Obviously I’m kidding when I call Drew Struzan “lazy,” as the most recognizable illustrator in all of movie poster history put in a solid 40 years of work into an industry that appreciated his magic craftsmanship less and less as the years went on. While mostly driven by his desire to relax and spend time with his family, Struzan has been open at times about his reasons for retiring including the difficulty in continuing working with studios that can’t see past their own photoshop departments and the smeared messes they routinely churn out.
Since completing the one-sheet for the fourth Indiana Jones film and retiring, Struzan has recently blipped back onto the radar for a few Mondo releases of versions of his work, including his beautiful Frankenstein piece. Now it turns out the arrangement will become more permanent, as Struzan has apparently agreed to fully join Mondo’s stable of amazing artists and to produce all new work!
With the increasing awesomeness of the library of IPs with which Mondo has arrangements, this is very exciting news. We could Struzan making art for everything from Jurassic Park to Marvel films to Lord of the Rings. Even better, we could see him creating beautiful images for more obscure titles that have perhaps never gotten such honorable artistic treatment…
This all comes from a statement from Mondo director Justin Ishmael to /Film.
He’s so excited to be working with us that, I don’t want to give too much away, but we basically got him to come out of retirement. He’s going to start doing new stuff. Not just old stuff. ‘I’m sitting down and thinking of new ideas for new stuff that you guys have.’ So that’ll be happening, hopefully, later on this year.
Most recently Mondo put out a blink-and-you-missed-it sale of Struzan’s The Thing, and definitely have plans to do the same with his The Dark Tower cover as well. The timeline or what other properties might fall beneath Struzan’s brush are unknown, so keep your eyes peeled for those announcements.