Apr 02
Click for full imageBibliomancer’s Art Direction: You spilled your whiskey all over the cover art! No time to redo it. Just sponge it off and get it out the door. It has to be at the printer’s today.
Published 1977
(Average: 7.30 out of 10)
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April 2nd, 2014 at 10:29 am
This looks worryingly like a frame from an animated clip telling us to get Kia-Ora and Toffee Poppets at the kiosk before the main feature starts. Sort of hybrid Gilliam and George Dunning. It deserves a jaunty soundtrack done on a charcoal-burning monophonic synthesiser.
April 2nd, 2014 at 10:52 am
“While turning their backs in disgust, secretly mr. Broccolihead and his companions wished they could let go of their inhibitions and just dance the night away like the lone space pirate.”
April 2nd, 2014 at 11:32 am
The Del Ray paperback version splurged their budget on a generic meh Boris Vallejo cover.
http://www.blackgate.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/the-best-of-leigh-brackett-2.jpg
April 2nd, 2014 at 11:43 am
@fred: ‘Jerry…it’s easier and quicker if we split the bill four ways evenly, rather than decide who ate what.’
‘Grrr!’
April 2nd, 2014 at 1:17 pm
That dude on the front right is one fugly Chia Pet.
April 2nd, 2014 at 1:33 pm
Stagediving on a book cover? And nobody to catch him? Foolhardy.
April 2nd, 2014 at 1:37 pm
The thing at top and left may be:
THE BEAST OF BITCH GEL TREK
THE BEAST OF THE BRICK GELT
THE BEAST OF BE TIGHT CLERK
THE BEAST OF BEG KILT RETCH
THE BEAST OF LIT BERG KETCH
THE BEAST OF HERB TICK GELT
THE BEAST OF TICK LEG BERTH
THE BEAST OF GLIB ETCH TREK
THE BEAST OF GET CHERT BILK
Anyway, some variety of beast.
April 2nd, 2014 at 7:53 pm
Hey, don’t all youse GSSers recognize fine art when youse sees it? Dis is an excellent late-period example of “frottage.” Not the sexual practice, which, frankly, leaves a lot to be desired, but the artistic technique, created by the great Dadaist and Surrealist Max Ernst.
I think, though, in this case, it still comes down to throwing up on the sketch pad and using a sponge to sop it up.
April 2nd, 2014 at 11:21 pm
I know it’s not nice to pick apart the work of someone who is obviously “special†, however, were is the fun in that.
Unless Captain monster thigh’s arm’s has an extra joint, like his legs appear to, he is going to have trouble getting that extra long gun in and out of a hip mounted holster. He should wear it lower down on his leg.
And what is going on with his right boot. The fold-over cuff is missing. Did he cut it off along with the scabbard for his scimitar?
Is that dangly bit on the end of the dragon/dinosaur’s lower jaw used to attract fish? If so, is this scene tacking place under the sea?
I should say, it was nice that Uncle Fester, Nosferatu, and Schlitzie could all make it for the portrait session.
I think Citizen Chiclitz is correct about this work’s similarity to that of Max Ernst’s surrealism, but I don’t think it’s based on work from his Frottage period. I believe it’s reminiscent of his little known Lavatina period, or as it is known in the vulgar, “droptheartworkinyourpottyandretrieveitwithaplumbershelperâ€
April 2nd, 2014 at 11:36 pm
Speaking of “special,” I think I meant, “where is the fun” not “were is the fun”
“Were” is the past tense of be, “Where” is an interrogation as to location.
Maybe it should read, “Where be the fun in that”
It’s a good thing nobody reads my comments.
April 3rd, 2014 at 3:08 am
@B. Chiclitz — I think you are confusing this with Max Ernst’s fromage period, where he worked exclusively with Cheez Whiz out of a can.
April 3rd, 2014 at 5:26 am
@Bibliomancer—ah, mon semblable, mon frère, this could fractal on far too long . . . since it was this phase of Ernst’s art that later inspired John Coltrane’s classic jazz composition, “Afromage.”
April 3rd, 2014 at 12:51 pm
I love that cover…
April 4th, 2014 at 4:04 am
The Worst of Leigh Brackett has a truly gruesome cover… can’t wait to see that one.
April 4th, 2014 at 12:14 pm
I’d be really disappointed if nowhere in this book the editor made a comment signed “Ed. (ed.)”
April 4th, 2014 at 1:13 pm
The best of Leigh Brackett edited by her husband.
@Ian: The Worst of Leigh Brackett was ‘The Empire Strike Back’ and had a rotten cover.
April 9th, 2014 at 12:18 pm
Editor: “Melvin! Did you drop the cover painting on the floor? Oh, why can’t we have nice things around the office??”
April 11th, 2014 at 12:03 am
@ A. R. Yngve
Is that the old meshuggener Melvin Cowznofski?
September 12th, 2015 at 8:24 pm
@Tat: ‘He told me you killed the cover!’
‘No…I am the cover!’
‘No! That’s not true! That’s impossible!’
‘Search ISFDB, you know it to be true!’
‘NOOOooooo…’
November 27th, 2015 at 1:19 am
Dude in the background = ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ as directed by John Woo.
May 2nd, 2016 at 10:41 pm
Never mind the bollocks, here is the best of Leigh Brackett, most commonly known as the other half of Hinge.
January 20th, 2023 at 3:42 pm
Aside from the plummeting pirate, this cover just screams Leigh Brackett, in the same way Salvador Dali is so evocative of JRR Tolkien.
January 20th, 2023 at 4:08 pm
Now I know what Nosferatu on an acid trip looks like.
January 20th, 2023 at 11:20 pm
@22 – Bruce, for me the Plummeting Pirate is worth the price of admission.
We should all be so well-armed and simultaneously insouciant while in free-fall.
January 21st, 2023 at 1:57 am
What is this I don’t even.
She was a great writer and did not in any way deserve this.
I do own “The Best of Edmond Hamilton edited by Leigh Brackett”, which has a cover of a dude with wings, flying over fields, which is all in proportion and stuff.
Maybe the Plummeting Pirate is actually in zero-G. He is easily the best thing about this cover, if only in that he’s recognizable. And unfazed.
Someone should probably have had the artist checked for substances. LSD or possibly Sterno for all I know.
The blue splorge on the neck of the… flaming dino-corn? looks like it came from one of those craft things done as kids, either oil paint on water, or Spin Art.
January 21st, 2023 at 1:57 am
One of these things is not like the others
One of these things looks like dragon bait
You already know which thing is not like the others
It’s the teeny flyin’ space pi-rate.
I’m with Simon, I rather like the cover, but am curious – is there a short musical story about the Pirates of Spacepants? And now I’m stuck without a smartypants comment to compare the three characters in the front to Three Little Maids from School. Yep, way in over my head on this one…
January 21st, 2023 at 2:43 am
Whoooo’s floating ’round lonely in dark zero-G?
PIRATE SPACEPANTS!
That’s all I got.
January 21st, 2023 at 2:45 am
I found a cover that would fit in here (technically; it has a ghost and also font problems):
https://awfullibrarybooks.net/the-taming/
Do read the sample pages as well. Happy weekend.