The year was 1948. After studying at the Art Students League of New York and Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, 24-year-old artist Frank McCarthy opened a small studio and dove into the world of commercial art.

Soon McCarthy’s illustrations and paintings were popping up in the pages of magazines like American Magazine, Collier’s, Redbook, Argosy, True and Calling All Girls.

Next, editors and art directors from paperback book publishers like Avon, Bantam, Dell, and Signet came calling. A book with a Frank McCarthy cover promised action and drama and passion, usually in the form of a montage.

Based on that work, it was inevitable that McCarthy would get the call from Hollywood to bring his talent to the art of the movie poster.

Frank McCarthy’s mission was a big one: Create a still image that would makes audiences pay for a motion picture experience. His approach was simple: “I want to give that scene as much visual impact as possible, so the detail and action are as accurate as I can make them.”

Let’s look at the complex art that came from that simple goal. We start with McCarthy’s James Bond paperbacks for Bantam Books.  Above, is Casino Royale. Next is Dr. No.

These were all published in and around 1971 and 1972. Here’s From Russia With Love.

The first James Bond novel not written by Ian Fleming, Colonel Sun.

McCarthy and Bond meet in another medium. The album art for the Thunderball soundtrack.

Frank McCarthy’s poster for producer-director John Sturges’ great The Great Escape (1963)

Robert Redford. Natalie Wood. Frank McCarthy. This Property is Condemned (1966)

McCarthy has Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier collide in Khartoum (1966)

McCarthy’s take on Elke Sommer, sexy star of They Came To Rob Las Vegas (1968)

It’s almost a storyboard. Director Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1967) by Frank McCarthy.

Frank McCarthy does Elke Sommer again, this time in The Venetian Affair (1967)

Yesterday’s post about Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story seemed like a good set-up for this:

1974. Bruce Lee had been dead for nearly a year and the martial arts craze he kicked off was still going strong. Lee’s epic Enter the Dragon was still in theaters.  The song “Kung Fu Fighting” was a hit the radio. Producer David Wolper gave ABC a backdoor pilot, Men of the Dragon, the first ever American martial arts movie of the week (unless young count the pilot for Kung Fu, which was still on the air as a series). The paperback racks were filled with pulpy martial action novels featuring heroes like K’ing Kung Fu, SuperManChu, Black Samurai and Jason Striker, Master of Martial Arts.

Marvel Comics, meanwhile, had their own roster of martial arts stars including like Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu and Iron Fist, Sales were good, so Marvel decided to take their heroes to the magazine rack, with a larger-format black and white comics magazine. Free of the color comics rack and the authority of the Comics Code, Marvel wanted to amp up the action for their new magazine, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu.

To launch the new book, Marvel tapped artist Neal Adams, who had exploded onto the comic book medium after a career-building turns in commercial advertising art and newspaper strips (Ben Casey, based on the ABC TV series starring Vince Edwards). Whether he was drawing Batman, The X-Men, Green Lantern or The Avengers, Neal Adams employed a naturalistic, photo-realistic style. He didn’t draw characters, he drew people. He didn’t just depict action, he made it hurt. (One of the many reasons why Adams was tapped a couple of years later to draw the hand-to-hand action in Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. See sketch above)

And so what we have for the enjoyment of your eyeballs here in the Cyclops Central Picture Gallery, are the six covers artist Neal Adams drew as Deadly Hands of  Kung Fu covers, plus a bonus piece. Enjoy The Art of Neal Adams. And don’t forget to block.

We begin with a flying sidekick from Lin Sun, one of the stars of the new Sons of the Tiger series to be found inside Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #1.

Adams on Shang-Chi, Master of Fu, with Chi fighting for a lady’s honor. Deadly Hands #2.

Lin Sun is back and he’s brought fellow Son of the Tiger, Abe Brown, with him (evoking Bruce Lee and Jim Brown in Enter the Dragon). Deadly Hands #3.

David Carradine as Caine is out front and center for Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #4.

Deadly Hands #12. Adams takes on the Roger Moore version of James Bond, inspired by the martial arts-influenced 007 epic, The Man with the Golden Gun.

When Masters meet: Neal Adams pays tribute to Bruce Lee. Deadly Hands #14.

A perfect example of what makes Neal Adams great. He could have chosen to re-create any complicated martial arts scene from Enter The Dragon…but he goes for the impossible one with the fractured-mirror effects. Deadly Hands #17 was Adams’ last.

Finally, the bonus: Neal Adams’s poster for the 1974 low-budget movie known as both The Death of Bruce Lee and The Black Dragon’s Revenge. Adams went for a Bob Peak-style montage, making dynamic imagery out of what I would imagine was a fairly undynamic movie.

Neal Adams. We’ll get back to him at some point…

Artist Richard Amsel had a short life (1947-1985) and an even shorter career, but he made the most of it. During his 16 years as a commercial illustrator, Amsel created over 35 different TV Guide covers and a couple of dozen movie posters for some of the most most popular and important movies of the 1970s. Steeped in nostalgic forms from the pulps to art nouveau, Amsel’s work is evocative of an era gone by and remains timeless.

Here’s a small gallery of Amsel’s work. We begin with Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

An alternate version of the poster for Chinatown (1974)

A terrific poster for a not-so-terrific movie, Lucky Lady (1975)

Amsel’s farewell to John Wayne for his last film, The Shootist (1976)

Robert Mitchum’s second outing as private eye Phillip Marlowe gets the Amsel treatment (1978)

Amsel evokes James Bama’s Doc Savage with this pulp-inspired one-sheet (1981)

Now, some TV Guide covers. Welcome Back, Kotter (1979)

A salute to All in the Family (1980)

Amsel’s take on the original King of Late Night (1981)

Lady cops Cagney & Lacey by Amsel (1983)

James Garner and Mary Tyler Moore in Heartsounds (1984)

Crockett. Tubbs. Miami Vice. Amsel.  (1985)

There’s lots more art by Amsel out there. A good place to start looking is here.

Bob Peak (1927-92) was an extraordinarily gifted commercial illustrator who started out working on ad agency accounts before gaining fame for his more than 130 movie posters and innumerable magazine covers.

A natural draftsman, Peak’s style consists of dynamic figure drawing, striking portraiture work, innovative compositions and eye-popping color design. Take one look at Bob Peak’s work you’ll see why he’s regarded as one the most diostinctive artists the field of commercial art ever produced.

Here’s a sampling of the art of Bob Peak, starting with a piece of advertising art, circa 1964

An early Peak movie poster for Camelot (1967)

One of Peak’s many Time magazine covers (1972)

TV Guide cover art for the NBC series Search (1972)

Peak’s iconic poster for Enter the Dragon (1973)

TV Guide cover for ABC’s The Six Million Dollar Man (1974)

An early version of The Yakuza one-sheet poster (1974)

ABC’s Baretta gets the Bob Peak treatment (1977)

Poster for the James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Peak’s poster for Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn (1982)

Number three in a series of six Bob Peak Star Trek posters (1984)

There’s plenty more of Bob Peak’s artistry out there on the Internet to be enjoyed and studied. A good place to start would be here.