TRASHY TUESDAY: MORE LARRY KENT SPANISH COVERS

The Larry Kent digests (Cleveland) went through several revamps over their nearly thirty year run from 1954 to 1983. As I have highlighted in earlier articles, https://murdermayhemandlongdogs.com/trashy-tuesday-larry-kent-covers/, the early distinctive covers were mainly done by Walter Stackpole, however, by the mid 1960s these had largely given way to less classy, more routine covers featuring semi-naked or bikini-clad young women. In the late 1960s/early 1970s this changed again when the Spanish syndicated art agency Nova Bossa started providing a lot of covers for Cleveland, including those for the Larry Kent books. Using Spanish artists such as Rafael Cortiella, Fernando Fernandez and Enrich Torres, Nova Bossa provided covers which were usually more violent and sexualised in their approach. https://murdermayhemandlongdogs.com/trashy-tuesday-larry-kent-the-miralles-covers/

I have been adding to my collection of the Larry Kent covers done by Spanish artists and recently acquired another batch with art work by Sebastian Boada Domenech (Boada), Salvador Faba, Rafael Cortiella and another artist that I cannot identify.

Sebastian Boada (born 1935) is probably best known for his horror comics and western covers, but he also did some syndicated crime artwork, which found its way onto book covers around the world. His art work does not seem to have adorned a lot of the Larry Kent books, but I came across two examples.

Assassin Take All (above) is a more lusher cover than the usual Kent ones and the rich blue hues really makes it stand out. For once the incidental detail, the roulette wheel, actually matches in with the storyline, which involved Larry Kent going to Las Vegas. It is not as edgy as some of the Spanish covers, but I quite like it.

Boada also did the cover for The Reluctant Blonde. The gun and helicopter puts it more in line with other Kent covers, but Boada’s use of colour once again gives it a moody feel.

Rafael Cortiella provided the artwork for several Larry Kent covers, including Some Dame, This One (above) and Who’s Kidding Who? (below). All of his covers have a similar feel and look to them. They all feature a girl, a man with a gun and some sort of action going on. They are very typical of the syndicated, generic artwork that the Spanish agencies did for publishers around the world (see below).

Cortiella’s artwork was also used by Cleveland on their numerous western adventure series: https://murdermayhemandlongdogs.com/trashy-tuesday-cleveland-westerns/

Who’s Kidding Who? has a typical Cortiella feel to it and was also used overseas on different books covers, including below on a Spanish crime novel by Lou Carrigan (Antonio Vera Ramírez). Thanks to Jussi Makinen for pointing this out.

I also like the suggestive, if corny, tagline: “She looked good… damn good… till she took the tinsel off!” But what does it mean?

Salvador Faba (1936) is another Spanish artist who is probably best known for his horror and western art, including the German covers for Vampira. Again the above cover is very generic and not greatly different from those done by Rafael Cortiella and Fernando Fernandez.

The cover of Disco Deadly is signed, but I am not able to identify the signature. Regardless, it is a good eye catching cover that makes better use of colour than some of the others. It is also a nice rendition of Kent, who seems to vary from cover to cover.

The same artist would also seem to have done the cover for #791 The Violators (which I have seen, but do not own).

I also came across a batch of unsigned covers which are very similar to the covers highlighted above, which I will post in the next few weeks.