Garish, Ghouly and Goofy -- Weird Wheels paintings and More by Norman Saunders

My friend Mark Brammeier recently turned me on to a fantastic new book about pulp artist and painter, Norman Saunders. He's most famous for painting images on Topps trading cards in the sixties and seventies - like Mars Attacks and Wackv Packages - but he produced masterpieces of consumable fun from the 1930's thru the 1980's, from pulps to comic book covers to baseball cards.

The Weird Wheels stickers were one of the last jobs he did [CORRECTION: see paragraph below], but they are full of groovy, ghouly, garish goodness! Half of the cards were painted by Gary Hallgren, but I can't tell the difference. You can see all the cards at:

http://www.brandedinthe80s.com/index.php?post_id=266872

UPDATE: According to some helpful comments below, there's some updated info to share.  According to artist Gary Hallgren: 

"I designed and painted all the cards, Art Spiegelman and Len Brown suggested some of the titles and Norm came in to make it all more Topps-like in some regards. Mainly he reworked my flames as I had done a more graphic style a la hot rod decorations, he changed all of the drag slicks to duallys and even trippleys. Where have you ever seen THAT before? And yes, he spiffed up and even replaced some of the monsters--truly his specialty."

You can look at the Weird Wheels sticker cards individually at:
http://www.bubblegum-cards.com/Weird-Wheels/index.html

Norman Saunders also painted the 1966 Batman cards for Topps

http://www.comiccovers.com/image.php?dir=Batman%201966%20Reissue%201989%20[DC-%20Topps]%20Card%20Set
Norman Saunders painted the classic Mars Attacks cards!

http://www.marsattacksfan.com/cards.htm

Civil War News Trading Cards
Painted by Norman Saunders
CORRECTION: According to the helpful comment below, "Norm Saunders only painted 13 of the Civil War News cards. Maurice Blumenfeld did the majority and Bob Powell did the rest. Norm touched them all up for uniformity." See here:
http://cwn.moonfruit.com/#/artists-list-of-cards/4563203632

http://www.bubblegum-cards.com/Civil-War-News/index.html


Norman Saunders' life story is a riveting read.



You can read all about him in the new
biographical art book,
Norman Saunders, by his son David Saunders.
See a gallery of all the Norman Saunders cards at:
http://www.normansaunders.com/TOPPS.html