Frank R Paul
From Superhero Wiki Encyclopedia
 Home Books Clothing DVDs Posters Toys Video Games |
Boards Comic Book News Comic Conventions Clips and Trailers |
Gallery Features Link to us Online Comic Books |
Resources Store Superhero Wiki Wallpaper |
Frank Rudolph Paul (April 18, 1884 - June 29, 1963) was an illustrator of US pulp magazines in the science fiction field. He was born in Vienna, Austria and died in Teaneck, New Jersey.
A discovery of Hugo Gernsback (himself an immigrant from Luxembourg), Frank R. Paul was influential in defining what both cover art and interior illustrations in the nascent science fiction pulps of the 1920s looked like.
Work
Paul's work is characterized by dramatic compositions (often involving enormous machines, robots or spaceships), bright or even garish colors, and a limited ability to depict human faces, especially the female ones. His early architectural training is also evident in his work.
Among his credits, Paul painted 38 covers for Amazing Stories from April 1926 to June 1929 and 7 for the Amazing Stories Annual and Quarterly; with several dozen additional issues featuring his art on the back cover (May 1939 to July 1946), and several issues from April 1961 to September 1968 featuring new or reproduced art. After Gernsback lost control of Amazing Stories in 1929, Paul followed him to the magazines Air Wonder Stories, Science Wonder Stories, and Wonder Stories and the associated quarterlies, which published 103 of his color covers from June 1929 to April 1936. Paul also painted covers for Planet Stories, Superworld Comics, Science Fiction magazine, and the first issue (October-November, 1939) of Marvel Comics. This last item featured the debuts of Human Torch and Sub-Mariner, and good copies sell at auction for twenty to thirty thousand dollars. All totaled, his magazine covers exceed 220.
His most famous Amazing Stories cover is probably that from August 1927, illustrating a reprint of H G Wells' The War of the Worlds
