Upper Deck is putting together a set of Firefly trading cards, and artist Robert Jimenez is one of the artists involved. He’s put together some stunning cards of Joss Whedon’s series in pulp form.
Jimenez noted that when Upper Deck was bringing on artists to draw up some Firefly cards, it was an opportunity to mesh together two interests: Firefly and pulp art. The company liked the idea as well, and asked for some propaganda-style posters to go along with the cards:
I love Pulp art, in particular the work of Rafael Desoto, George Rozen and Walter Baumhofer. A lot of my painting work is definitely influenced by the genre. I also have been designing faux pulp covers for a few years now using my paintings as the cover art. I’m a big fan of Firefly and the Serenity film, so when I heard Upper Deck was hiring artists for an upcoming trading card set I wrote them and sent off some sample of my pulp influenced work.
For me Firefly has always felt like it’s drawn heavily from the planetary romance style of science fiction - the pulp stories of the 1930s - and after reading up on authors such as C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett, I can totally see either author or their contemporaries playing in the ‘Verse with Serenity and her crew. These covers fit perfectly, and I wish that they existed for real.
Over on his website, Jimenez has indicated that he’ll be offering the original art for sale in the near future.
Here’s a closer look at a couple of the cards that he’s drawn up: