THE BOOK OF JUSKO

Indexed: 2026-05-20

[00:00:04][music] >> Hi, welcome to Race Sensation. I'm your host Dan, and in this episode, I'm going to be taking a look at this new publication, The Book of Jusko.

[00:00:20]And as you can uh imagine, this is a book about Joe Jusko's artwork.

[00:00:29]A lot of the covers I I mostly know him.

[00:00:31]He's a working illustrator and does fantastic work. These are a lot of covers he's done for various publications.

[00:00:42]And uh he's managed to make a living doing a lot of pulp type illustrations of the kind of an older variety that I really like.

[00:00:51]Here is uh the table of contents. As you can see, there's an introduction and then there's loose chapters.

[00:00:58]The paintings are done They have these loose themes: Savages, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Adventure, Heroes, Odd Jobs, The Process, and then one of the things I found the most fun and I wished maybe maybe they could do a whole publication of more of this stuff, but you'll see what the amateur stuff looks like when we get there.

[00:01:23]Um there's the intro.

[00:01:27]But that it's dedicated to his wife.

[00:01:30]Oh, I forgot I didn't point out there.

[00:01:32]Did I pass by? So, on this, as you can see, it's words by Joe Jusko, edited and designed by uh Joe Pruett.

[00:01:41]There's not a lot of writing in this.

[00:01:43]It's mostly captions. That's okay.

[00:01:46]Um I think that works out in the book's favor.

[00:01:52]There are a couple places where I wish there was a little more background on a painting, but hey. Now, the crazy thing is it starts off with one of my least favorites. I don't really like this uh fighting with the tiger painting. It looks more like he's a doing a riding a bucking bronco. For some reason that just doesn't work for me.

[00:02:12]It's nothing to do with the quality of the the painting.

[00:02:15]Just there's there's something Occasionally there's, you know how nitpicky picky I can be if you've watched a few of my videos. Um so here's Savages. A lot of this is the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate. He was He's been doing a lot of work with them. They've been doing 100th anniversary publications, republications of a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs books, and he's been doing covers and illustrations for them.

[00:02:42]And that works out great. There you go.

[00:02:45]Look at this. They're a perfect match.

[00:02:47]That looks like a little bit like uh uh Gil Kane.

[00:02:55]Some really great That is a great action there.

[00:03:04]Again, wow, fabulous.

[00:03:13]Nice pen and ink there.

[00:03:22]Jungle Girl, I guess kind of like Sheena, maybe uh Huh.

[00:03:31]Doesn't say what uh that was done for there.

[00:03:35]Uh this is his uh homage to Frank Frazetta's designs for the Fire and Ice movie that Frazetta did with Ralph Bakshi.

[00:03:48]This nice Conan Savage Sword of Conan cover.

[00:03:53]I like seeing that pencil work there.

[00:04:00]>> [snorts] >> Nice. You know, fans of this channel will know that I love Conan. I love the barbarian stuff.

[00:04:19]Uh this the homage to the Boris Vallejo painting.

[00:04:25]I mean the scenario happens in the story, so it makes sense that they look similar and then they did it in the movie.

[00:04:33]But that looks a lot like the Boris, so he he acknowledges that's one of his favorite ones.

[00:04:44]Um here's some Red Sonja stuff. I you know, I wasn't familiar. I've never seen any of this uh the trading cards he did.

[00:04:52]He doesn't really like them. He doesn't feel like this is some of his best work.

[00:04:55]I would I would go along with that, but at the same time it's cool seeing those.

[00:05:03]There's uh there's the Red Sonja picture they used for this the cover of the book.

[00:05:10]>> [snorts] >> She looks a little more uh come you know, come hither than I would imagine Red would be, but uh still she's more much more uh business than this uh original drawing there.

[00:05:32]Here we go with fantasy.

[00:05:37]Wizard of Oz Hawks of uh Off Meer Now this with the woman in peril and all this going on, this is very much like the pulp magazines.

[00:05:59]Very much and or even the earliest very those very first dozen or so of the Savage Sword of Conan.

[00:06:17]I don't I'm not sure where these uh some of these characters are from.

[00:06:27]I don't There's Rut uh Rowdy Piper.

[00:06:35]Rowdy Roddy Piper, Monster Hunter.

[00:06:38]Is this a comic or a book? I don't know what he did that cover for.

[00:06:46]It was it says it's a book.

[00:06:49]That's fun. That looks like a lot of fun.

[00:06:52]Oh, wow.

[00:06:56]Great. Well, I don't want to go through every single page of this.

[00:07:00]Of course, I hate to to miss out on anything or make you feel like you're not seeing this the things that would make you make a decision to buy it or not, but uh have that I bought this issue of the this is uh the second edition of Famous Monsters.

[00:07:17]Uh They did some fill-in numbering. I can't go into it. It's too long a story. Maybe this Maybe in here it says, but uh that was a good cover. I bought that issue just for that uh that cover.

[00:07:32]That's cool.

[00:07:36]Um What's There these these roots and stuff that looks very, very Barry Kitson.

