The one who wrote Coraline, and co-wrote the book of Good Omens and made the TV show, also the Sandman comics writer and co-creator who made the Sandman TV show. Quite nice really.
The Graveyard Book cover ask reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to ask for a long time.
Is there a comprehensive list of your books that have Pulp Fiction covers? As far as I can tell from my *extensive* googling, it’s only said that Anansi Boys, American Gods, Stardust, and Neverwhere were released with the pulp cover (according to articles from 2016) but I bought a brand new Ocean at the End of the Lane w/ the pulp cover in 2020. So do you know if it’s only those 5 books with the pulp style covers?
Are there plans to release more of your works in the pulp style covers? If not, can there be? Because, if I may be so bold, pulp fiction style covers of Good Omens and The Graveyard Book would be two very cool additions to my bookshelf.
Sorry for this incredibly nerdy and inane ask but I’m dying to know.
I’m looking at the website and I am utterly boggled and shook. I had assumed these were just remarkably accurate parodies/reproductions. They’re so accurate because he’s reproducing himself. The “pulp style” is his style. That’s epic.
(It is still also an amazingly accurate reproduction, because he’s tuning the style very precisely to specific eras, which is awesome. Without the lettering I would swear the cover of American Gods is from a Hardy Boys book. Anansi Boys is going off things like Fleming novels - the covers of which McGinnis did in fact paint, apparently. Stardust is, mmm… I’d say about mid-60s, early 70s fantasy? Around the time of Barbara Remington’s Tolkien covers, Dragonquest, that sorta thing. And every one of the others is identifiable, too. The precision of the style is AMAZING.)
Absolutely. That’s Todd Klein’s brilliance.
The sequence is, Mr McGinnis sends in sketches for a painting, and then Todd and I put our heads together and talk about it, and then talk more when the painting arrives. The American Gods cover reminded us of late 60s blockbuster novels. Stardust of early 70s fantasy, as you say. Then Todd would find examples of things and I would find examples and we’d point stuff out to each other. Then Todd would make magic… (Would anyone be interested in the process? I could go and find some of the paintings and sketches, and explain.)
So to begin with, Mr McGinnis said yes. He was, at the time, almost 90, and we were unable to believe our luck. We had talked about getting someone to work in the style of book covers of bygone days, but Bob McGinnis was there, and he had painted those covers. And he was – and is – still painting.
The brief from me was as simple as I could get it:
Mostly, for all except American Gods, which could be haunted spooky American landscape, I’d love people, and the feeling that we are looking at the kinds of book covers nobody does any longer.
Mr Nancy in the foreground for Anansi Boys? - something that says Funny, Thorne Smith, slightly sexy, strange.
Stardust, a beautiful study of the Star ? Very fairy tale.
Neverwhere, very Adventures, and perhaps Richard and Door, or a scene or moment from the book?
Jennifer Brehl, my editor at William Morrow, came back with:
I think there should be figures/people on all four covers. Looking at McGinnis’s art (and the other covers you sent me) it seems that the characters are extremely important. I was also seeing TWO characters per cover. Rough images:
AMERICAN GODS: Shadow and Mr. Wednesday, standing in a rugged landscape beneath a lightning-streaked sky ANANSI BOYS: Mr. Nancy in his yellow hat (didn’t he have a yellow hat, or am I misremembering?) holding mike singing to young woman STARDUST: Tristran leaning over a sleeping (fallen) Yvaine (Star) NEVERWHERE: Richard carrying/supporting a wounded Door through a door – leaving the World Above and stepping through to Below.
That seemed like enough to get going with.
We did American Gods first. Landscape and lightning, Shadow and Wednesday. We lifted the “Underground novel” blurb from a 60s paperback of Stranger in a Strange Land.
When we did Anansi Boys it followed the same pattern (although I knew what I wanted as a blurb):
Mr McGinnis sent in some cover sketches. He honed in on the opening scene, with Mr Nancy singing Karaoke to tourists in a Florida seaside bar. We had told him we wanted it to feel like it was a book cover from 60 years ago, and that all these covers would have slightly different sensibilities. We knew that he was the one painting the most memorable book covers in the 50s and 60s, so our brief was to paint what he would have done if he’d read the book back then.
He sent in 5 sketches and I picked a few of the ones I liked best and sent them to Todd, to start talking about visual book styles. (Here are a couple.)
Everyone’s favourite was the first.
Todd mentioned that it reminded him of this kind of style, and sent me book covers to show what he meant. He suggested that we have the title over on the left (like the ALL THE WAY cover here).
