King Kong Illustrated by Richard Powers

Here’s a King Kong item that I was not aware of until it was presented to me by a good friend (thanks M.M.!) – the original novelization illustrated by the legendary SF artist, Richard Powers. You probably don’t recognize the name, but if you’re a fan of 1950’s SF or related art then you’ve seen the surrealistic cover art he provided for seemingly hundreds of pocket books.

This Kong book seems to have been produced in conjunction with the DeLaurentis production of Kong that came out in the mid-70’s. By the looks of the art I suspect that Powers produced these pieces very fast. They’re reproduced in green in the book (see the image below) making them look decidedly cheesy. For this blog entry I’ve converted them back to B&W where they regain some real power – the image of Kong first appearing over Fay Wray tied to the alter is particularly evocative.

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