Tuesday, May 3, 2016

When Covers Were Cool - Brian Lumley's covers

Once upon a time, in the not too dim and distant past, fantasy books had cool covers. Whether you went for the throbbingingly lurid styles of Boris Vallejo, or the oddly antiseptic yet still colorful Darrell K. Sweet, or the thunderous and blood streaked work of Frank Frazetta, you knew you were reading something special. And there were even wilder artists, such as those whose magnificent art graced the covers of Lin Carter's Ballantine Adult Fantasy line; Gervasio Gallardo, and Bob Pepper. Fantasy books didn't look like anything else, and that was a good thing.



At some point this changed. Perhaps it was the mainstreaming of fantasy. Maybe the triumph of the marketers. I'm not sure when, but at a point in the past decade, what I derisively call the photoshop covers started appearing. They're too clean, too similar to those of romance and airport potboilers. Even if there's someone in a cowled cloak on the cover brandishing a knife, it doesn't "feel" like I'll be reading a story rooted in pulp or heroic fiction.



I don't know anything about Paul Ganley, except that in the eighties and nineties he published several volumes of Brian Lumley's Mythos-inspired fiction. His were the first American editions of the Titus Crow, Primal Land, and Dreamlands novels. 








The thing that most stands out, I imagine, to the casual viewer, is the almost amateurishness of these covers. They really aren't that much better than something a kid, albeit a talented one, might draw on the back of a notebook. That same roughness would have kept them from ever gracing a book that got front of the store placement in Barnes & Noble. 






Even those by Steve Fabian, an artist of tremendous renown among S&S readers, while much more polished than the others, would still be relegated to the back shelves if at all these days. And that's great. These covers practically ooze fannishness. There's an utter love for the material depicted in this art that I rarely get from modern covers. The new ones could just as easily have been done by anybody or even a machine, for all the intimacy with the material they evince. Yeah, I'd go for a book with a cover like this a hundred times before some of the abominations out there today.

20 comments:

  1. "Yeah, I'd go for a book with a cover like this a hundred times before some of the abominations out there today."

    Agreed.

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    1. I should do a whole post on Fabian. He's someone I've only recently become aware of as an artist, even though I've seen his work for decades. It's just sort of been there on and in books I read and love, effortlessy forming part of my visual landscape of fantasy fiction.

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  2. I do a weekly post on fantasy artists and their art and this week's artist reminded me again of the covers of old:

    "...in the great sea of fantasy books, they only form a small group, which means finding a good fantasy cover that bounces your heart to the ceiling is rare. Most covers these days are “photoshopped” stock photos. I am not a fan.

    As a kid, a book’s cover used to sell me the book more than the story did. It was only as I got older that I paid more attention to the description on the back, but even then, if the cover was crap, then the description had to really compel me otherwise the book went back on the shelve. Such is the power of a beautiful cover.

    I can say this at least, as you get older you start to follow your favorite authors and read whatever they publish, irrespective of the covers for their books.

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    1. Same here. I have a friend who used to buy any book with a DKS cover.

      Now, buying mostly e-books, I almost never pay attention to the cover at all any more. Kind of sad actually.

      Lucas Graciano's art is beautiful. The attack on the dragon in front of the gate is downright stunning.

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    2. Truly sad, yes. I have this thing though where I buy the print version of a book when the author is a favorite of mine, or, and this is only now and then, when I can't wait for the book to be delivered. But other than that, I buy mostly e-books these days.

      I love Lucas' art. My favorite is the first image of the Snow Viking for Paizo.

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  3. I have kept my entire Horseclans collection simply for the wonderful covers. As a huge music fan, so many of my early purchases were based solely on the album covers. The same applies with books. These days, the art of art is lost. Nothing of these new novels say "fantasy.." Just as Game of Thrones has bastardized the genre into "Sopranos with Swords meets West Wing," fantasy needs a shot of color, magic, wonder, prose and beauty.

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    1. You are so right on. I bought British Steel solely for the cover without the slightest clue of who Judas Priest was.

      As to the Horseclans, do you mean the brutal Ken Kelly covers? I love them, and held on to my dad's copies half out of nostalgia and half out of love for those covers.

      And I think you hit on the reason I've been reluctant to read GoT (also - I'm not reading 5,000 pages when there's a damn good chance GRRM won't finish). When people on the National Review praise the political insights from GoT and not the dragons and walkers, I'm pretty sure I'd be better off reading something else. If I want politics/history, I'll read non-fiction.

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  4. The amazing Ken Kelly covers. And the Whelan Eric and John Carter covers. One series I am trying to track down is the Richard Blade fantasy series. As far as albums, Iron Maiden's Killers was an impulse buy along with Sabbath, Demon, Bauhaus, Fields of the Nephilim, Gene Loves Jezebel, Japan and so many others. Priest I know about form seeing them open for KISS in 1979.

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  5. I remember all the Jim Steranko artwork on the covers of the 70's era S&S novels. Michael Whelan who did the Elric covers for Lancer in the mid 70's. Jeff Jones, who did Fritz Leibers Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser for Ace publications. Roy G. Krenkel who did virtually all of the E.R. Burroughs book covers in the 60's.
    And just to go slightly off-topic, there was Kelly Freas, king of science fiction novel covers (as well as Analog magazine) in the late 50's through the early 70's.
    Hmmmm.... I appear to be dating myself again.

    Ahh, who cares! :-)

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  6. Is there any S&S cover artist doing work as consistently great as Jeff Jones? Same for Whelan - I wrote a post partially about his Stormbringer cover, which is probably my favorite S&S cover bar none (okay, maybe it's tied with Frazetta's Conan the Adventurer).

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  7. And for first place in the category of "Worst Conan Covers Ever" we have a dead heat between 'Conan the Wanderer' and 'Conan the Freebooter'.

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  8. Bane of the Black Sword is my all time favorite.

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  9. I'm late posting but you are so right, the current crop of fantasy covers are abysmal. We so need to get back and distinguish between fantasy/sci-fi and the romance/thriller genre covers.

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    1. Absolutely! But people seem to be buying this crap, in which case something's seriously wrong.

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  10. "...We so need to get back and distinguish between fantasy/sci-fi and the romance/thriller genre covers."

    I hear they're re-issuing Lin Carter's Callisto series with Fabio on the cover...... ;-) LOL!!!

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  11. the new Horseclans covers are the worst damn things ever. About as bad as Iron Maiden's "Dance of Death" cover.
    All these computer generated covers are generic, soulless and just embarrasing

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    1. I thought about buying the first Horseclans e-book just because but couldn't bring myself to push the button. Adams has to be rolling in his grave.

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  12. I have to like the cover if I'm going to read the book. I'm embarrassingly superficial like that. I recently saw a number of old Arkham House books for sale, and I totally would have bought them for the dust jackets, if I'd had the money, which I didn't. It's interesting what you say about the amateurishness, which I've often noticed. For some strange reason that only increases the appeal for me. It seems to go hand-in-hand with their unapologetic enthusiasm.

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