Frank R. Paul - Firsts

Firsts

Frank R. Paul can be credited with the first color painting of a space station (August 1929, Science Wonder Stories) published in the U.S. His cover for the November 1929 Science Wonder Stories was an early, if not the earliest, depiction of a flying saucer. This painting appeared almost two decades before the sightings of mysterious flying objects by Kenneth Arnold. So large was his stature that he was the only guest of honor at the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939. He has been described as the first person to make a living drawing spaceships; this is a slight exaggeration, as much of his income was also derived from technical drawing. He was also the cover artist of Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), the first ever Marvel Comic.

He was very innovative in the depiction of spaceships. Several of his illustrations were disc shaped and it has been speculated that he may have, accidentally, created the UFO craze when the fist sighting of lights in the sky were described as disc shaped; this would have been the result of the psychological phenomenon known as mental set.