There’s no way anything in that publication could top the cover.
Dinos on iceskates? I want to know wtf that’s about. I know that the cover artist wants us to wonder, too.
I actually kind of hate that cover. The ice-skating dinos are keen, but your eye is forced to scan through a bunch of dreary military hardware and the painfully cliche giant ringed planet to find them lurking at the very bottom.
Whoo Whoo!! I hope it’s available at supermarkets for kids to buy without having to search for stuff.
Hmmm, April 1st you say? Since I haven´t heard about this before I´m sceptical.
Is this related to that TV/television show/series?
The juxtaposition is the whole point, though. it’s not just ice-skating dinos, as if that weren’t interesting enough, but dinos ice-skating happy and carefree in the shadow of a monolithic war machine that’s apparently actively defending against a planetary siege. It makes the whole thing even more bizarre and fascinating.
And some of use like “dreary military hardware” and “painfully cliche” astronomy, so nyeah.
Hey, everybody. This is Frank Wu - I did the cover. When editor Steve Davidson and I first discussed this, we wanted to do a tribute to the first Amazing Stories cover, which is the first one you see at the link philipp posted: http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/amazing-stories It has a Saturn-like planet (but NOT Saturn because the colors are wrong and banding is not so pronounced on Saturn), with people iceskating. That’s why there’s a giant ringed planet, VinneTesla. And I did dinosaurs iceskating, because, well, dinos are more fun to draw than people. And I replaced Frank R. Paul’s sailing ships (they used THOSE to get to this ice world?!? - now THAT’s bizarre) with a giant laser tank. The point of the piece - as PhasmaFelis got (thank you) - really is the juxtaposition. It’s a political statement about the war in Afghanistan. So here we are over a decade into the war (America’s longest), with thousands of people dead, and very few people seem to care about all the fighting still going on, the hardships the troops and the Afghans are going through. Contrast this with Viet Nam, when there were protests and songs and marches and speeches and movies every day about the war. So the dinosaurs are blissfully iceskating, happy as can be, completely ignoring the fighting and dying going on right outside their small universe.
The illustration is perplexing, awesome and fits perfectly in the spirit of the publication.
Now let’s talk about the horrors done to the cover design after the illustrator’s work was done. Starting with the ‘new and improved’ magazine logo:
There’s nothing I could add about this that wasn’t more masterfully said by BB’s own Mark Frauenfelder in his extensive coverage of classic breakfast cereal package designs going to shit, so I’ll just go ahead and willy-nilly piece out-of-context quotes into a semblance of narrative relevant to the topic at hand.
The delightfully eldritch logo lost its serifs, and accrued three dimensions, warping, a gradient, an outline, a drop shadow, and a rainbow-colored flourish. (…) The overall effect is nauseous and confusing. (Lucky Charms)
The most amazing part of this is that the art director approved such a massive flub. (Boo Berry)
It’s not the fault of illustrators that many modern packages are hideous. The blame goes to the brand managers at cereal companies who think they are art directors but have no artistic taste. (Trix)
Well said, Mark. It’s almost like your carefully cherry-picked quotes somehow just read my mind.
And don’t get me started on the hideous, eye-punishing composition and photoshoppery going on the ‘88th Anniversary’ title. It’s like a punchline right out of LiarTownUSA. (NSWF link!)
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