Ed Vebell and The Three Investigators
According to Mr. Vebell, the world of
illustrating has changed tremendously since he first entered the
field. In the "old days," he did not use an agent;
paying a commission to an agent did not seem a wise use of his
money when he was able to find work on his own. So when he was
ready to accept a new illustrating job, he would tuck some
samples of his work under his arm and go to visit art directors
at the publishing companies. Typically, he would visit three
publishers in a day's time and usually he got at least one
illustrating job for his effort. This was how he got involved in
drawing for the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three
Investigators series with Random House.
To do the illustrations, the publisher would deliver a manuscript
of the story, which Mr. Vebell would read. Based on his
sensitivities as an artist, he would then pick the scenes which
he felt would best capture the action of the story, keeping in
mind that the illustrations also needed to be more or less evenly
distributed throughout the book. The jobs would take anywhere
from 4-6 weeks, which was sometimes a tight schedule depending on
other activities at the time.
After selecting the scenes to draw, Mr. Vebell would then take
photos of models in poses that he had visualized for the
illustrations. He acknowledges that in theory an artist should be
able to draw everything from within the imagination, but almost
all artists use models to help them get a more natural drawing,
particularly when there are multiple people in an illustration.
So Mr. Vebell found young boys that looked like the Three
Investigators: a somewhat stocky boy for Jupiter, a taller, more
athletic boy for Pete, and a boy of smaller of stature for Bob.
Although it was not uncommon to use professional models, Mr.
Vebell was able to find local boys near his home who resembled
the Three Investigators; so he used the neighborhood boys. He had
them look dramatic in their poses to achieve the atmosphere of
fear and mystery that was associated with the series, and he then
drew the illustrations from those photos.
Although Mr. Vebell can obviously draw illustrations in color or
black and white, he prefers the black and white drawings, and
when you look at his drawings, you can see that his black and
white illustrations are almost photo-realistic. To get sharp
lines on the illustrations, he would usually draw the original
illustrations at a size of about 2 to 2.5 times the printed
illustration (much larger drawings would result in fine lines
being shrunk into blobs when the artwork was reduced in size for
printing). When these were sent to the publisher, the camera-ready
copy would be prepared at the size to be published in the printed
book.
Mr. Vebell knew two of the other artists involved with the series:
Herb Mott and Jack Hearne (Mr. Vebell remembers having lunch at
Hearne's home one day). However, they never had occasion to
discuss their common involvement on the series; so Mr. Vebell's
involvement with the series was limited to just his artwork.
Mr. Vebell drew 7 book covers for the Three Investigators series
and did the internal illustrations for one book. His signature
can be seen in most of the cover illustrations, but they are
usually uncredited on the title page. The one exception to this
is the first edition printing of "The Mystery of the
Stuttering Parrot," where the internal illustrations are
credited to Mr. Vebell whereas he did only the cover for that one.
Subsequent printings of the book correctly credit Harry Kane for
the internal illustrations but do not credit Vebell as the cover
illustrator.
The illustrations that Mr. Vebell drew for the series are listed
below (click on the link to see the scans of the drawings).
1. Cover
illustration - The Secret of Terror Castle
(original hardback version)
2. Cover
illustration - The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot
(original hardback version)
3. Cover
illustration - The Mystery of the Singing Serpent
(original hardback version)
4. Internal
illustrations (7) - The Mystery of the Singing
Serpent
5. Cover
illustration - The Mystery of the Shrinking House
(original hardback version)
6. Cover
illustration - The Secret of Phantom Lake
(original hardback version)
7. Cover
illustration - The Secret of Terror Castle
(Windward paperback version)
8. Cover
illustration - The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot
(Windward paperback version)
Mr. Vebell also took time to share some tidbits about the various
drawings that he did. I have included them below, because they
give additional insights on how he constructed the drawings.
1. The Secret of Terror Castle - He
used a place he was familiar with as the inspiration for the
walls that are illustrated in the dungeon scene on the cover of
the original. He drew both the front and back covers of the book,
and he used a skeleton (stored in his attic) to draw the skeleton
on the back cover.
2. The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot
- He used a variety of props to draw the clutter in Headquarters
on the hardback version of this cover. He still has the
dressmaker's dummy that is illustrated on the back cover.
3. The Mystery of the Singing Serpent -
He had quite a bit to share about the internal illustrations on this one.
a. His middle daughter was the model for Allie Jamison in the first and last illustrations in this book.
b. He used his wife as the model for Mrs. Compton, who is
illustrated in the hospital bed scene with
Jupiter looking at the curious serpent bracelet.
c. He used himself as the model in three of the illustrations: the scene where Pete is
confronted by a guard at the house (Vebell
is the guard, although Vebell admits that he beefed himself up a
bit in the drawing from his normal appearance), the scene where the boys
are escaping from Bentley's apartment (Vebell
is Bentley; Vebell had no mustache at the time so he had to add
one to the drawing), and the scene where the séance is occurring (Vebell is the neatly dressed gentleman in the suit at
the back of the table).
d. He used his sister-in-law as the model for the lady on the far
left of the illustration
where Hugo Ariel is conducting a meeting with the group
I acquired the remainder of Mr. Vebell's photos that he had in his studio from his days of illustrating for The Three Investigators. If you would like to look at them, along with what I can reconstruct of how they were used, click here.
