One of the graphic greats of commercial art

Austin Briggs gets the Auad treatment in this handsome book. It follows the style of their previous titles like Al Parker and Albert Dorne (I've reviewed both) with lots of illustrations, either color or black and white drawings. As expected Briggs, like all the great illustrators from past decades, was a stunning draughtsman. Page fifty-six has a whole page pencil drawing of a group of people relaxing on sun-loungers for a magazine story. It looks quite casual but if you study it carefully it's actually incredibly precise, all the bodies are anatomically correct and in perspective as the scene stretches into the near distance. Page sixty shows a pencil illustration from a 1965 edition of Look magazine, a policeman is walking towards you and in the background is a quite detailed yet casual rendering of a Victorian looking building, the body and the building merge together beautifully though they would be far apart in reality.

The book's first two chapters covers the life of the artist with illustrated essays from his son and David Apatoff. There are several Flash Gordon strips and individual panels plus two comic ads in color for Wheaties (The breakfast of champions) from 1939. The remaining eight chapters look in depth at Austin Briggs creative work like 'Advertising illustrations' with several ads for leading brands of the day and 'Airline illustrations' features color work for American Airlines and five superb black and white drawing for Douglas Aircraft from 1959. 'Magazine illustrations' features, as you would expect, plenty of those single page or spread paintings from the main consumer weeklies or monthlies. Some of these are just the picture, frequently page size but nicely others show the painting on the editorial spread with the headlines and story. The last two chapters cover illustrations for Lithopinion and Reader's Digest during the fifties.

I doubt that anyone else will publish a graphic book about Austin Briggs commercial art as good as this one.