TR Review: Drew Struzan’s Oeuvre
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?If you’re a regular reader of Topless Robot, chances are you know who Drew Struzan is — or at least as the artist behind all those Star Wars, Harry Potter and Indiana Jones movie posters, as well as countless others than feature a collage of character heads. Oeuvre is a large art book collecting most of Struzan’s art work from movie posters, book covers, album covers, collector’s items and more.
Now, you know right now whether you’re the kind of person who enjoys art books in general, or would enjoy a collection of Drew Struzan’s major works in specific, so me doing a review is a little weird. However, if you’re anything like me, you’re going to be seriously surprised by how much Struzan’s done, and what he’s done that you didn’t know. For instance, sid you know he made the posters for John Carpenter’s The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, and Masters of the Universe? Did you know he did some of the early Star Wars art, like that incredible poster from ESB of Luke and Vader dueling in front of the massive Vader helmet? Or that he made the (admittedly awesome) cover for Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits album from 1974? Just seeing what Struzan’s done outside of his well-known style is wonderful, and chances are there’ll be more than a few pics that blow you away. Plus, at the end, there’s some of his more personal art — or at least non-commercial — that I found incredibly striking (and which are mostly of nudes). So it’s not just his movie posters.
The book’s sole problem is that the guide is located in the back, so when it comes to some of his more obscure work, you have no idea what you’re looking at unless you flip to the back of the book. Of course, I understand they wanted to reproduce Struzan’s work unmarred and as large as possible, which is pretty reasonable. All in all, it’s 300 pages of amazing art by one of the great commercial artists of our time (for only $31 at Amazon at the moment), so again, if you’re a fan of pop art, Star Wars or Drew Struzan, Ouevre would make a fine addition to your library.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.