James Bama appreciation thread!

[Count_Zirock]

Bama's most iconic science fiction cover though was perhaps the one he did for the first paperback adaptation of the Star Trek television series:



Bama initially did the piece for a CBS print ad to promote the new Star Trek series which ran in publications such as TV Guide.

That was awfully nice of CBS, considering the show ran on NBC.

[Hepcat]

It's nice to see some good Christian charity in the cutthroat corporate world on occasion.

[BlackLagoon]

Bama's work to me mirrors that of Gogo's, not in the sense that they "look the same" but the fact that they are the 2 artists that make me want to "live in their work".

Stuff like that Monster Color add is so beautiful and just oozes "classic horror" that I just find it jaw dropping. There is so much depth to the work itself it starts to create new depth.....right in your mind. I want to know whats going on in that house. Who lives there? What great monster battles may have been fought there?.....You can smell that faint, damp mildew smell in the house as the crisp, autmn wind blows through the cracks of the ricketty wood.

When I 1st got the Wolf Man model I put the box on my dresser and was mezmorized daily by the colors....what could be going on in the background that I couldnt see?

I put Bama up there with the greats, right along side the likes of Karloff and Carl Lammle. These are guys that inspired regular people...like me, years and years after they initially got their work out.

[Hepcat]

I agree!

James Bama also did the illustrations for a lot of the covers for Bantam's western paperbacks. His cowboys were really well rendered:



Included among these was the very popular Nevada Jim series of books:



Bama also did the illustration for the movie poster of this classic western:

[Hepcat]

James Bama couldn't be pigeon-holed as best for certain genres. His cover renderings for Bantam spanned their entire range of books. A few more examples:





His WWII action renderings for Bantam, such as those for "Cross of Iron" and "Hitler Moves East", and for the men's sweat magazines also rank up there with the best of genre:

[packy120353]

Baboon tortures! "Like"

[BlackLagoon]

Man that WWII plane shot is pretty awesome!

We should have his work on a U.S. Stamp.

[Hepcat]

Man that WWII plane shot is pretty awesome!

A lot of his excellent WWII paperback covers are reproduced in the "James Bama - American Realist" book but I can't find that many good images on the web. Here are a couple of military themed pictures he did that aren't in the book:

[Hepcat]

Here's one of James Bama's sci-fi paintings:

[Illoman]

Hep, thanks for posting that one. Never saw it before.

[Hepcat]

That one certainly highlights the breadth James Bama's artwork. His work certainly wasn't one-dimensional.

[YoungestMonsterKid]

Wait, did he not do Godzilla's Go-Kart and King Kong's Thronester? I hadn't realized that before.

[Hepcat]

No, he did not. He hated the monsters in rods concept and refused to do any more.

[YoungestMonsterKid]

No, he did not. He hated the monsters in rods concept and refused to do any more.

Ah, I knew he hated them but didn't know that he skipped those two. Do you know who did paint them, then?

I always wonder why Godzilla's driving around a graveyard on the box art. Not exactly his standard territory. And with the size of it, it must have been made by and for giant monsters.

[Hepcat]

I just discovered that a 56 minute film devoted to James Bama's artwork is available: