Ken Barr was a Scottish artist who made his mark as a paperback cover man and with Marvel’s Black & White magazines like Doc Savage, Planet of the Apes and Marvel Preview. Before this he did a few other covers and one story, “Journey Into Wonder” (Eerie #27, May 1970). His covers graced several independent comics like Phase One and Hot Stuf’. Paperback companies sought his work for fantasy and SF novels by Andre Norton, Gardner F. Fox and A. Merritt.
Hey there GW,
About that cover for Hot Stuf’ #1…. I’d bet a paycheck that you’re already well aware that Barr’s painting was also the cover of Gardner Fox’s Kyrik: Warlock Warrior.
But as a genre-crazed teen reading that paperback when it was new, I spotted something else.
Barr swiped the background from a matte painting used in an episode of Star Trek.
Here’s the original image…
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Matte_painting?file=RigelVII-Holberg917G_fortress.jpg
And here’s a little background about it and other Star Trek matte paintings.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Matte_painting
I can’t fault Barr over it. He proved his inventiveness often enough that I can’t help but wonder why he bothered. Maybe he just liked the image.
I don’t know if you can classify it as a “swipe”. The image is certainly similar (and flipped). Maybe he was “inspired by” seeing it either on Star Trek, in which case he would have to paint it from memory (no vcr’s back in the mid-70’s) or he saw the painting re-printed in a magazine. I imagine that matte painting might have been used for publicity or in an article about Star trek. These images would not have been readily available back in 1974 the way they are today. Maybe he figured no one would remember the matte painting from some obscure 60’s sci-fi show (ha ha) and felt it safe enough to use it perhaps to make a tight deadline. Either way the image is ubiquitous enough that both Barr and Whitlock may have been “inspired” by the same image.
Good job spotting that, though!