No, that’s not a typo, I’ve decided to post some images of how Slippery Jim diGriz, The Stainless Steel Rat, has been portrayed over the years.
First up are two images which show the Rat as he appeared during my early teenage years: the wonderful 2000ad comic art by Carlos Ezquerra and the cover painting by Peter Elson (1947-1998 ) from the Sphere paperback edition of the novel.
Art: Calos Ezquerra
Art: Peter Elson
Dave Langford’s Ansible convention listing says that Ezquerra will be a guest at next year’s Eastercon, Odyssey 2010, to be held at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Heathrow, London (2-5th April 2010).
Ezquerra’s artwork has Jim looking very like a young James Coburn, while Peter Elson is perhaps closer to Harry Harrison’s own image of the character: Harrison once named Steve McQueen as the ‘ideal’ actor for the role.
Over the coming weeks I’ll dig out different images from different periods and different countries to prove just what a master of disguise our hero is!
For those of you desperate for news of the new book, Harry is hard at work writing it at this moment. Publication is likely to be late this year or early 2010.
Harry Harrison News Blog 
17 February, 2009 at 6:47 pm |
I think Ezquerra probably had in mind Coburn’s film ‘Our Man Flint’, in which Coburn played a super cool secret agent, who is obsessed with gadgets, gizmos, and beautiful women. Not sure how he made the connection from that to Jim DiGriz … (whistles) 😉
20 February, 2009 at 11:41 pm |
Yeah, good thought! Flint really had alot of Slippery Jim, tho he wasn’t a criminal. 😉
Great artwork and I hope there will be more SSR-pics of Ezquerra, cos there are nowhere to find. 😦
Of the covers the one by Karel Thole are my fav.
23 February, 2009 at 5:07 pm |
I’ll include some more of the Ezquerra images over the coming weeks too – I have a few more scanned already, including the great image of Angelina firing away like a psychopath.
I have some German cover scans, so will see if they’re the right size to post – don’t want to post them if they’re too small.
22 February, 2009 at 10:23 am |
Peter Elson’s work for the Sphere SSR series was amazing.
When I was 13 (a long time ago!!) I made a replica of his version of the .75 recoilless pistol in my woodwork class!
I always hoped that if a SSR movie was made that the look of Peter Elson’s covers would somehow be incorporated into the overall art direction of the film.
23 February, 2009 at 5:03 pm |
I always loved that gun too! That cover was always my favourite, as it seems to sum up the character pretty well. And I’d guess you were 13 about as long ago as I was! 🙂
26 February, 2009 at 12:19 am |
Tho I never got a chance to see the SSR comics in real I must say this is my fav pic:
