As a kid, like many of you I’m guessing, I was told to never judge a book by its cover. That little aphorism was usually meant as a life-lesson in the same vein as “beauty is only skin deep” or “looks can be deceiving”. In general, all of those are still good advice, but I am here to tell you a secret— sometimes you can judge a book by its cover!
Now understand, I’m just talking about books, actual books. Yes, I know even then some would argue you can’t judge an actual book by its cover, but I am here to tell you nearly all of my favorite books have had awesome covers. In fact, I would say I was downright spoiled with awesome covers due to the fact that I came up during the apogee of genre paperbacks.
From the 70s to the 90s, it was an era when the science-fiction, fantasy and horror I so love, but especially fantasy and specifically sword and sorcery, had a wealth of great artists doing amazing covers. And if they weren’t doing the covers currently in use, they were well represented on the shelves of the used bookstores and book exchanges I frequented.
Frank Frazetta stands head and shoulders above the rest, his iconic paintings of Conan bursting with vitality and violence, redefining the visual look of the character and becoming the yardstick by which all other versions would be measured. Most of all, there was energy there. Frazetta’s subjects did not just stand and pose as if for a portrait. They leapt or crouched or lunged, caught in a freeze frame of some climatic moment. Nor did Frazetta stop with just Conan, lending his talents to Tarzan, John Carter of Mars and many, many more.
Close on Frazetta’s heels were other legendary talents such as Boris Vallejo, Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Ken Kelly, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, Michael Whelan, the Brothers Hildebrant, Robert Gould and so many more. If you aren’t familiar with the works of these painters, I highly recommend you treat your eyes to the visual feast they represent. Warriors and warrior women, cosmic landscapes and fierce beasts await you, all brimming with a potent sensuality, like dreams made flesh.
There was a time when custom vans often had imitations of such art, especially Frazetta’s, airbrushed onto their sides. I have to say, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all if that particular fad experienced a resurgence in popularity. I came into the world as such things were on the way out. I was just 6 years old when the first Conan the Barbarian movie was released, which was pretty much the high water mark for the mainstream popularity of sword and sorcery.
Fantasy as a genre had existed before and would continue to exist after that brief period, but aside from a wave of low-budget knock offs, we never got to see the full expression of where sword and sorcery could go in cinema. Sword and sorcery had more viscera than conventional fantasy, a rawness to it that was at odds with all the shining cities and genteel nobility embodied by Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It was as simple as looking at the difference in the book covers of Frazetta and his followers.
The paintings of those greats could trick one into buying a mediocre story, so judging a book by its cover might still separate a fool from his gold, but even the most anemic adventure often gained a little something when I imagined the characters and events looking as vivid and dynamic as the cover had promised.
Indeed, many times the cover images bore very little resemblance to the characters and creatures as they were described in the stories. It was the strength of the image that got me to pick the book up in the first place and often colored my perceptions of the reading experience to follow. To use another bit of timehonored wisdom, many of these book covers were powerful examples of putting your best foot forward.
At heart, I objectively know that is all advertising. The right image, the right font, the right cover copy all coming together to sell something. As a business practice, it is all very cut and dried. I image there is a science to it. But to a boy of 11, the young man of 16, the grown adult of 20 and ever onward, upward and (unfortunately) older, these images were the stuff of life itself, doorways into other worlds brimming with possibility.
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