Frank R. Paul – Amazing Stories’ Amazing Illustrator

A week or so ago I started a series highlighting the early issues of Amazing Stories.

That initial piece only covered the first calendar year of the magazine – April through December of 1926.

That was a bit misleading since the magazine’s year is April to March;  among other things, that article should have included the Frank R. Paul covers from January 1927 through March of 1927.

In light of that fact – plus the astonishing revelation that one single artist set the look and tone for the magazine (and its spin-offs, the Amazing Stories Annual and Amazing Stories Quarterly) from its inception through June of 1929 – has led me to re-do that piece in a more comprehensive manner.

This exercise also presages a little poll we’re going to conduct during the next week or so, the Pick Your Favorite Paul Cover Poll.

Frank R. Paul was a master of his craft.  By being tapped by Gernsback to illustrate the cover of the one (and, at the time, only) science fiction magazine, he had the unprecedented opportunity to decide how the new genre would be visualized and presented.  He was fittingly honored as the guest – the very first Guest of Honor, at the very first Worldcon in 1929.

You can learn more about Frank R. Paul in the FRP Galleries on Frank Wu’s website.  (We didn’t have FRP around to illustrate our first issue, so we tapped another Frank!)

And another gallery, this time without the text:

 

Gallery Images are from Galactic Central; contents data is from the ISFDB.

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