Out today from Jayde Design is Bob at Haberfield: The Man and His Art, a monograph about the artist best known for the fantasy and science fiction book covers that he created in the early 1970s for Michael Moorcock and others.
Bob was an astonishingly prolific artist who painted extensively throughout his life for his own joy, expressing the beauty he saw in the world around him.
There were few endeavours, as readers will discover in these volumes, available here, to which Bob could not turn his creative hand. An extremely accomplished musician and singer, he rejected the lure of a career on stage in favour of more solitary pursuits as an artist.
He went on to make a reasonable living in that field, and, as these books, published after several years of patient and meticulous work relate, remains best known for his often astonishing book-cover artworks. In particular, those painted for titles by fantasy and science fiction author Michael Moorcock.
In time, however, he would struggle to reconcile his limitless artistic ambitions with the constraints of work-for-hire, no matter how extraordinary and wide-ranging the results. Other demons, too, would affect both his output and his relationship to it, added to which his strongly held Buddhist beliefs felt at odds with a monetary wealth that he neither sought nor wanted.
So there are two discreet elements to Bob Haberfield: the man, and his art. Even that separation is by no means clear-cut, but it does allow for a logical distinction between these two complementary volumes. To quote Ben Haberfield, Bob’s son, Volume I: The Man focuses almost exclusively on “a catalogue of his drawings and paintings … These images are an expression of who he truly was. This is his legacy. The catalogue he made is his own selection of those images and this book is that selection”.
Volume II: His Art features painstakingly curated, deemed the best, examples of Bob Haberfield’s many book and magazine covers and record sleeves, as well as other artworks created across a staggering range of subjects and media. Each volume also includes a number of essays by family, friends, peers and admirers of Bob Haberfield… both the man and his art.
“It’s been a long and winding road to get to this point, but the books are finally back from the printers and I couldn’t be happier with the way they have turned out,” Ben Haberfield notes on the official site dedicated to his father, who died in 2021. “My only disappointment is that my father is not here to see them.
“This is a project that my father started before he died. I feel sure he started it for me because I would soon be the custodian of his legacy.”
• Bob Haberfield: The Man and His Art, compiled by Ben Haberfield, with additions by John Davey and John Guy Collick; published by Jayde Design, 28th July 2025 | Order copies here | Two outsized paperbacks in a full-colour decorated slip-case; original price: £52.00 (including shipping within the UK); 376 + 232 pages; (collective) ISBN: 978-1068386121; first edition
With thanks to Iesorno Zines
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Art and Illustration, Books, downthetubes News, Other Worlds, Science Fiction
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