Michael Koelsch

Michael Koelsch (born 1967) is an American illustrator based in Huntington Beach, California. He works out of his own art studio, Koelsch Studios. Koelsch's paintings have a distinct retro / pulp art style, reminiscent of paintings popular between the 1940s and 1960s. Koelsch's work has been featured on dozens of book covers, from fantasy novels to pulp and hard-boiled detective stories. One in particular, "Gun, With Occasional Music" by author Jonathan Lethem, was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Original Art Work in 1995. Koelsch has also been prolific in several video games, including the entire Earthworm Jim series. He has designed a handful of film posters (including the DVD and Blu-ray cover art for The Criterion Collection's re-issue of "The Blob") and worked on several Epitaph album covers, including ones by The Offspring, Bad Religion and Pennywise, while he shared a studio space with Joy Aoki in the early 1990s.