Author Archives: Dazzling Erin

Artist Profile: J. Oval

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Who was J. Oval?

No one seems to be sure.  In the 50s and 60s, the covers of several Pan paperbooks were credited to “J. Oval.”  While almost every source that I’ve found seems to agree that J. Oval was a pseudonym, there does not seem to be much agreement on who the real J. Oval was or even whether or not there was actually only one artist using the J. Oval name.  The most convincing argument that I’ve found online was at Little Owl Ski, where a good case was made that J. Oval was a British illustrator named Ben Ostrick.

Regardless of who he was in the real life, J. Oval was prolific and talented cover artist.  Here are a few of his covers:

 

The Covers of Leading Western

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

This week’s covers come to us from Leading Western, a magazine that ran for five years, from 1945 to 1950.  This magazine features all of the typical pulp stories of violence, crime, and romance but, instead of taking place on the mean streets of America, they instead took place in the Old West.

Here are a few of the covers from Leading Western.  Unfortunately, we don’t know which artist or artist was responsible for any of the work below.  Consider this post to be dedicated to the legacy of all of the unknown, uncredited artists out there whose anonymous work continues to thrill collectors decades later.