Saturday, October 9, 2010

Pocket 643 (October 1949)

Title : The Case of the Drowning Duck
Author : Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover art : Louis Glanzman

style ***
substance **
collectibility **




"Complete and unabridged." Louis Glanzman's depiction of floating heads of two women & a claw-like left hand holding a baby duck is a primo example of the ca. 1950 lurid phase of this usually reticent publishing house. The lively cover art of Pocket 643 has an  unsettling creepiness to it with the combination of the forlorn looking women, the menacing hand, but mostly the bright colors of orange and yellow, to suggest : the fires of Hades? an out-of-control sun? nuclear explosion? Whatever, it's a terrific, more-or-less one of a kind cover effort from little known artist Louis Glanzman.

No comments:

Post a Comment