Frank Rudolph Paul (April 18, 1884 – June 29, 1963) Frank R. Paul was influential in defining what both cover art and interior illustrations in the nascent science fiction pulps of the 1920s looked like. Paul painted for a number of pulps, most notably Amazing Stories, Air Wonder Stories, Science Wonder Stories, and the first issue (October–November, 1939) of Marvel Comics.
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 object – all before most people in the US even had telephones.
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 first sighting of lights in the sky were described as disc shaped.
