Fantagraphics designer Jacob Covey isn’t pleased with the French edition of Fantagraphics Fletcher Hanks book:

More often than not the foreign reprints produce covers not by starting from scratch but by somehow “improving” our cover designs. And it’s not like I wouldn’t understand if, say, you the reader of this post thought that the French edition is just fine. But I’m still cranky that the underlying purpose to my design choices becomes cosmetic furniture to be rearranged and thrown out– or, as is most often the case with these redesigns, added to. It’s ALWAYS accumulated upon– never stripped down.

And this angst isn’t rooted so much in pride of my own work (and certainly not rooted in some sense of vicarious possessiveness) but, frankly, it would be fun to see another, better-than-my-own take on the cover. Something besides a redecoration. In this case the French surprised me by throwing a heavy blue shag carpet over the top of fine (white) hardwood floors. They FORCE us to contextualize our god-like hero, to literally solidify Stardust in space and thereby reduce his power. His omnipotent presence is gone and he simply becomes a component in a generic field of empty blue space. The iconic quality of his turned-away pose goes from being a stark portrait of his unknowable-ness to a poorly-timed snapshot of some sci-fi space traveler. (I’m not truly an expert but besides the fact that this panel is fabricated it doesn’t FEEL like Hanks to me. His character is never so incidental to a composition and landscape never dwarfs his heroes. Though his worlds are bleak, they aren’t so expansively EMPTY.)

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 8:30 am and is filed under Fantagraphics, Graphic Novels, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.