Ever wonder what’s the deal with all those indie cartoonists doing book covers for Penguin lately? The LA Times has the answers you’re looking for:
Most often the artists are selected by Penguin art director Paul Buckley, but occasionally authors chose for themselves. Thomas Pynchon said, grandly: “Sure, I’ll put ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ in your series — but you have to get Frank Miller.” Amazingly, they did. A second case proved simpler: Paul Auster and Art Spiegelman are friends. Spiegelman’s art for Auster’s “New York Trilogy” shows a deep and easy familiarity with Manhattan, with the pulp fiction from which this contemporary existential masterpiece emerged and with Auster himself — an ink portrait on the back flap shows a lean and youthful Auster, fountain pen in hand, one eye blanked out by a magnifying glass. Spiegelman weaves this motif throughout, rendering a score of lost eyes staring from the background of the cover. It’s a haunting conceit, emerging from the work while concentrating its meaning.
Lots of other good stuff in the link, like Dan Clowes talking about how he designed his Frankenstein cover and more.
