Roy Krenkel’s Evocative Cover Art for Edgar Rice Burroughs

Michael Sellers Edgar Rice Burroughs

A disciple of J.Allen St. John, Franklin Booth, William Walcot and Norman Lindsay, Roy Krenkel was responsible for vividly evocative cover art for the ACE 1960’s Edgar Rice Burroughs paperbacks. For the gallery below I was able to get clean copies — no frontplate to obscure the art. Some of them were in less than ideal condition and I’ve done my best to clean up and color balance those. Many of them are quite large — click and see.

I was going to label each one with the title of the book illustrated — but halfway through posting them it occurred to me that it might be fun to just label them with numbers so those who grew up, as I did, reading the Ace Paperbacks (and Ballantine -but Krenkel worked with Ace), can see if you recognize them without the titles. The answers are at the bottom. If you get them all right it means you’re a super geek or a child of the 60’s who cut his/her teeth on the Ace paperbacks.

Also, Bill Hillman and Erbzine have more Krenkel Ace Cover Art — see links in his comment at the end.

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34

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7

8

Answers
1) Land of Hidden Men (Original Title: Jungle Girl)
2) Mastermind of Mars
3) Fighting Man of Mars
4) The Eternal Savage (Original Title: The Eternal Lover)
5) Pirates of Venus
6) Out of Time’s Abyss
7) At the Earth’s Core
8) Escape on Venus

6 comments

  • Atoz wrote

    Ahhhh… my very first ERB novel, “Escape on Venus”… I picked it up because of the cover art on my way to visit a relative (probably in 6th grade or so). I inadvertently left it there, halfway read, and had to beg to have it mailed back to me. Worst week of my life up to that point. Krenkel’s da man, and I even hate to say it, more of a favorite than Frazetta, and I realize what blasphemy that is!

    One of my very first too — also 6th grade. I still recall seeing it on the shelf of a Stars and Stripes News Stand at Patch Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany. At that point I had read the only Mars novels in our library — Llana of Gathol and A Fighting Man of Mars, plus Tarzan and the Lost Empire and Jungle Tales of Tarzan……..this was my first taste of Venus.

  • Ahhhh… my very first ERB novel, “Escape on Venus”… I picked it up because of the cover art on my way to visit a relative (probably in 6th grade or so). I inadvertently left it there, halfway read, and had to beg to have it mailed back to me. Worst week of my life up to that point. Krenkel’s da man, and I even hate to say it, more of a favorite than Frazetta, and I realize what blasphemy that is!

  • I spent my teens reading Burroughs and I still have all these books. Great trip down memory lane.

  • Thanks for those hi res images! Krenkel had a stylized approach to his figure rendering and his coloring was a knockout!! I remember spinning the paperback racks at the local drugstores when I was a kid and these just popped out!! I’d beg and borrow the 60 cents from my parents to buy them!!

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