Sanjulian - art book

Manuel Pérez Clemente, better known by his artistic name of Sanjulian, is known by most for his incredible covers of Warren comics in the 1970's, and like José González, was one of many latin artists employed by Warren at the time. His covers for Vampirella were his most famous and have become almost iconic. Unfortunately none of these covers are reproduced here. Equally unfortunate is that the format of this small book is woefully inadequate to appreciate the work of this great master of the fantastic. The book, almost a pamphlet really, is barely 8.5 inches tall by 5.5 inches wide. The good news is that it's full color throughout (except for the black and white drawings, of course) and it's printed on heavy stock.
But enough complaining, let's see what we do get. 32 pages, 23 color pieces and 10 black and white drawings from a very wide variety of themes. From the usual sword and sorcery to comic book pinups and even some Star Wars. As far as I know, Sanjulian was never an interior comic artist so the drawings included are probably commission pieces. Vampirella fans will be glad to know that she is represented with two excelent drawings,both of which I have scanned and present here, click for larger versions.The rest of the art shows Sanjulian's work from various book covers and some advertising work. I can only assume that is the case because there is no text at all that tells us anything about the art. Not a caption, nothing. What's worse is that most of the art is not presented in full page format but instead has a rather large colored border around it making the art smaller than the already small format of the book. I have presented the scans without the useless border here of course, as it should be. Why they chose to do this is beyond me. Big Wow publishing, who published this book, really dropped the ball here. I'm still waiting for a large format hardcover edition of Sanjulian's work like the previously reviewed Art of Jeffrey Jones, that will really do justice to this amazing and underappreciated artist. An edition which showcases his Warren covers as well as his more personal works. We'll have to wait and see if any publisher is up to the task. There are a couple of other Sanjulian artbooks which I will review later on, but these are also not up to the standard that this artist deserves.