Kubert School Years: Bissette Does Tarzan

This Might Have Become the Cover for Abyss #2…

John Totleben and I have been catching up of late, and among the goodies we’ve been exchanging online is this vintage Bissette experiment inking with brush—given the date (December 1976), this is likely one of my early brush-and-ink illustrations—from our Kubert School days.

The late Steve Perry was really taken with this piece, and somewhere in the SpiderBaby Archives is a photocopy of this artwork that Steve hand-lettered a logo for Abyss across, proposing that we do a second issue of Abyss leading with this image. Tom Yeates suggested I send it to ERBdom at the time, but I never did, that I can recall. The original ended up with John (a gift or a trade, no doubt; I have a fair number of Totleben sketches and such in my own collection, all gifts back in the day), and it’s a real hoot to see it again.

Scan is compliments of John, too.

More to come!
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Artwork ©1976, 2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved, from the collection of John Totleben.