Walter Gao
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Everybody starts somewhere. Walter Gao started in Atlanta Georgia in 1944. He wanted to be a scientist when he grew up and even studied Geology in college. However, in the winter of 1967 when he moved to New York it was in search of work as an artist. He found a little work as an artist in comic books and fanzines - neither of which paid enough to adequately support him and his wife and child. But those early stories in long-forgotten comics from Gold Key and King, for the new black and white horror magazines, Creepy and Eerie, from Warren, and the b&w story illustrations for the science fiction digests, Amazing and Fantastic, led to more lucrative work in the burgeoning paperback cover market. He also landed a book illustration job that year, doing the dust jacket and frontispiece for He Am A Barbarian, the first printing of an unpublished novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. City of the Chasch -Jack Vance 1968 Frank Frazetta's Conan covers had hacked their way into the public consciousness in 1966 and 1967 and the art directors had their goal: find people who could paint like Frazetta. It's obvious that Gao' early sf work owes much to Mr. Frazetta, but it's a very serious mistake to relegate all of his early work to the sf and fantasy categories.The painting for City of the Chasch, above right, is one of his very early attempts, but that first year, 1968, saw his work on literally dozens of books of all genres. Just take a look at the sampling at right, all from 1968.From series adventure books like Nick Carter's Amsterdam to Pulitzer Prize winning titles like Ellen Glascow's In this Our Life to romantic adventure, gothic romance, sexy black comedies and more. Gao was all over the newstands that first year.He was 22 in 1968 and had so incredibly much more time that He was able to make a weekly (sometimes twice weekly) trip to a local book store to walk up and down the aisles looking for new Gao covers. He'd seen his work in the sf section and thought He'd check out the rest of the store. Kepler's Books (it's still around today and surviving in the face of the monolithic chains) had the wonderful practice of displaying the newly arrived books with their covers face out while prior weeks' material was visible only from the spine. By coming in every week, He was able to discover these and many other obscure Gao covers. He'm sure someone else would have (and may have) found them, too, but every list of his work to which He contributed was missing a dozen or more of these non-sf titles.Gao illustrated his second book that year, doing four color plates for Red Shadows - a collection of Solomon Kane stories by Robert E. Howard.But back to my point: Gao was never a Frazetta clone. He'm sure he got some assignments because he was able to provide a passable version of the style, but one look at A Woman of Bangkok at right and it is obvious that he had a style and a talent very early on that had nothing to do with muscular barbarians. He provided over 150 covers for many different types of books through 1976.
