Warning: Not Safe For Work!

Part of Norem’s mural that he painted for the Military Museum of Southern New England honoring the 10th Mountain Division.

Earl Norem passed away on this date in 2015. Perhaps "faded away" might be a better term, since that is what old soldiers are said to do and Earl was most definitely a veteran. A proud veteran of the legendary 10th Mountain Division and a decorated combatant in America's Italian campaign during World War Two.

When Earl demobilized, he went into magazine illustration, mostly for the "Men's Adventure" mags. Such magazines have also been called "men's pulps" and "sweat mags". Essentially, they were magazines that somewhat carried on from the actual pulps--which died out in the 1950s--but were printed on "slick" paper. A significant percentage of their readers were veterans of World War Two and Korea who were looking for manly stories featuring action and beautiful women. In other words, those readers were the actual "Nazi punchers" we hear so much about these days. Many of the men's adventure authors and illustrators were also veterans. Earl Norem was one of them.

Much of Norem's men's adventure artwork was done for Martin Goodman's Magazine Management Company. This would be a crucial fact later in Earl's career.

Getting back to Earl's artwork... While I was aware of Norem's art from a young age by way of his Marvel Comics covers, I never really got beyond "liking" his art until Bob Deis at MensPulpMags.com introduced me to Earl's art from the '50s and '60s. Definitely a revelation. There was a dynamism to those illustrations that just grabbed me. Also, in my opinion, the women were more beautiful.

Let's look at a couple of illos from Norem's prime. Check out this one, which I call "Stormraft", since I'm not sure which mag/story it appeared in:

The women are outrageously sexy, the storm-tossed sea is excellently rendered and it's all-around a masterful piece of work. There is an exciting tale to be told in that painting, my friends.

This second one is even more awesome. Done for a 1968 issue of Action For Men, this was the cover illo for a story titled, "Yank Safari To A Lost Tribe: I Found WWII’s Secret $6,000,000 Looted Treasure".

This one has it all. An SS officer who is obviously halfway to "going native", gorgeous women transporting golden ingots and a stalwart American blowing the whole thing wide open with the help of a (bare-chested) native girl that he's--probably--seduced and suborned. We need somebody like James Reasoner to write a new story based on this painting and have Titan Books publish it..

Men's adventure mags were fading into the sunset by the late ‘60s. Meanwhile, thanks to Roy Thomas and Glenn Lord, the dawning 1970s saw Conan the Cimmerian surging to dominance in the realm of comics, along with a slew of new black-and-white horror titles from Marvel. All of those titles were being published by Martin Goodman, Norem's main client for the previous two decades. Earl just shifted gears and kept rollin' like a boss.

The first piece of Norem artwork I ever owned was the "Man-God" issue of Marvel Preview, which was pretty bad-ass. I also bought several Norem-covered Savage Sword of Conans around that time. The one that stuck with me was the "Moon of Blood" issue, which might be my favorite Conan cover from Norem.

I have to say that I found Earl's SSoC covers to be somewhat uneven. Several I really liked and others not so much. It's a big enough topic that I'll save the in-depth analysis for another blog entry. That said, Norem did some pretty awesome covers for Marvel's horror and SFF mags. I'm especially fond of his Tales of the Zombie artwork.

Earl in 2012 with his 10th Mountain Division insignia on his cap.

As the '80s arrived and brought with it a dwindling market for sword-and-sorcery, along with the direct comics shift, which helped bring about the death of b&w comic mags in general, Norem adapted and overcame. He did artwork for the He-Man and Transformers properties, along with other projects.

By 2005, Earl--who was over eighty years old at that point--decided to hang up his pencil and brush, officially retiring. However, the old war-horse had one last run in him. Topps approached him to do a reboot of their Mars Attacks property and he fired up the studio one last time. The resulting series of trading cards was well-received and Norem was especially singled out for praise. Earl was part-way into painting a new series of Mars Attacks cards in 2015 when he died.

Feel free to click on the carousel art gallery below. A fine tribute to Earl Norem can be found here.

Raise your glasses to the shade of a fallen warrior and a damned good artist, sword-brothers.