You know what was a big deal in the ’90s? Trading cards. And not just for sports, there were dozens of lines, for comic books, bands, movies, serial killers, politicians, artists, you name it. My favorite? The Bernie Wrightson cards from FPG, in part because it was so incredibly hard to find Bernie’s work anywhere else at the time. The FPG cards are interesting because unlike other artist series, a lot of the art was new, created specifically for the cards. The first series wound up with 37 classic paintings, 45 Frankenstein illustrations (pretty much the only way to see them at the time without spending an arm and a leg) and 53 brand new paintings.

The cool thing is, FPG let Bernie go wild with the new material. He could paint whatever he wanted, however he wanted and, for two years, he did just that. Bernie Wrightson: The FPG Years (2022) collects all that original material under one cover and presents them in chronological order so you can sort of see the artist in motion. He gets really big on experiments with markers here and there, but you can also see other tangents and investigations. Imagery repeats — lots of people getting eaten by eel-like fish, lots of werewolves, lots of goop monsters. You can see how he warms up over time, gets red hot and then never really cools off, though you can start to sense some fatigue by the end. All the works are finished, but only a handful feel complete, if that makes sense — this isn’t really a criticism, it is super cool to see so much process from an artist over such a long period of time. Most artists generate this much material in a couple years’ time, they just don’t show all of it to you.