Monday, July 11, 2011

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Hank Chapman

Today's VDA post is bite-sized, featuring only two little illustrations. But they're a neat change of pace, I hope you'll agree.

Hank Chapman was a prominent comics artist who worked for Timely, Atlas, and DC comics. He's also one of the few entrants in this long, proud series famous enough to warrant a Wikipedia page of his very own. Chapman is well-known for his war comics in the fifties, having written over a hundred, but in the mid-sixties, he "fell off the map." Crammed next to advertisements for Boy Scout camping supplies in the March 1964 issue of Boy's Life magazine are his small illustrations of Stegosaurus and the first theropod, Megalosaurus.

The Stegosaurus, on his elephantine legs, eats what looks to be a french fry plant.

Stegosaurus

Meanwhile, Megalosaurus chases down some unseen quarry, likely while yelling "RARRRAGHGHAAARGH!!" and flexing his grabby little hands.

Megalosaurus

The story these cute lil' dinosaurs accompanied was a quick n' jaunty blurb about the origins of dinosaur paleontology. I'd love to find out if Chapman did any other dinosaur illustrations. So far, I've had no luck finding any. At the very least, it would be fun to look through his sketchbook to see what other amazing archosaurs he played around with.

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