they will release a softcover version of the extended edition of Flight from the Dark in March. I will post it as soon as it is revealed, but you can now add room for the new artist (and add Alberto Dal Lago as the artist of book 27 of Holmgard press, which seems to have been forgotten when it was published last year).

EDIT: ah, and don't forget the new cover for the Definitive Edition of Flight from the Dark by Alberto Dal Lago (his third different cover for the same book!)

[lorddarkstorm]

Jan 21, 2022 18:34:32 GMT Black Cat said:

You now have a lot of updating to do!

A very good problem to have. Should all be up to date now except...

Jan 21, 2022 18:34:32 GMT Black Cat said:

EDIT: ah, and don't forget the new cover for the Definitive Edition of Flight from the Dark by Alberto Dal Lago (his third different cover for the same book!)

Thinking about how to represent this. Do you think it's best in the Holmgard field or a new column? An extra column would make things start to look a bit cluttered, but on the other hand it's kind of a different run. Maybe I should go to three images worth of columns

Jan 21, 2022 18:34:32 GMT Black Cat said:

BTW, just to let you know that Gallimard will have yet another new cover for book 1 as they will release a softcover version of the extended edition of Flight from the Dark in March. I will post it as soon as it is revealed, but you can now add room for the new artist (and add Alberto Dal Lago as the artist of book 27 of Holmgard press, which seems to have been forgotten when it was published last year).

Gallimard love their new covers. Not complaining.

[Black Cat]

Jan 21, 2022 18:52:45 GMT lorddarkstorm said:

Thinking about how to represent this. Do you think it's best in the Holmgard field or a new column? An extra column would make things start to look a bit cluttered, but on the other hand it's kind of a different run. Maybe I should go to three images worth of columns

You have already a column for Holmgard. Just put "Alberto Dal Lago 3" for book 1 (as you did with the Vincent Books, "Alberto dal Lago 2"). You could also put the "Alberto Dal Lago 2" for book 2 and 3 as they are the same than those of Vincent Books. We'll see if the covers change for books 23 and onward. Or maybe you could rename the Holmgard column as "Holmgard CE" and create the new column called "Holmgard DE".

EDIT: Ah, and don't forget to include the Mattioli's cover to your other thread: link