Good Show Sir

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Marcus’ Art Direction: Fredric Brown mostly wrote short stories with twist endings. So let’s have a twist ending to the cover! But, at the same time, semi-naked women sell books. So we should have one of them. Not too big, though, we want lots of nice black space around.
Published 1980

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Tom Noir’s Art Direction: Now look Horne, you’re a good artist, but you’ve got a thing or two to learn. See, this cover of yours, it’s just not realistic. Does this guy look like he just walked out of an explosion? No. He still has body hair. The fire would have burned it all off! Take this back and I don’t want to see it again until it looks like he’s fresh from a wax job.
Published 1994

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Joachim’s Art Direction: “Raw adventure” — with a whip, in underwear, make sure there’s a rocket… you know what I mean… it’s science fiction.
Published 1974

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Corey Comments: A naked woman on fire. Thanks Orson Scott Card.
Published 1979

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Alessandra’s Art Direction: I want the main characters looking soulful, or at least sulky.  I want the woman on the left missing her frontal lobes, but balance it out with piles of sausage curls on the woman below.  Give the woman on the right a freakishly small body and no flesh on her arms, no ribcage, in fact no anatomy at all.  Dress them in brightly colored Renaissance fair castoff costumes — don’t forget the purple!  Oh, and put in a horse because you do them so well.  Make its wings as sloppy as you like; we’re going to cover them with the title anyway.
Published 1978

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Frank Comments: Helmets for men only because we wouldn’t want to mess up the lady officers’ hair. And if we’re seeing the forward view, I hope they’re looking at the rear view mirror.
Published 1980

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Janet’s Art Direction: Okay, fine, you’re an “artist”… you can paint your own cover.
Published 1991

Happy New Year!

Well another year is here, I am just about over my hang over and of course back in work! So it’s time to start again and see what exciting covers we can find to brighten our days. Last year didn’t see a cover which had the power to beat, I Sing the Body Electric. But maybe this year… maybe…

Thanks to everyone who has sent in covers and comments! You all bring such entertainment to our lives. And of course thank you to all those amazing publishers, without you and your art direction where would Good Show Sir be?

Last year was very exciting now that I think about it. And my quest for terrible Sci-Fi/fantasy book covers also led to the best conversation ever in a second hand book store.

Shop Assistant: Wow.. that cover is so bad!!!
Me: Yeah isn’t it? That’s kinda why I am buying it actually.
Shop Assistant: Really? Awesome. You should start some sort of website to show covers like these.
Me: I have…
Shop Assistant: ……
And nothing more was said. Here is the book I bought.

The top rated cover of the year:

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A Personal Favourite:

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CSA Chooses dragon crotch!

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And of course, how could we not mention the cover that started a censoring legend:

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Well it has come to that time of year again when we at Good Show Sir need to take a break to steal Christmas presents from children, eat an insane amount of other peoples food and of course, get stinking drunk and rant about book covers!

Not to worry though, we’ll be back first thing in the new year with a round up of the best of 2011′s covers!

Here we have some fantastic Hungarian covers sent in by Gabor and River, about 9 months ago! I appologise for keeping them hidden for so long but here they are, all six of them!

Have a great holiday! And again thanks to everyone who visits the site and all the specials ones who leave comments which brighten our days with witty banter!

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Colette’s Art Direction: I want a colony of giant lavender termites- all with the same goofy facial expression- dragging an extremely khaki couple into their underground nest. Try and make the tunnel seem as reminiscent of a human colon as possible, as subtle subliminal foreshadowing of where a large purple ovipositor may soon find itself.
Published 1980