Paperback 1079: Jonathan Wild / Henry Fielding (Signet CQ660)

Paperback 1079: Signet CQ660 (1st ptg, 1962) (actually 3rd ptg, year unknown, probably early-mid '70s)

Title: Jonathan Wild

Author: Henry Fielding

Cover artist: Milton Glaser

Condition: 7/10

Value: $5

Best things about this cover:

• Another acquisition outside my normal (1939-69) collecting range, but Glaser's covers for Signet are special, so I think I'm going to start making them a special subset of my collection (esp. since they can be found all over and procured for super cheap)
• There's a borderline cartoon quality to Glaser's pop art take on the classics (his most famous work for Signet was the covers of all the Shakespeare plays). Love the intricacy of his designs, and the low-key bawdiness of this particular image—the deep cleavage, the hint of thigh above the stocking, the (I'm guessing) randy bewigged leonine figure standing behind her. . . though if he's randy for anything, it's probably that jewel he's fondling.
• The colors are vibrant and the design on her stockings is absolutely aces. Her shoes are special too.

Best things about this back cover:

• Bah! Mere description! 
• I've never read this novel, but the cover copy here is promising. Love the idea of naming your wild-ass main character "Wild." 
• The book is part biography (of an actual criminal), part social satire, part picaresque novel. Honestly, it sounds amazing, and I am tempted to dive right in.
• Is Gin Lane bad? I want to live on Gin Lane. There's gin there, right?

Page 123~

Wild, immediately at his return to town, went to pay a visit to Miss Laetitia Snap, for he had that weakness of suffering himself to be enslaved by women, so naturally incident to men of heroic disposition.

"Suffering himself to be enslaved" is some choice phrasing, but not as choice as the name "Miss Laetitia Snap"—that is an all-time name. The implications of "Snap" are suggestive but ambiguous ... unlike the implications of "Miss Straddle" (p. 88), which seem pretty straightforward.

~RP

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Paperback 1058: Berserker's Planet / Fred Saberhagen (DAW UY1167)

Paperback 1058: DAW UY1167 (PBO, 1975)

Title: Berserker's Planet

Author: Fred Saberhagen

Cover artist: Jack Gaughan

Condition: 8/10 (unread, some surface wear)

Estimated value: $10-15

Best things about this cover:

• "That's not a toothpick! ... THIS is a toothpick!"
• There was an early-80s arcade game called "Berserker." It was pretty cool. I don't remember these guys, though.
• I like the big guy's aesthetic. Very Prince Valiant-meets-Grizzly Man. It's just ... he looks more like an action figure than a living humanoid creature. He has many points of articulation and is neither standing nor holding that sword in a way that one might call "naturalistic" or "plausible." 
• Little buddy, on the other hand—very believable. Cowering nakedness, total unpreparedness, I can relate.
• The pink palette here is amazing, as is the suggestion of a giant skull in the oddly machine-like background.
• The actual title has an apostrophe in "Berserker's" but the cover does not. This bothers me about as much as you'd expect (a lot).

Best things about this back cover:

• No one needs this much text, truly.
• "NO QUARTER! NO QUARTER! NO COIN! ONLY DOLLAR! DOLLAR BILL! OR CREDIT CARD!"—someone behind me at the vending machine
• This feels pretty prescient—the idea that your robots would learn and "develop"; sadly modern out-of-control robots didn't take over the planet with swords, they just figured out how to sell you things you don't need and show you "content" that makes you angry ... in order to sell you things you don't need. Give me the robots in pelts and disco boots, please!
• "It's a Fred Saberhagen science thriller" doesn't quite have the standalone energy you'd expect a climactic back-cover paragraph to have.
• Also LOL "Have you seen THE BOOK OF SABERHAGEN" what, is it missing?

Page 123~

As the two men wrestled, it was still Omir who smiled, and Thomas who looked desperate, but quickly it was demonstrated that Omir was not the stronger of the two, not with a spear stuck through him, anyway.

Yeah, impalement will really take it out of you, I find

~RP

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Paperback 946: The Book of Paradox / Louise Cooper (Dell 3343)

Paperback 946: Dell 3343 (1st ptg, 1975)

Title: The Book of Paradox
Author: Louise Cooper
Cover artist: Frank Frazetta

Condition: 7/10
Estimated value: $8-12

[Latest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover:

• The Oracle foretold the coming of the one they call ... Glutemaster!
• Man vs. Angel in the World Pose-Off of Love
• No one did Subterranean Mystical Catacomb Beefcake like Frazetta.

