Vampirella 1972 Poster
by Warren Publishing Artist Mike Royer
by Warren Publishing Artist Mike Royer
Rare 1972 Vampirella poster by former Warren Publishing artist Mike Royer (google Mike Royer for his website). Measures 16" x 23" and includes 5 images of Vampirella including one rare topless image. Poster is marked © 1972 ST Amina! Productions in the lower right corner and also has Mike Royer's printed signature inside the black bat also in the lower right hand corner. Poster is printed on acid free quality matte paper, this is an original issue poster and not a cheap ink jet or laser copy.
About the Artist
Michael "Mike" W. Royer is an comic book artist and inker, best known for his work with pencilers Russ Manning and Jack Kirby. In later life Royer became a freelance product designer and character artist for The Walt Disney Company. Royer began freelancing for Warren Publishing's line of black-and-white horror-comics magazines, drawing writer James Haggenmiller's eight-page "Space Age Vampire" in Eerie #23 (Sept. 1969), and later drawing a handful of stories in Creepy and Vampirella as well.
Early life and career
Mike Royer came to southern California in spring 1965 to pursue a career in comics art, although his first confirmed credit, inking penciler Tony Strobl on the two-page story "Pluto Helps Babysitting" in publisher Gold Key Comics' Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #282 (March 1964), appeared a year earlier. He became an assistant to artist Russ Manning on Gold Key's Magnus, Robot Fighter comic book, beginning with issue #12 (Jan. 1966), and Tarzan, beginning with issue #158 (June 1966).[4] By the following year, he was also working with artists Warren Tufts and Alberto Giolitti on the company's Korak, Son of Tarzan comic. He fully drew two 10-page stories, featuring the Three Musketeers and a group called the Arabian Knights, in Gold Key children's comic Hi-Adventure Heroes #2 (Aug. 1969). He also worked, uncredited, writing and drawing the Gold Key comics Speed Buggy and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, and drew cover for the publisher's licensed Hanna-Barbera property TV Adventure Heroes.
While continuing to work primarily for Gold Key, Royer began freelancing for Warren Publishing's line of black-and-white horror-comics magazines, drawing writer James Haggenmiller's eight-page "Space Age Vampire" in Eerie #23 (Sept. 1969), and later drawing a handful of stories in Creepy and Vampirella as well.
1970s and Jack Kirby
Royer inked the covers of writer-penciler Jack Kirby's the Forever People #2 and #5 (May and Nov. 1971), and The New Gods #5 (Nov. 1971) early works in comic maestro Kirby's "Fourth World" narrative at DC Comics, where Kirby had recently ensconced himself following a storied decade at Marvel Comics. He became Kirby's primary inker at DC, working on those titles and fellow Fourth World series Mister Miracle, as well as on the preexisting sister series, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. He additionally inked Kirby's next two DC series, The Demon and Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth, and, among other Kirby projects, inked the extant war comics feature "The Losers" in several issues of Our Fighting Forces in 1975.
Royer also lettered and inked the last six months of Russ Manning's Tarzan Sunday-newspaper comic strip and, in the late 1970s, the first four months of Manning's daily and Sunday Star Wars comic strips
Later career
Beginning spring 1979, Royer spent 14 years on staff with The Walt Disney Company, doing art and design for books, comic books and comic strips, and theme park and licensed merchandise for its Consumer Product/Licensing division. His comics work there included designing and art directing the movie tie-in Dick Tracy and 3-D Rocketeer comic books, and helped launch a Winnie the Pooh licensing program in late 1993; for the latter, he was featured in a 43-minute video, How To Draw Pooh, sent to licensees. Royer had left his staff position in June 1993 to freelance full-time for Disney, primarily on Winnie the Pooh projects.
Beginning spring 2000, Royer has produced freelance art and design, including work on Digimon products, screen icons for the Fox Family cable television channel environment and its Fox Kids programming bloc, "floor plans" for computer game animators, Reader Rabbit workbooks, and Rescue Heroes toy packaging. Since spring 2001, Royer and his wife and concept collaborator, Laurie, have lived in Medford Oregon