{illustrators} – Page 197

War of the Worlds book covers

Continuing the cover art theme, here’s a whole gallery of covers devoted to one book only, HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds, from 1898 to the present. Once again it’s fascinating to see how styles evolve and how different artists and designers approach the task of providing art for the same book. The most common approach with this particular novel has evidently been to depict the tripod machines laying waste to the Home Counties. The samples here follow the pattern: the uncredited 1967 Penguin edition above was the one I read originally (I still have a copy); the other is a cover by Philippe Druillet from 1973 showing a particularly heavy-footed and tentacular Martian vehicle. The site also includes some great interior illustrations.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

JG Ballard book covers

In a similar vein to the Burroughs cover gallery, Rick McGrath’s site does the same for one of Burroughs’ followers, JG Ballard. The covers below are two typical examples using Surrealist art as their illustration, The Eye of Silence by Max Ernst and City of Drawers by Dalí. I’ve always loved the pairing of Ernst’s painting (my favourite by that artist) with The Crystal World, a design that Panther carried over to their 1968 paperback edition.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

William Burroughs book covers

This site has a great selection of Burroughs’ cover art. By no means complete but pages like this are always fascinating for showing the variety of visual interpretations that can be brought to a single title. Also nice to see how books looked in their earlier editions before they achieved status as “classic” works. And sometimes you see odd book title variations, so Queer in some foreign editions has become Pederast.

Too many great designs to choose from so I’ve picked out a couple of favourites by Thomi Wroblewski for Picador editions of the early Eighties. Cities of the Red Night remains my favourite Burroughs novel and I still toy with the idea of doing an illustrated edition one day.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive
• The William Burroughs archive

A few thousand science fiction covers

Seems that this has been around for a while but I’ve only just run across it. Jim Bumgardner has created a browsable “table-top” of thousands of sf magazine covers using minimal Flash and Perl scripting; unlike many Flash-oriented web toys you don’t have to waste valuable minutes watching a progress bar before it starts working. Rest your mouse anywhere on the picture and a cover lifts itself from the mass; double-click that cover and it grows larger. He also has a similar page for covers of Mad magazine and 1001 graphic novels and comics. And an explanation of how it all works.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Vintage magazine art II

In the days before colour photography most magazine covers were created by illustrators (as the New Yorker still is), a situation that’s left behind a rich legacy of wonderful artwork often far more stimulating than any of the magazine contents. This site has a great collection of early Vogue covers that show an amazing amount of variety and originality at play. Some of these early issues even break with the understandable stricture for a fashion magazine of having a female figure as the focus.

Looking over this selection, it’s impossible not to compare the rich designs of the 1920s with today’s bland uniformity. Vogue now looks like any other magazine for women, with an overly made-up (often celebrity) face filling the cover and the whole picture crowded with sub-headings and a general clutter of typography. UK Vogue‘s own cover archive pages show the gradual degeneration of a stylish flagship to a condition of cultural muzak over the passage of ninety years.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Vintage magazine art I
• View: The Modern Magazine