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Neil Gaiman’s ‘American Gods’ gets vintage cover from pulp master Robert E. McGinnis
07.28.2016
03:45 pm
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TV fans are already lamenting the impending resolution of Game of Thrones likely to arrive in 2018 with a shortened 8th season, and so the chase for a suitably addictive replacement has been underway for some time now. Right now the heir apparent to take over that hole in our hearts is, without question the Starz adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

For those wondering how you can get roughly 60 episodes of TV mega-narrative out of a brisk 465 pages (brisk next to George R.R. Martin’s projected five doorstops, anyway) will be relieved to hear that Gaiman will permit Starz to draw from the book’s companion novel Anansi Boys as well. Bryan Fuller, recently of Hannibal and Pushing Daisies, will be the showrunner for the series with writer Michael Green.

Yesterday Gaiman took to his blog to tell readers about a development of no small excitement for the writer. Gaiman explained that he was waxing wistful with his HarperCollins editor about the fantastic painted paperback covers of pulp novels from the mid-century era and wondered if HarperCollins might be willing to release a set of paperbacks with new covers in that style. The answer, he learned, is yes.

Gaiman has long admired the covers of Robert E. McGinnis, best known for the posters for Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Diamonds Are Forever as well as the covers of literally hundreds of crime novels from the postwar years, but had supposed that anyone whose heyday was so long ago must surely be dead or at least retired. It turns out that his hero was not only alive (he recently turned 90) and is “pretty much” retired but not very long ago was still churning out terrific covers for the Hard Case Crime imprint.
 

 
McGinnis agreed to do the covers for the forthcoming HarperCollins series, and the first cover to see the light of day is for Gaiman’s American Gods, of which, due to the increased media attention due to news of the impending Starz series, the publishers currently have hardly any copies in stock to sell. Thus the need for a new edition, which will have the gorgeous new McGinnis cover seen below.

As Gaiman points out, there is a recent coffee table book celebrating the alluring cover artist under the title The Art of Robert E. McGinnis.
 

 

 
Lots more McGinnis art after the jump, including the new cover for ‘American Gods’

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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07.28.2016
03:45 pm
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