Auf somethingawful.com: Ein Artikel über Fantasybuchcoverillustrationen
Steve “Malak” Sumner schreibt über sein Lieblingsthema unter anderem folgende Zeilen:
Okay, so, the key elements of the barbarian pictures are that you have a super muscled barbarian about to do something awesome, you have some dark shadowy location like this smoky forest, and you’ve got a hot babe.
In some cases the hot babe is replaced with an awesome monster. Like a big snake man or some sort of dude with a skull head and a burning spear or something.
Sometimes the hot babe is there in addition to the bad guy and once in a long while the hot babe actually is the bad guy. Like she’s shooting magic at the barbarian or she’s got some poison arrows or something.
Nach dieser knappen Einführung in das muskelbepackte, schweißtriefende Kitschbild-Subgenre ‘bewertet’ Summer eine Handvoll Illustrationen, denen man vor allem auf (Trivial-)Fantasy-Taschenbüchern begegnet, aber auch als Airbrush-Verziehrung auf Fahrerhäusern, Motorhauben und Benzintanks.
Und das liest sich dann beispielsweise so:
As you can see [Vallejo] has perfectly captured the struggle of hot chick versus hot chick in lifelike detail. You can see their muscles straining against each other as they are locked in mortal combat over something serious and it looks like their boobs are ready to fly right out of the picture and land in your face.
Ein besonderes Leseerlebnis.