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Average Customer Rating:

A GREAT introduction!!!

Customer Rating:

For a guy like me who only knows Alex Raymond as the artist on the classic Flash Gordon comic strip, this book serves as a wonderful introduction to the man himself and his other work. Author Tom Roberts has put a lot of time and energy into this book and done painstaking research to bring the man off the pages of the comic strip and into real life. Never again will Alex Raymond be for me just a signature on a comic strip. He will from here on be the fantastic artist that Tom Roberts has revealed him to be in this book. Do NOT hesitate to buy this book!!

Clearly a labor of love

Customer Rating:

To begin with, this is a beautiful book. No doubt about it - for the most part the graphic design of the book is really outstanding, other than the fact that sometimes it was difficult to understand where to find the caption that went with a particular photo. As far as pure content goes, in addition to what you'd expect (pages/panels from Raymond's comic art), there's also an equal emphasis on his illustration work, pin-ups, etc. We are also treated to extremely rare material, such as Raymond's colour guides - done in watercolour on small reproductions of his Flash Gordon pages. Raymond's assistant on Rip Kirby gives us a run-down on the kinds of brushes, pens, paper, etc. that Raymond used, and we even get to see a Flash Gordon panel "ghosted" by Austin Briggs in which Raymond wisely re-drew Flash's face. As far as the book's shortcomings go, there are some curious omissions. Roberts describes the initial, rejected version of the Flash Gordon strip when he could have simply reprinted the art - it saw print in the comics fanzine Alter Ego in 2005 or 2006. In a book chock full of Raymond rarities, that strip would have been a natural to include. There are tons of great photos of Alex, but I also would have liked to have seen more photos of Raymond's wife and children. In some ways I think that the material in the book could have been arranged a bit differently so as to give it a more natural "flow," but I can fully understand the challenge of trying to organize and juggle such a huge amount of stuff. All in all, this book is the sort of work that I have been wanting to get my hands on for 30+ years. Thanks to Tom Roberts, thanks to Adventure House, and thanks to everyone involved in making this possible.

Alex Raymond: His Art and His Life	Customer Rating:
Enjoyed the book very much. My father, Toby Cromwell, served in the military as a Marine with Alex during WWII. I never heard much about my father's time during his years in the military, so the chapter during Alex's time in the military helped put some more pieces of the puzzle together. Thank you. Rob Cromwell

Lots of good and rare stuff!

Customer Rating:

Just a quick review for those of you still hesitating wether you should buy this book or not. Buy it! I'd say. It's loaded with rare artwork and photos of Raymond in action. The selection of drawings are not the usual dailies or sunday pages (Even if there are a few of those too.) but it's mostly rare and/or previously unseen stuff. Several of these "unpublished" pieces has actually appeared in Russ Cochrans "Graphic Gallery", but that was a long time ago. One thing that bothered me was that all of the black and white line art drawings had been reproduced in a way that they look like "grey" drawings instead. Raymonds sharp ink lines has been changed into grey lines where the pixels shows. (If you own the book: Take a close look again if you don't believe me.) The black and white images could have been so much sharper reproduced. Too bad on an otherwise excellent book. [...]

Alex Raymond - trendsetter	Customer Rating:
Alex Raymond, a giant in the comics world. Though his intentions are genuine,this book lacks the quality of design it deserves. A lack of reprints of Raymond's classic comic strips is it's major downfall. Inferior paper and binding cheapens the subject matter. Alex Raymond deserves better.