Best things about this back cover:

• "and now" is the biggest LOL line on this whole cover
• LORD OF THE RINGS (... which is absolutely *nothing* like) LORD OF THE FLIES ... and now! ... LORD OF THE DANCE! Nope, sorry, misspoke. It's BOOK OF PARADOX! Feel the fantasy!
• That's an astonishing array of words considering none of it means anything.

Page 123~

Varka shrugged. "Make of it what you will—but I am going to Limbo."

I believe this is the fantasy paperback equivalent of "Screw you guys, I'm going home."

~RP

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Paperback 792: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly / Joe Millard (Award Western AQ1495)

Paperback 792: Award Western AQ1495 (4th ptg, 1975)

Title: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Author: Joe Millard
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Man, my brain really, Really wants the Oxford comma there.
• This cover manages to be plain vanilla and superbadass simultaneously.
• There should be a word for this style of cover art (prevalent in '60s and '70s) where different elements are montaged into one monstrous blob / human pyramid.
• Facial expressions here are all fantastic, especially on about-to-be-hanged guy.

Best things about this back cover:

• Aha, Tuco! So *that's* where "Breaking Bad" got it. Plagiarism!!
• Oh, Tuco. Why don't you come to your senses? You been out riding fences for so long now.
• This description is making me want to pull this movie out and watch it right now. My morning *is* kind of wide open …

Page 123~

Tuco lifted his own gun out of the concealing suds and shot him precisely through the adam's apple.

"When you're going to shoot somebody," he said coldly to the twitching figure on the floor, "shoot him. Don't stand around trying to talk a man to death."

Oh yeah, I'm definitely watching this Right Now.

~RP

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Paperback 656: Baton Twirling / Doris Wheelus (Warner 78-810)

Paperback 656: Warner Books 78-810 (1st ptg, 1975)

Title: Baton Twirling
Author: Doris Wheelus
Cover artist: photo cover (interior illustrations by Frank Bolle)

Yours for: [Not available—it's a heavily-annotated gift from my college best friend]


Best things about this cover:

• Well she seems happy.
• I assume this is a sex manual in metaphorical form. (For instance, replace "twirlers" with "swingers")
• I always wondered how people learned to do this. Now I know.
• That half-psychedilic font is kind of amazing.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Do I!"

Pag 123~

Let inside of your boots or shoes dry thoroughly after each use so that the bacteria will not multiply.

And now, some illustrations:




~RP

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Paperback 280: The Female Man / Joanna Russ (Bantam Q8765)

Paperback 280: Bantam Q8765 (PBO, 1975)

Title: The Female Man
Author: Joanna Russ
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• "See, you thought I was a woman, but under these boobs ... no, wait, under these boobs ..."
• You decide: crazy red hair that conveniently hides her (apparently faux) vagina? or monstrous red pubic hair that is attempting to eat her head?
• "Dad, this stripper is scaring me. Can we go home now?"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Reality Times 3" — sounds like a very bad educational / religious rap act.
• Passive voice cavalcade in that fourth sentence is setting my teeth on edge.
• Apparently a reference to Philip Wylie's "The Disappearance" meant something to someone at some point.

Page 123~

I want love. (she dropped her paper cup of lemonade and covered her face with her hands.)

Wow, they really screwed up her order.

~RP

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Paperback 28: Signet Y6638

Paperback 28: Signet Y6638 (1st Signet, 1975)

Title: The Big Gold Dream
Author: Chester Himes
Cover artist: Uncredited

Best things about this cover:

• Orange!
• "Starsky and Hutch"-era font - and fashion!
• Somebody needs to tell the white woman in the bra and panties that a back alley is no place to play leap frog.
  
• Chester Himes rules - despite being a mid-70s reprint, this book is reasonably valuable, both because Chester Himes is the most important black crime fiction writer of the 20th century (sorry, Walter Mosley) and because this particular incarnation of Himes' work is hard to come by.
• This cover is poorly designed - sometime starting in the late-60s, you begin to see these covers where a single realistic scene gives way to a composite montage, where lots of different pictures are crammed together into a kind of blob in the middle of the cover. Somebody's (bad) idea of artistic. Check out how this cover gets all abstract expressionist toward its edges - like it was finished by Rothko or Rauschenberg.
• Yet another floating head - this time, an oddly benevolent-looking, kerchiefed young lady is preparing to devour Harlem.

RP