[00:07:45]Kyle McDonald cover for The Walking Dead. I I would not have guessed that was him that had done that cover, honestly.

[00:08:00]Not the Not the greatest.

[00:08:03]The Airlords is Vampire. I know he gets a lot of work through Dynamite. He does a lot of covers for Dynamite Comics.

[00:08:15]And I I don't pick a lot of that stuff up.

[00:08:18]So, it's nice to have uh a lot of this work here.

[00:08:38]Yeah.

[00:08:38]That's good. I like that.

[00:08:45]Some other science fiction uh I don't know if that's his uh I'm not He says, "My eldest stepson, Jason, is a huge Star Wars fan, and his wife commissioned that painting."

[00:09:16]Conspiracy on the Planet of the Apes a 2011 novel. Did not know that existed.

[00:09:25]Fun.

[00:09:26]The thing about this is when you see the double-page spreads, boy, this is a tight gutter.

[00:09:31]And if, you know, it's a little hard to get the full Like Stanley's face is pretty hard to read there with that gutter so tight. I mean, I'm it's always hard when you get these art books how to do the gutters for these double-page spreads. Um I'm not crazy about how some of this is turning out. I can't say that there's you know, every there's other options that are definitely better, but I don't I do like that monster there.

[00:10:14]Okay, these look like uh I I'm not sure. I I didn't see these um these are not this I guess these are for that reboot of the Mars Attacks trading cards.

[00:10:32]Here's some Warlord of Mars drawings.

[00:10:37]I can appreciate these.

[00:10:43]Again, most of this must have been done for uh Dynamite.

[00:10:50]The thing about the Dynamite is um the covers are usually the most intriguing part. It's not that there's not any good stories in the Dynamite stuff. You know, and some people just love all the pulpy stuff no matter what. I I get a little bit burnt out on some of it and uh So, there is some good stuff done. It's just hard to want to keep up with the Dynamite books. So, again, I'm glad they've got this book here collecting his uh terrific artwork.

[00:11:21]Wow.

[00:11:34]Damn. he did a lot of these covers.

[00:11:41]Adventure.

[00:11:47]Jimmy's Bastards. Don't know what that's all about. I'll have to look through and see where some of this stuff came from.

[00:11:55]Oh, yeah, I remember these uh uh Die Hard.

[00:11:59]Year One.

[00:12:03]Great covers.

[00:12:06]Great, you know, cuz his style is just it captures those original I mean, cuz he is one of these guys, you know, his artwork style is that artwork style.

[00:12:26]Heroes.

[00:12:28]You know, I I have I finally remember reading the Marvel Comics in the '60s and early '70s, but I haven't kept up with them, so.

[00:12:43]What If Comics.

[00:12:46]That's a pretty good Hulk there.

[00:12:50]Avengers.

[00:13:05]Hm.

[00:13:07]Yeah.

[00:13:16]Okay, so these weren't actually done for uh for the uh These were a commission he did.

[00:13:25]They weren't actually used on any of the Marvel books.

[00:13:29]I knew they weren't used for the 12 cent comics cuz he wasn't doing them back then, but but boy, these are some of these are pretty cool.

[00:13:42]Black and white sketches.

[00:13:55]Odd jobs.

[00:14:00]What was this uh Oh, this is a print he did for a commemorative I Dream of Jeannie event.

[00:14:08]And there's Barbara Eden herself.

[00:14:17]Okay.

[00:14:22]Some more Hulk.

[00:14:26]Hulk versus the Abomination.

[00:14:32]Uh All righty.

[00:14:42]The process. So, here's a little behind-the-scenes look at him working on some on a piece, putting together the various pieces.

[00:15:06]Well, definitely the finished product is pretty far pretty wild-looking.

[00:15:10]Now, here's amateur These were all done drawn mostly between the ages of 11 and 17.

[00:15:18]>> [laughter] >> I actually really like these.

[00:15:21]I would like to see a whole publication for That's a great Look, it's just like when I was a kid and I would be going like, "None of these comics are gory enough. I got to make them gorier and gorier." That's great.

[00:15:39]>> [laughter] >> Show this to a child psychologist today.

[00:15:45]>> [laughter] >> That is great.

[00:15:50]Uh I I love this stuff.

[00:15:54]Like I said, I would like I would want to see a whole book filled with this. Joe, if you got it You know, you know, even if it's a short book.

[00:16:11]I love it. Anyway, uh so, this was Kickstarted. I'm not sure where.

[00:16:20]Do you go now to to pick up copies? I'm sure it'll be everywhere. I'm I I know Bud Plant is probably going to do it uh carry it.

[00:16:28]I'll look around and see if I can spot somebody selling it and put a link below.

[00:16:33]I think if you're into this kind of pulp painting, uh Joe's one of the best. I think this looks great.

[00:16:41]It's got a ton of the kind of artwork you want to see. Like I said, it collects artwork that I'm not going to go back and buy all those different issues of the Dynamite comics.

[00:16:50]So, to have it collected here, I think it's great.

[00:16:53]There you go.