I got an email today from a fan of a website I took down a few years ago, Mark Monlux’s Lurid Paperback Cover of the Week. You might have seen the inch and a half blurb about it on the second column of page 185 in the November 1999 issue of Yahoo! Internet Life magazine. It received a fair amount of attention, which probably had more to do with the subject matter of politically incorrect and morally offensive paperback cover art from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s than my skills as a writer. Back in the early days of paperbacks, there were no PC police to reprimand publishers for using sex to sell their novels.
Each week I posted a cover from either my or another collector’s collections and waxed nostalgic about its artistic or historic merits. As much as I enjoyed maintaining the site, the number of hours in a day is limited and I wanted to pursue creating some webcomics. (see The Comic Critic and The Return of Stickman) Thus, my time in Internet space was reallocated. Still, it was a lot of fun. Here are a few of the covers I’ve posted over the years.
2 comments:
I always used to enjoy reading this site ... not only did you pick out some great covers, but also, in your explanation of what made the cover work, you made clear a number of issues of composition, color choice and other artistic factors, which enhanced my appreciation, and which I would then, sometimes, attempt to apply to my own, admittedly amateur, artistic efforts.
If you aren't up for reviving this on a weekly basis ... what about making doing it on a monthly basis?
I've been giving some serious thought about bringing back some of the covers and comments. Maybe that would inspire me to post some new covers and opines.
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