This is such a mediocre, amateurish book and expensive for what it delivers. First off, my copy is produced by inkjet print-on-demand, the bottom-of-the-barrel printing, essentially for text-heavy titles and requiring paper just a bit thicker than the photocopy sort. Secondly, no print designer got near this editorial material. There is no design as such, especially evident with the spreads that reproduce the magazine pages with headlines, text and Pollen's illustrations. These are sort of large thumbnails four to a spread but with a ton of empty white space. It would have been better to show these four to a page. I think it was produced like this to pad out the book, there are forty-two pages of these partially empty magazine spreads..
Regarding Pollen's illustrations, they all look like very competent roughs to show to an Editor, get approval and then do the illustration properly. The giveaway are five paintings on pages ten and eleven that show what he did for other publishers than the down-market men's adventure slicks. These paintings show a very professional, full-of-detail style more or less absent from his work in the rest of the book.
The poor quality of 'Pollen's women' (and probably his other books from New Texture) was revealed to me when I compared it to Taschen's 'Men's adventure magazines' (ISBN 3822825174) a beautifully designed and printed, on a good matt art, 514 pages title with over a thousand covers and inside page art, all in color, by the main and lesser known artists, it includes some Pollen. It came out in 2004 but copies can still be found on the net and cheaper than PW!
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