The cover of the trifold sleeve for The Fantasy Worlds of Alex Nino. — The cover of the trifold sleeve for *The Fantasy Worlds of Alex Nino*.

As I've noted elsewhere, the 1970s and the early '80s were the Golden Age of cool artist portfolios. For about a decade, one could buy portfolios with amazing art from the likes of Frazetta, Wrightson, Chaykin, Kirby, Brunner, Thorne and many, many other talented artists in the SFF art realm.

Rising stars coming from of the comics scene were especially eager to make their mark outside the four-color pages where they started. Portfolios were a way to reach somewhat beyond their core audience to art aficionados who didn't read "funny books". Alex Nino was one of the earliest artists to forge ahead into this promising venue.

The result was The Fantasy Worlds of Alex Nino, which came out in 1975, just a few short years after Alex began doing work for American comics. The publisher was Christopher Enterprises, a somewhat shadowy company about which I've been able to discover little. They emerged on the scene in 1975, put out portfolios by Nino and Michael Kaluta, then followed that with a Bernie Wrightson portfolio in 1976. Also in 1976, Christopher Enterprises published several awesome posters by Wrightson and Stephen Hickman. After that, the company seems to have faded away. I plan on doing a bit more research into this pioneering company and doing a few more posts about them at some point in the future..

The portfolio itself was a limited edition, signed and numbered to two thousand copies by Alex Nino. The portfolio contained eight full-color 12 x 16 plates which were housed in a trifold sleeve.

The art within the portfolio is "typical" Alex Nino. That is, baroque, bizarre and mind-bending. All delivered with the sure hand of an artist who's mastered his craft and knows what he wants. As the title says, these are "fantasy worlds". Plural. In each one, Alex seems to have dreamed up an entirely new world unlike anything seen before, each plate suggesting wild tales never before told.

This portfolio is a product of what I call the "Deep Seventies". Artists with more of a background in--and love for--the popular art of the previous half-century had assimilated the psychedelic, trippy art from the '60s. The previous decade had been more about "design" and abstraction in popular art, with many of the tropes coming top-down from the “trendy” and elitist art schools.

Artists of the '70s like Nino, Jim Fitzpatrick, P. Craig Russell and the guys in the Studio looked back to pop art titans like Alex Raymond, Mucha, Rackham and Wyeth. They then took all of those influences and added some '70s grooviness. This style was rarely seen before 1970 and was seldom seen after 1980, for better or worse. Let's take a look, shall we?

Plate One depicts the interior of a domed building, colored in blazing hues of red and yellow. The architecture is brutal and cyclopean. The foreground is what appears to be a gladiatorial arena surrounded by cowled spectators seated high above.

The center of the piece is dominated by a long-haired swordsman who is jumping into/flying in the air. He is being attacked by horned, golden, spine-backed demons descending from a skylight. The floor of the arena is heaped with the bodies of demons who have --apparently--already tasted the steel of the swordsman. Obviously, the warrior is an utter badass.

Taking a closer look, other interesting details pop out. Is the chained "giant" in the background a statue or a living being? Is the green celestial body beyond the skylight a moon or a sun or a planet? Does the swordsman have a tail swinging out to his left?

Alex conveys all of that in this one plate. He has seven more tales to tell...

Plate Two shows us a skiff surging through some sort of hellish tunnel. A man stands in the boat, wielding a wicked-looking polearm. Seated below him is a beautiful woman sheltering a child. The skiff is being assaulted by creatures both aerial and aquatic. One of those creatures is a demonic crab-man astride some sort of demon sea-horse which appears to be growing out of the side of the tunnel. Launching out beside the crab-man are humanoid crab/flying fish demons. Pretty damned trippy, my friends.

Is the boatman floating through some sort of Belly of the Beast? Who are the woman and the child? What do they mean to him? Does the light far ahead of the skiff represent safety or just more danger?

Plate Three follows a similar theme to Plate Two. Once again, Nino depicts a boatman floating through some sort of tunnel on a flaming river bedecked with purple lotus blossoms. As in Plate Two, the tunnel walls have malevolent faces leering out of them. However, the boatman in this skiff appears to be a different person from the one in Plate Two. There is no woman or child with him, either. Instead, we have a monstrous being--seated upon a sort of mushroom upheld by Grecian columns--reaching down toward the man. In the palm of the demon is a voluptuous girl. Meanwhile, strange Birds of Paradise—or Hell?—fly above.

Is the demon offering the girl to the boatman? One can see chains stretching from the monster's palm back around the columns. The girl appears to be a "gift" the demon offers and then takes back.

Plate Four veers off in a completely new direction. In the foreground is a small floating island of matter, surrounded by similar islets. In turn, they are encircled by a ring of blue fire. Crouching on the central islet are three humans. Above them is a pair of disembodied, flaming hands. Behind the crouching group is a demonic being clutching a scepter/scythe in one hand and a crown in the other.

Is the demon offering the crown and scepter to them? Is it merely displaying its overwhelming power? What part do the skulls/beings above and behind the demon play in all of this?

Plate Five returns to a theme similar to that in Plate One. Tiers of screaming spectators cheer as a giant, trollish warrior hacks down his goblinoid opponents in a red-litten fighting pit ringed by clawed walls. Nino depicts not just the male spectators as being overcome by blood-lust, but also the bare-breasted women in the audience. In the background looms a strange demon-tree idol with votive flames shooting toward the ceiling. Once again, Nino uses a skylight as part of the composition.

Plate Six depicts another combat. Here we see moustachioed warriors attacking a clean-shaven axe-man. The axe-wielder has already laid low several foes, but more are rushing in. Behind them all looms a glowing-eyed giant with a massive spiked mace in his hand. Is he an ally or an enemy?

Plate Seven shows some sort of biomechanical machine. The helmeted pilot—wielding a stave, his garments blowing in the star-winds—is working a bizarre control panel. The center of the machine is composed of humans seemingly bonded to it with brazen ooze flowing over them. Meanwhile, a spiked skull, wreathed in blue flames, burns above them.

Is the helmeted man some sort of technomancer or wizard who has hijacked the craft? Or was it designed to run exactly as we see it?

The final plate may be my favorite. A horned, glowing-eyed, mastodonic beast dominates the picture. It is commanded by an armored, dicephalic mahout. Sitting atop the beast is a palanquin containing a beautiful, bare-breasted woman. There are similar palanquined behemoths stretched out behind her in a line of march. To the left, one sees burnt out/ruined walls.

In front of the behemoth is a powerful, battered, long-haired man manacled to a yoke. He is surrounded by helmeted warriors.

Is the woman a queen? If so, did the prisoner scorn her, rebel against her rule or is he a cast-aside lover? Is he the king of a nation who fought against her armies? All of the above?

Without a definitive word from Alex Nino, we'll never know. It is certainly possible that Nino was just depicting whatever erupted from his incredibly fertile and inventive mind. Free to create whatever he chose, Nino unleashed a phantasmagorical Day-Glo saraband of groovy art for his first foray into art portfolios. The plates in this portfolio are like black-light posters on steroids...and acid.

I don't consider this Alex's best portfolio. He crafted ones with more cohesion and coherence later in his career. However, there is an air of unchained enthusiasm to it that I treasure. I thank him and Christopher Enterprises for giving it to the world, in all its wild-ass grooviness.