My Worst Covers
City of a Million Legends and Masters of Space: A Plague in Paradise
I’ve painted over 2,000 book covers in a 50-year career, so I’ll be honest, some of them were stinkers. Not just could’ve been better, but full-on disasters. A couple rise immediately to the top of the list.
First up: City of a Million Legends by Jacqueline Lichtenberg. This one had no excuse. On paper, it’s got everything you need—an alien and a good-looking guy. That’s practically the definition of a science fiction cover. And yet nothing happens. There’s no background, no environment, no sense of drama. The model was my friend, the artist Kevin Eugene Johnson, who showed up in phenomenal shape. I remember thinking at the time that his abs deserved their own credit line. Unfortunately, even heroic abs can’t carry a composition that goes nowhere.
Then there’s Masters of Space: A Plague in Paradise by Robert Vardeman, which fails in the exact opposite way. This one has action and energy. It even has a beautiful Al Williamson–inspired castle in the background. And then your eye lands on the girl’s face. To this day, I think it may be the worst face I’ve ever painted.
The reason for that is that I painted it while going through a divorce from my first wife, Barbara. In a stroke of questionable judgment, I had asked her to pose for the female figure. So there I was, day after day, staring at photo reference of my soon-to-be ex-wife. Shockingly, this did not produce my finest work. The male figure, based on me, isn’t doing the painting any favors either. I have a tendency to make my male figures looks like string beans. I wish I had bulked up my men so they didn’t look so skinny.
Looking back, what strikes me is that neither of these covers had to fail. The ideas weren’t terrible. The execution just went sideways—whether from bad compositional choices, or bad life circumstances. Which is part of my job, whether I like it or not. You don’t get to make 2,000 covers without producing a few cautionary tales.
Here are a few more flops for your consideration. I’ll leave out the titles and authors to spare them any lasting association with these particular disasters.
