Folks lucky enough to make our public preview and book launch for HUMBUG this coming Saturday March 7th, will find themselves audience to the originals of the 2 covers by Arnold Roth & Al Jaffee for our newly published masterpiece. Behold…
The Arnold Roth originals we got for the show are unbelievable! Upon first spying them, most folks here at the office didn't think they were original drawings. They thought they were old stats. Roth's work is classy, precise and hilarioius. Sadly, for Roth, I think the full appreciation of his work is still yet to come. I predict HUMBUG readers will come away smitten with Roth.
The above image is of Al Jaffee's original painting for the cover with vellum overlay showing the potential space for title placement and credits. Early on in one of our editorial meetings, it was decided by Gary Groth (Editor), Adam Grano (Designer) and myself (Assitant Editor) that it'd more exciting to share the magnatude of Jaffee's hypnotic work sans credits. To my way of thinking, Jaffee is peerless when it comes to his painted work (runner's up include ALL of Jim Woodring's color work and Dan Clowes' cover paintings for EIGHTBALL #17, 18 and the first hardcover edition of GHOST WORLD). When Jaffee's painting, the decal like result hums flouescence and stikes some harmonic, vaudvillian chord replicated by none! Jaffee kills me.
HUMBUG Designer Adam Grano evades the camera.