Monday, January 30, 2012

Jean-Michel Nicollet: Book covers

Jean-Michel Nicollet: Book covers


One of the most memorable and accomplished of the French artists contributing to Heavy Metal / Metal Hurlant in the late 70s and early 80s was Jean Michel Nicollet. 

His distinctive style is showcased at this website, 'Neo' (the acronym for 'Nouvelles Editions Oswald'), which provides images of French paperbacks for which Nicollet did the cover art.

I'm not fluent in French, but I gather that Neo is a specialty publisher in the 'fantastique' genre. The paperbacks, all of which were issued in the 70s and 80s, reprint famous works of fantasy, sf, and mystery genres. Represented are well-known authors like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, William Hope Hodgson, and Brian Lumley, among others. 

Also receiving cover artwork from Nicollet are some of the 'Harry Dickson' ('The American Sherlock Holmes') novels by the Belgian author Jean Ray. 

[Nicollet apparently ia a big fan of the Harry Dickson stories, which remain tremendously popular in Europe but sadly, have never been widely translated into English, and given the wide dispersion for US consumption that they deserve.]

Needless to say, Nicollet's illustrations for these classics are equal (if not superior) to those of Frazetta, Vallejo, and other well-known artists. 

Unfortunately, those few Neo editions that are available from US vendors are prohibitively expensive.
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6 comments:

  1. Will ErricksonJanuary 31, 2012 at 10:48 AM

    Love these, especially the Masterton one - her glasses make it!

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  2. autodidactJanuary 31, 2012 at 9:45 PM

    You're using a viewing mode that makes it very frustrating to look at your scans...far inferior to the classic version. Could you go back to the classic viewing mode?

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  3. tarbanduFebruary 1, 2012 at 7:23 PM

    autodidact: I changed the 'Showcase Images With Lightbox' option to 'off' in the Blogger fomatting settings; see if that improves things

    tarbandu12

    ReplyDelete
  4. franciscoFebruary 4, 2012 at 12:53 PM

    His illustrations are not equal or superior to those of Frazetta or Vallejo, they are so arty for me although as WE says that of Graham Masterton is awesome...

    By the way spanish covers for fantasy and s/f books in the 80's was awful they tried to be artistic or original but the results are very bad specially if you compared with the original covers...

    Take a look here...

    http://pictures.todocoleccion.net/tc/2009/04/19/12950287.jpg

    http://pictures.todocoleccion.net/fot/2008/08/24/9698319.jpg

    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kSAOsCtE6Do/TESAfm_B-3I/AAAAAAAAITI/wJF0kiwKTR4/s1600/Mundos+144.jpg

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kSAOsCtE6Do/TEXjWZFS4tI/AAAAAAAAITg/Qfci9HMk_7U/s1600/Mundos+Aparte+I44.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mahendra SinghFebruary 7, 2012 at 1:51 PM

    love the Nicollet. I just bought a copy of one of his Neo's, a Harry Dickson, for 50 cents at a library de-accession book sale, here in Montreal. One of the great things about being in Quebec, the used book sales have some rare French SF/fantasy titles that nobody's reading anymore.

    You have a very nice blog, really enjoying it.

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  6. Mahendra SinghFebruary 8, 2012 at 6:26 PM

    one more comment, then I'll get off the Nicollet kick … but there's a collection of the Neo covers just released in France, info here: http://www.li-an.fr/blog/zolies-images/neo-nicollet-zanpano/

    It's very expensive, 90 euros … kind of ironic when you remember it's pulp covers

    ReplyDelete