May 12
Click for full imageGiles Comments: I love the Taltos novels, but these covers actually stopped me buying the books several times – they’re so cheesy. True, the artist gets some credit for getting the jhereg (the winged reptile) approximately right, but that doesn’t really offset the general awfulness.
Tache-tastic! Thanks to Giles!
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May 12th, 2010 at 10:25 am
Sometimes I wake up in the mornings and I just wish… I could have a moustache like that!
It does look like all of his body hair is growing just below his lip. He probably waxes his chest. And why not Sir… why not?
May 12th, 2010 at 10:36 am
Is it weird the the guy’s face freaks me out more than the winged animals with which he associates?
@ SI: I wake up in the mornings and I just wish that I would NOT have a moustache like that! So does my boyfriend…so does my boyfriend.
May 12th, 2010 at 10:37 am
MARVEL at our cross-eyed, vacant warrior hero!
May 12th, 2010 at 10:45 am
Yes, those omnibus editions do have bad covers. The sad thing is that they get Taltos and Loiosh’s appearances RIGHT, but the books are just so ugly…
The single paperbacks are much prettier, I think.
May 12th, 2010 at 10:50 am
…I should say, they’re right except that Taltos, who is Hungarian by extraction and very much human, should no doubt have a decent amount of hair on his chest – and, being an assassin, it’s very doubtful that he ever goes topless on a job.
But hey, got to give the ladies of House Jhereg something to look at, eh?
May 12th, 2010 at 11:07 am
@SophaLoaf: *Shutters* So much stumble rash… so much….
@Herm: I don’t know, the topless assassin has a certain ring to it 😉
May 12th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Someone stole the head of Stacey Keach and stuck it on the head of Lou Ferrigno!
May 12th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Oh no, you’ve got it all wrong. This is clearly an attempt to inject some homoeroticism into mainstream fantasy fiction. I mean a man with such a lithe, sculpted body, that perfectly quaffed hair, that cute little pet so you know he’s a cuddler…Talos is the assassin of my heart!
May 12th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Since the tools of his trade mostly involve a variety weapons hidden in his clothing the picture must depict what he wears to the beach.
May 12th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
On the left-hand cover he looks all mysterious like a character on the lid of a 1970s board game.
“Can you face the challenge of DRAGONMIND?”
May 12th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Its totally Emilio Estevez. After getting out of detention he wanted to get his life on track, so he found a dragon and became a warrior assasin, would have been an interesting twist to the Breakfast Club movie.
May 12th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
I first read “pants of the dead”. Sounds cooler that way.
I’m with you on the Emilio Estevez angle – talk about a weird stakeout.
May 12th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
Is this what the “Conan the Accountant” books were called in the UK?
May 12th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
he looks like Kyle MacLachlan with a Hilter moustache
May 13th, 2010 at 3:29 am
It’s always great to see a book cover with a character that is looking so intently at you that it’s almost comical. Plus it looks like Taltos rolls with a pet dragon like creature, which makes it easier to overlook the creepiness of his shirtlessness (are shirts illegal in his universe?)
@CSA I see where you’re going with the Emilio Estevez, but he looks more like Jesse Ventura in Running Man
May 13th, 2010 at 9:18 am
“Kyle MacLachlan with a Hilter moustache” Bingo! There’s the name for my new band!
May 15th, 2010 at 4:17 am
Is it just me or are we talking about buffed up Hitler, here?…
especially the left cover…
May 16th, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Dude @ #17, the moustache is a lot wider; what you’re seeing is the shadow under his nose. The photo above isn’t all that great (it was taken with my phone). Incidentally, the author more or less agrees with you, I think. A quote from http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel/Cracks-and-Shards/books.html:
“The book was called Taltos when I wrote it. It was still called Taltos when Ace published it. Pan [the UK publisher — MAM] bought rights for a British edition and, for reasons best known to themselves, re-titled it Taltos and the Paths of the Dead and put a Hitler Youth on the cover. If they’d asked me, I’d have suggested that this was a poor idea. “
May 17th, 2010 at 11:23 am
@Giles & Dude – Good spot! And excellent quote.
I now can’t tell what’s what. To me it kinda looks like he has a black or hairy upper lip.
May 21st, 2010 at 1:29 am
Undercover cop at a leather bar?
July 27th, 2010 at 5:41 am
I have the series of Jhereg books, but I’ve never seen these before.
It’s amazing and funny how different they are; mine just have drawn pictures of Jhereg’s on the front and a pastely looking Vlad.
August 25th, 2010 at 2:32 am
The cover’s incredible. The dude looks like a Seventies Andy Warhol wet dream.
December 28th, 2013 at 11:25 am
@SophaLoaf, it’s the rapey eyes.
January 17th, 2020 at 10:27 am
I cannot look at these covers without hearing disco music. He’s like the missing member of the Village People. The dragon may be indicating the first letter of YMCA.
it’s fun to be an a-saaas-i-i-n…
macho, macho man…
January 17th, 2020 at 12:10 pm
So… Tom Selleck fan?
January 17th, 2020 at 1:26 pm
From Wikipedia
Brust’s band, Cats Laughing, appears in issue No. 5 of a Marvel comic book called Excalibur. Brust is the only member of the band who is both seen onstage and named. Emma Bull also appears, but names everyone in the band except herself.[28] Brust was seen again in a one-shot special issue, Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem,[29] in which the mutant superhero Shadowcat attends a Cats Laughing concert in Edinburgh and mentions previously having seen the band at Windycon.
January 17th, 2020 at 3:16 pm
The artist, Fred Gambino, would be happy to sell you the original of the Assassin painting for $700
https://www.wow-art.com/product-page/fred-gambino-taltos-the-assassin
January 17th, 2020 at 3:20 pm
That’s Taltos on the left https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh-GvaRa234
January 17th, 2020 at 4:21 pm
Tat wins the thread, and the internets for today.
January 17th, 2020 at 8:43 pm
Taltos always greases up before an assassination so bodyguards/cops can’t hold onto him.
January 18th, 2020 at 4:20 am
@Tat W—Great link. Worst lip syncing I’ve ever seen, which only adds to the experience. I think the choreography might have been synced too.
January 18th, 2020 at 9:53 pm
Now that I return, I’m wondering if there will be any Taltos Jr’s, the way he’s storing that dagger in “Paths of the Dead”. That and the way he’s waving that sword near
@Tat: Good Show Sir! And no, we don’t want to know how you found that clip.
@B’mancer: Cheap at 1/1000th the price.
I had a look at all of Fred’s stuff on that site and much of it’s also awful. We’ve had a few others here. He seems to be good at horses and turf, but insists on painting people. I think he got the model for the “Doomsday Warrior” books from the same disco.
I espied some other GSS favorites there, like Romas Kukalis. Look around the site, it’s all prime GSS material. Would you believe they want $1200 for this double anatomical disaster?
https://www.wow-art.com/product-page/victor-garduno-immortal-princess
Wondering how many of these things actually sell.
January 19th, 2020 at 5:12 am
@Tat: I am speechless with horror/breathless with laughter. No words can adequately comment on that video.