The finished cover painting came in…
and Todd did a few versions, always picking up the green from Mr Nancy’s hat and tie:
(There were lots more versions than these, but I’m limited to 10 images on Tumblr.) I suggested that we lost the Awards stuff, which made it feel cluttered. And I picked the typefaces and versions I liked best, which gave us:
The publisher wanted the #1 Bestseller information back…
I suggested that if we were going to do that we should add an adjective of some kind, like “rollicking” or “magical” just to make it less dry. So Todd did a few of those…
(We actually went with “Magical” on the finished book.) And we had a book cover.
One that felt way out of time, like it had been designed and painted 60 years ago.
The Graveyard Book cover ask reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to ask for a long time.
Is there a comprehensive list of your books that have Pulp Fiction covers? As far as I can tell from my *extensive* googling, it’s only said that Anansi Boys, American Gods, Stardust, and Neverwhere were released with the pulp cover (according to articles from 2016) but I bought a brand new Ocean at the End of the Lane w/ the pulp cover in 2020. So do you know if it’s only those 5 books with the pulp style covers?
Are there plans to release more of your works in the pulp style covers? If not, can there be? Because, if I may be so bold, pulp fiction style covers of Good Omens and The Graveyard Book would be two very cool additions to my bookshelf.
Sorry for this incredibly nerdy and inane ask but I’m dying to know.
I’m looking at the website and I am utterly boggled and shook. I had assumed these were just remarkably accurate parodies/reproductions. They’re so accurate because he’s reproducing himself. The “pulp style” is his style. That’s epic.
(It is still also an amazingly accurate reproduction, because he’s tuning the style very precisely to specific eras, which is awesome. Without the lettering I would swear the cover of American Gods is from a Hardy Boys book. Anansi Boys is going off things like Fleming novels - the covers of which McGinnis did in fact paint, apparently. Stardust is, mmm… I’d say about mid-60s, early 70s fantasy? Around the time of Barbara Remington’s Tolkien covers, Dragonquest, that sorta thing. And every one of the others is identifiable, too. The precision of the style is AMAZING.)
Absolutely. That’s Todd Klein’s brilliance.
The sequence is, Mr McGinnis sends in sketches for a painting, and then Todd and I put our heads together and talk about it, and then talk more when the painting arrives. The American Gods cover reminded us of late 60s blockbuster novels. Stardust of early 70s fantasy, as you say. Then Todd would find examples of things and I would find examples and we’d point stuff out to each other. Then Todd would make magic… (Would anyone be interested in the process? I could go and find some of the paintings and sketches, and explain.)
Robert McGinnis is 90 years old, and painted all of these covers over the last 8 months. It feels like being somehow connected to the book covers of 60 years ago having him do these. The lettering style was inspired by the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line of the late 60s and early 70s.
http://bit.ly/NeverwherePulp (I loved his initial sketch, but I asked Robert McGinnis to add the rats when he painted it.)
The cover was inspired by early 70s gothic romances, and Todd Klein did the Title and lettering style inspired by them. Gloriously retro.
I love the retro art style, but is that supposed to be Door? It looks like her, but I can’t recall her wearing anything like that in the book
I have been pondering this since the covers came in. I figure it is either:
a) Door, injured at the start of the book. (Although she doesn’t ever wear anything like this in the book, she must at some point have dressed up posh.)
b) Jessica, Richard’s fiancee, thinking about the underground.
c) Lamia dressed in bright (for her) colours, perhaps on her day off.
d) someone else.
But I didn’t mind. I felt like the covers for Stardust and Anansi Boys were pretty literal. This was more evocative of what Neverwhere made Robert McGinnis think and feel and want to paint, and I liked the fact it had a woman on it and no man, and a woman who wasn’t smiling and seemed both interesting and slightly dangerous. I think I like how it makes me feel about the book…
http://bit.ly/AnansiPulp Published October 29th. Robert E McGinnis paints a beautiful retro cover, and Todd Klein does perfect lettering and designwork.
Mr Nancy performs his last Karaoke number before an audience of tourists, in a Florida nightclub…
If you want to see the next three Robert McGinnis RETRO mass market paperback covers (they are for Stardust, Anansi Boys and Neverwhere) click on the link to my blog. http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2016/09/its-ashs-first-birthday-bare-chin-is.html (along with some photos of somebody’s first birthday). I’d love to know what people think. Which ones you like, which ones you don’t.
For me, oddly enough, it’s about wanting mass market paperbacks to continue to be out there and get love from publishers, so this series of McGinnis covers (with Todd Klein design and lettering) is there to make the publisher and bookstores care about the cheapest way to buy the physical books. Because you are much less likely to pick up someone else’s kindle and discover a favourite author than you are to pick up a paperback from a window ledge…
