Like Santa Claus, Spectrum only comes around once per year and is always highly anticipated. This annual collection of the world’s best contemporary fantasy and Sci-fi art is always a favorite not only due to its sheer size and beautiful production, but also because of its diversity in scope. Spectrum presents the best art from the fields of books, comics, advertising, editorial, concept, and even sculpture into each year’s volume.

As always, the book begins with a look at the year in review and the trends in contemporary fantasy art before getting into the opening category of advertising art and presenting the first of its gold and silver annual awards to the best in each category. This year’s gold winner in the advertising category went to James Jean for his Retro-hip “Spacerace 2020” painting for Nike. This gorgeous pop-art piece is a tribute to Sci-Fi imagery of the ‘40s and ‘50s.

I’m not sure how they could have picked a winner in the book category as there are so many outstanding pieces. While Jon Foster’s winning painting for Night Shade books was very good, Luis Royo’s offering for his graphic novel, “Dark Labyrinth”. Adam Hughes took home the Gold Award in the Comics category for his depiction of the sleek and sexy Scarlet Witch from Upper Deck. As a long-time comic book fan I love seeing the industry’s artists getting their just due as the outstanding artists that they are. Other standouts included Gary Giannni’s standout art from the Prince Valiant comic strip that is in the best tradition of Hal Foster, and Charles Vess/Mike Kaluta’s work from the Vertigo Comics series “1001 Nights of Snowfall”.

One of the categories I look forward to most each year is the dimensional chapter featuring the year’s best sculptures and models and this year was certainly no disappointment. A. Brent Armstrongs mammoth 54” tall piece featuring King Kong atop the Empire State Building is simply breathtaking! The Alex Ross designed Superman resin sculpt by artist Karen Palinko features the distinctive look of Ross as Clark Kent rips open his shirt to reveal Superman’s legendary logo. Shawn Nagle’s “Tarzan and the Golden Lion” based on art by longtime Tarzan illustrator, J. Allen St. John, is another winner. Spectrum never fails to deliver a little something for everyone’s taste and Spectrum volume 14 may be the best edition yet. Grade A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Comics, Judgment Day, Op-Ed, Tim Janson. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.