Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jul 10, 2026 | 4 comments

The celebrated Mr. K pays a BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE…

By PAUL KUPPERBERG

Bob Larkin had Marvel Comics covered in the 1970s and 1980s!

By that I mean, Bob did a whole lot of covers for the House of Ideas during that period, becoming in my memory the defining look for their black-and-white magazine line. Horror, science fiction, superhero, adventure, humor, Bob painted covers for them all.

Marvel had a fairly robust line of black-and-white magazines then, including Savage Sword of Conan, Monsters Unleashed, Planet of the Apes, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Monsters of the Movies, Marvel Preview, Hulk, Tomb of Dracula, and Crazy, all packaged under painted covers. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because that’s the way Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella, the Warren Publishing line that popularized and standardized the category, did it, beginning with a series of now legendary paintings by Frank Frazetta.

Marvel relied on a number of talented artists for their covers, including Larkin, Boris Vallejo, and Joe Jusko to name a few, but Bob, along with Earl Norem, was one of the most prolific.

Bob — who’s turning 77 — didn’t begin his career in comics. He trained to be a commercial illustrator, entering the field through advertising and paperback publishing, where he learned to produce realistic paintings under the same tight comic book-like deadlines. That experience made him a natural fit for Marvel’s magazine line, where a single painted image had to catch a reader’s attention on a crowded newsstand.

He caught my attention with a couple of 1979 paperback books in particular, both far better than the novels they covered (see Crime Campaign and Murdermoon, below), as well as his covers for Crazy Magazine, many of them featuring the movies I had written the parodies for, which, by the way, was an ongoing showcase of Bob’s ability to capture the likenesses of real people. And actors.

Outside Marvel, Bob also painted covers for Warren and built a substantial career illustrating those paperbacks. His best-known book work came with Bantam Books’ reissue of the Doc Savage adventures, for which he painted more than 30 covers.

Bob worked across whatever assignments came his way, moving easily between fantasy, horror, science fiction, historical subjects, and licensed properties. Whether the job called for Conan battling monsters, Spider-Man swinging into action, or Doc Savage confronting another impossible threat, he told a story before the reader even opened the cover.

Here then, MY 13 FAVORITE BOB LARKIN MARVEL COVERS. (In chronological order, by pub date.):

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Monsters Unleashed #5 (April 1974). One of Bob’s earliest Marvel covers, a Man-Thing of beauty!

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Planet of the Apes #1 (August 1974). As good at painting those damned, dirty apes as he was Homo sapiens.

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The Haunt of Horror #4 (November 1974). A devilishly fine image!

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The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #24 (May 1976). A classic composition made to pop by a bold use of color!

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Crazy Magazine #32 (December 1977). This issue featured my very first sale to the magazine, the rib-ticklingly funny “Star Warts.” Oh, the Farce was strong with this one!

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Savage Sword of Conan #27 (March 1978). Some pictures really are worth 1,000 words!

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Marvel Novel Series #8: The Amazing Spider-Man — Crime Campaign (1979). Remind me never to ask Kingpin for directions!

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Marvel Novel Series #11: Spider-Man and the Hulk — Murdermoon (1979). Hulk says, “Niagara Falls!! Slowly Hulk turned, step by step, inch by inch, then Hulk grabbed him…!”

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Crazy Magazine #69 (December 1980). A second dip into the Crazy well. Hated “The Shining” but loved this cover with Bob’s Obnoxio the Clown portrait front and center.

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Marvel Treasury Edition #28: Superman and Spider-Man (1981). For the second meeting of Superman and Spider-Man, Marvel went with this iconic cover by Bob (painted over John Romita).

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Eerie #119 (February 1981). Alright, so it’s “My 12 Favorite Bob Larkin Marvel Covers and One Warren Cover.” It’s a nice one, OK?

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Dazzler #1 (March 1981). It was unusual for a regular newsstand comic book to get painted covers, but Dazzler was a supposed to a big cross-promotional hoo-hah with Casablanca Records for a disco-singing comic book superheroine who would release a real-world album by studio musicians. There were two positive outcomes to this experiment: (1) the Dazzler album was never released, sparing the world yet another disco disk, and (2) Dazzler #1 was the first Marvel comic sold exclusively through the direct market, selling something like 400,000 copies.

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The Punisher: A Man Named Frank (June 1994). Ending this installment with a bang-bang!

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MORE

— 13 COVERS: A BOB LARKIN Birthday Celebration — SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN. Click here.

— GO APE for 13 COVERS: A BOB LARKIN Birthday Celebration. Click here.