An art book retrospective/meditation/collection of illustration, comics, pop culture, and stories celebrating James A. Owen's career.

The Story:

In the thirty-five years since my career officially began, I have created thousands of pieces of art -- most of them were for the best known of my projects: the epic comic book series StarChild, collected as the massive one volume NEARLY-COMPLETE ESSENTIAL STARCHILD, and the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series, which began with the internationally best-selling illustrated novel, HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS, and which consists of seven more volumes, including the most recent book, THE DRAGON KNIGHT. But in and around and before and after those were covers, and illustrations, and book proposals, and one-shots, and dozens of other projects for which I produced a LOT of art -- much of which has not been seen since it was created, and not in a format which could truly be a showcase for the illustration itself.

The STARCHILD book we published was limited to black and white. I wanted to show the color work as well, and my favorite pieces from the other projects I had done -- and not just in illustration and comics, but also in design.

I envisioned this book as the place where I could collect and display the very best of that work: the color covers and best pages from STARCHILD; the line art, color covers, and process drawings for illustrations from the IMAGINARIUM GEOGRAPHICA books; the drawings I made of J.R.R. TOLKIEN, C.S. LEWIS, and the other Inklings of Oxford from Diana Glyer's book BANDERSNATCH; the lost graphic novel proposal for Peter Beagle's THE LAST UNICORN; covers for books by Jeff VanderMeer & Cat Rambo, and Alma Alexander, and Catherynne Valente; illustrations and covers for the emagazine THE INTERGALACTIC MEDICINE SHOW; comics adaptations of a song by TORI AMOS and a story by F. PAUL WILSON; unseen art for LOST TREASURES OF THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN; the covers from my periodical WORDS & PICTURES; designs for the magazines ARGOSY and INTERNATIONAL STUDIO; spot illustrations and pinups from every era of my career; and much, much more.

The book is a 240 page full color 9 1/4" x 12 1/4" clothbound hardcover, with a tipped-in color cover plate and debossed (impressed) foil titles and accents. It has a matching clothbound and foil-debossed heavy slipcase, and a special bound in signed limitation page. It features a Foreword by the legendary Irish illustrator JIM FITZPATRICK, and an Afterword by the equally legendary creators of ELFQUEST, WENDY & RICHARD PINI.