Paperback 1093: Black Lizard (unnumbered) (1st ptg, 1987)
Title: Black Friday
Author: David Goodis
Cover artist: Kirwan
Condition: 9 or 10/10 (they don't come any better—looks brand new)
Value: $25
- Well, sure, if you live in the sewer, every Friday is Black Friday
- A jug of wine, a single boot, a weird ... I'm gonna say 'coin purse' ... and thou ...
- It looks like a hand gun fossilized inside a coin purse, or handbag. Maybe if we could get a little more light in here...
- I love that Kirwan works his name into the objects in his paintings. No way you're gonna cheat him out of an artist credit! (check the neck on the bottle)
- I adore these late-80s, pre-Vintage takeover Black Lizards. They go through a white-spine and then a later black-&-gray spine incarnation. This one is of the white-spine variety:
- I'm so mad at the lack of complete vintage paperback checklists online. My kingdom for a one-stop shop featuring numbered lists of every paperback by ever imprint, including reprint houses like Black Lizard. Sigh. Everything out there is incomplete and/or hard to navigate—though I do like BookScans pretty well
Best things about this back cover:
- Woof. Pretty bland back here.
- According to backyardchickens.com, pickled eggs are "100% absolutely horrible frozen." In case that Mike Wallington blurb was giving you any ideas.
- Ah, good, they gave Kirwan his artist credit after all. Nice.
Page 123~
"There's the other dog. Over there, Charley. You looking?""No," Charley said. "You look.""Aw, don't, Charley. Don't be that way.""What way?" Charley asked mildly. "I'm just telling you to look, that's all. I want you to have a good look.""Jesus," Rizzio said. And then he sobbed it. "Oh Jesus—"
The dog is a Doberman and the Doberman ... seems to have had a mild disagreement with Charley and Rizzio's partner, Mattone. The phrase "there was little of his throat remaining" makes an appearance. I'm usually a "root-for-the-dog" kind of person, and since these guys shot a dog a few pages back, I don't feel so bad for Mattone, frankly.
~RP
2 comments:
I'm not a big fan of the one or two random objects school of cover art, but that shoe is really well done. The bottle is pretty good too, unless the round thing behind it is supposed to be part of it; then it makes no topological sense. I like the title font, though.
When he did illustrations for the SF mags, Vaughn Bodé was pretty good at working his signature into the art. A lot like Kirwan here, where you'd expect to see branding, just in his more cartoony style.
The first time I saw this post, I had no idea what I was looking at. The secondtime, it was all clear. Weird.
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