Rich Powell

Rich Powell is a commercial artist and illustrator based in central North Carolina. The lantern emblem that opens every page of this site — that’s his line.

Rich and the publisher first met years before Dark Lantern Tales existed, when Rich was illustrating album covers for music projects in Mark Williams’s circle. One of those covers leaned on the dense ink-line drawing style of Robert Crumb. When the time came to design a logo for the new publishing project, the publisher briefly considered chasing Crumb himself — reaching Crumb meant working through layers of intermediaries, and the prospect of dealing with a famously eccentric artist outweighed the appeal. Rich could cop the style readily — and was a lot easier to reach.

Read more about Rich Powell here

“Rich copped the style I wanted and created the logo art from a photo I sent him of me holding a Dietz ‘Flashlight’ lantern.”
— Mark Williams, publisher

The lantern logo is the entire body of Rich’s work for Dark Lantern Tales — one drawing, one job, done years before the press carried that name. His commercial illustration practice runs across editorial, design, and music-industry clients well outside the DLT orbit. The cover art on the three Dark Lantern Tales book series, and on the Old Marvel collection, is by John Coulthart.

At a glance

Practice: Commercial illustration

Based: Central North Carolina

For DLT: The lantern logo (one and only)

Style note: Crumb-adjacent ink line