Various Artists

Various Artists
Skeletons in caves

Departing from my usual format featuring a single artist, this Illustration Station entry is about something I noticed a few years ago: several covers of children's books featured kids in caves with skeletons.

Click on pictures for full-size images.

The earliest I have is Mystery of the Haunted Mine, a Scholastic Book from 1962, painted by Dom Lupo.

The Boys Life Book of Mystery Stories is from 1963, painted by Arthur Shilstone.

Artist Harry Kane (1912-1988) drew Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators The Mystery Of The Moaning Cave, published in 1968.

Kane did two versions of this cover, the original and the paperback version which came out a few years later. Kane redid the background color scheme from a hot red to a cool blue-green, and he changed the Three Investigators' hairstyles to the early-to-mid 1970s look.

Artist Roger Hall did this other Three Investigators cover for The Secret Of Skeleton Island in 1972.Cave of the Living Skeletons is by Richard Kriegler, and came out in 1989.

Garin Baker did Ghost Cave, which came out in 1993.

This entry in the Fright Time series from Playmore is uncredited, and was published in 1995.