Doc Savage started the numbered series concept in the modern paperback marking business. In October 1964, Bantam reprinted 3 books from the pulp series of the '30s and '40s, and they used 2 different illustrators. The eye-catching logo and full-bleed covers created a fresh approch to paperback design.

Bantam set the standard as high as could be imagined with illustrator James Bama, who created the iconic widow's peak and continued the torn shirt theme from many of the early pulp covers. You can see many of the series cover gimmicks, like the villainous face leering symbolically, as first employed on the 9th reprint, The Mystic Mullah, and repeated by Bob Larkin in the cover for Mystery on Happy Bones, shown below.

These covers were done while James Bama was on his honeymoon.The series design was so strong that most readers didn't even notice they were different artists.

Left: number 5 had the artwork of Mort Kunstler, who is a famous Civil War illustrator today. Right: Doug Rosa, who seemed to have a fondness for machine guns painted the 6th cover; his other Doc cover has The Man of Bronze shooting a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the face on the cover of The Land of Terror, Bantam Doc number 8.

Left: Fred Pfeiffer did 13 covers after Bama painted his 63rd cover (The Freckled Shark, #67). Though his Doc was more stylized and metallic looking, he had the same power and weight of the Bama renditions. Right: Boris Vallejo painted 6 covers after Pfeiffer; I suspect Bantam found they didn't have to pay the premium for such a "name" illustrator to sell the potboilers. The Red Terrors was Boris' first and strongest entry.

Left:Bob Larkin is a proloific illustrator of comics and paperbacks. He created 45 cover paintings, most of them for the popular Doc double volumes, which had 2 illustrations per cover. Mystery on Happy Bones , #96, was the last original single-volume Doc book. Right: Joe DeVito created seven covers for the new adventures penned in the late '80s and early 90s by Will Murray, novels that were based on notes and fragments from the pulp era.

Other Series Covers

Ian Fleming reissues of his super spy 007, from 1971. The display sans serif font is used like the Doc Savage symbol. Casino Royale looks like it could have been painted by one of Bantams most dependable, go-to illustrators: Lou Feck.


Historical novels and another pulp hero. September 1965, one year after Bantam launched the Doc Savage series, they published this edition of Lord Hornblowe. The Shadow logo has a definite 70s disco flair. There were about 8 in this short-lived reprint series before Pyramid took over the Shadow property from Street and Smith, also owners of Doc Savage; Hidden Death is from October, 1970.


Another popular TV property: Night Gallery. Bantam also published "novelizations" of Twilight Zone. Night Gallery 2 is from December 1972.

Where I Hadn't Gone Before...
When I was in 6th grade, my Aunt Dona and Uncle Al Drangel bought me a boxed set of eight of James Blish's Star Trek TV series adaptations, published by Bantam Books. This was my first exposure to the insidious world of marketing; specifically the concept of 'Brand Loyalty'... and I became very loyal to the Bantam Books line.

The Star Trek books were the first science fiction books that I owned and collected. Right from the start I was hooked. Bantam Books just felt like quality. And the artwork was so cool. Star Trek 8 was painted by Lou Feck, whose signature I picked out on many other covers, from westerns to adventures. Spock, Messiah! was the second original novel Bantam published (after Spock Must Die! by James Blish) and probably the third original novel published by any publisher. Today the franchise has spawned hundreds of adventures in the Trek universe. Spock, Messiah! was painted by Gene Szafran. Bob Larkin rendered the famous First Officer on Vulcan! The Star Trek covers also show that clean, sans serif design and hairline rule motif of the Bantam design look. I would start to buy Bantam Books over any other publisher. Doc Savage caught my eye next, but the science fiction line was also in my sights...

CLICK ON THE BOOK IMAGES FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW IN A SEPARATE WINDOW

Space, the Designer's Frontier...

The Bantam science fiction brand used clean sans serif type and full-bleed illustration by about a dozen talented artists. These covers are all scanned from my collection.	The Embedding (April 1977), cover by Paul Lehr Hellstrom's Hive (April 1974) by maybe Gene Szafran In The Problem Pit (June 1976) maybe Eddie Jones...?
The designers' use of space provided a bold balance between art and text. 12.07.09: Mark Dillon graciously added confirmation and corrections to this page - Thanks Mark!	Crompton Divided (November 1979), cover by Paul Lehr Bander Snatch (June 1979), cover artwork by Dean Ellis; note the similarity to Hiero's Journey, below VALIS (February 1981) painted bu John Berkey, who painted the first Star Wars poster

Marketing Samuel R. Delany

When Bantam printed their first Samuel R Delany book, Nova, in November 1969, they were establishing their 'sans serif' look (see left). Delany had already won a number of Hugo and Nebula awards for books and stories like Babel-17 and Jewels of Aptor. Then, in January, 1975, they published for the first time the noted Dhalgren, under their Frederik Pohl Selection crest (see right), and then reissued Nova in this new departure in design.

Bantam was apparently getting ready to reissue all of this young author's works in the years to follow, and they maintained the same 'Dhalgren' design. They seemed to want Dhalgren to be a Frederik Pohl Selection, they probably wanted Delany's earlier works to fit into a uniform style. My copy of Dhalgren, shown above, is a later reprint, and Bantam appears to have removed the "Frederik Pohl Selection" line of type (note the space at the top). The first copy I had did in fact have the Fred Pohl designation. Below are the rest of the Bantam Delany editions. The Nova edition below is by Eddie Jones.

After publishing Triton in 1976, the rest of the books didn't get published until 1982. Boris Vallejo painted the covers for The Einstein Intersection and Babel-17, Vincent Di Fate provided artwork for The Ballad of Beta-2. I don't own copies of the two Boris covers, so the images are the best I could find.

Frederik Pohl was (probably) an acquisitions editor under contract to Bantam's Science Fiction line in the first half of the 1970s. His imprint (as duplicated above) was used on the covers of books he edited. Some of the books were first publications: Triton, Web of Everywhere, Towers of Utopia and the infamus Dhalgren. I bought Towers at Medic Discount Drug off a spinning book "tree" when I was 14; I remember riding my bike 2 miles home afterwards. Dhalgren I ordered by mail, and I recall our neighbor, Mr. Leporati leafing through it and telling my father at a Boy Scout meeting that he'd better watch what I was reading; this was interesting, because he was notorious among his son's friends for the Playboy, Penthouse and OUI collection he kept in his bedroom closet. It was the 70s, and many of the Frederick Pohl Selections were quite liberal and open in their treatment of adult themes such as sex, politics and drug use. Science Fiction was alternatively called speculative fiction during these years, and you can almost hear the disco beat as you read them. Interestingly, the Delany titles are designed differently, the Frederik Pohl crest is in a classic Times styled font as opposed to the compressed sans serif. See the notes at the left on marketing Delany's books.
January 1974 Cover by Dean Ellis	March 1974 Cover by Fred Pfeiffer
June 1974 Cover by Dean Ellis	1974 Cover by the prolific Dean Ellis
January 1975	November 1975
February 1976 Art by Mitchell Hooks	July 1975 Bruce Pennington British Artist
Februray 1975 Maybe Robert McGinnis...?	November 1976 Art by Ken Barr

Marketing Ray Bradbury

Bantam used a number of styles in Ray Bradbury's books, the two that are most prevalent during the 60s and 70s are shown below and lower left. Note the Dean Ellis artwork (above) that influenced the designs on many of the covers. The illustration above on some covers was enlarged and sections used on a few of the covers. However, note the consistency in type use in both generations of packaging.


1972 cover designs.

A 1971, 5th printing of a first paperback edition design. Illustration by Gene Szafran.