Noir Artwork of Glen Orbik: Pulp Artists -

With his noir artwork on the cover of a long list of great hardboiled books, Glen Orbik was the ultimate pulp cover artist. Here’s some of Orbik’s amazing noir artwork. It’s really in a league of its own.

I was writing the American Pulps December Reading List and one of the books had a Glen Orbik cover. When I went to link that back to a previous article we had written about Glen Orbik I found out we never wrote such an article. This surprised me because we’re such big fans of his work.

A Brief Bio

Glen Orbik is probably best known for his for Hard Case Crime illustrations. He illustrated more than two-dozen books for Hard Case: Branded Woman, The Wounded and the Slain, Blackmailer, Songs of Innocence, Money Shot, The Max, Fifty-to-One, House Dick, The Valley of Fear, Memory, Choke Hold, False Negative, Seduction of the Innocent, Web of the City, Joyland, The Secret Lives of Married Women, Odds On, Scratch One, Easy Go, Binary, Brainquake, Easy Death, Thieves Fall Out, The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes, Quarry In The Black. I have a lot of those books, and I honestly bought many of them because of the cover art. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was swayed to purchase a book he illustrated because of his cover art. His work is so lively and vivid.

For the Cover of ‘Pork Pie Hat’ by Peter Straub

Before Hard Case Crime, Orbik studied under Fred Fixler (1923-2010). He went on to illustrate for DC Comics, with some awesome artwork. I was never into comics all that much but I liked Batman, I think it’s the Noir esthetic I’m drawn to and his work embodies it. He was also one of the illustrators for a comic book series The Victorian which looks pretty Steampunk and cool.

It was after he took over Fixler’s school and started teaching people himself that he met his frequent collaborator Laurel Blechman, orbikart.com features her artwork as well.

Aside from Hard Case Crime, Orbik worked with; DC Comics, Marvel comics, Avon Books, Berkley Books, Universal Studios, Warner Bros, Sony, and many more. He illustrated covers an amazing list of authors: Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Gore Vidal, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Samuel Fuller, Lawrence Block, Michael Crichton, and Donald Westlake to name a few. An amazing career cut too short.

He was based out of Van Nuys California when he died after battling cancer in 2015.

Anyway, here’s Glen Orbik’s Noir Artwork: