Sadly, recent official Gor covers have been somewhat amateurish compared to the glory days of the earlier books. I have a love of old book covers and think modern ones are rather dull in comparison. Anyway, see what you think of these bootleg mock ups. :)
Tal Emma,
ReplyDeleteWell I like the ones with kajiri best of all.
Some appear to show the way Cassandra and Donna should be 'dressed' when they are branded collared and renamed Cassie and Bella.
As ever thanks for posting.
Much like 80s White Dwarf RPG magazine covers but far more 'adult'
Having viewed these ypu have woken the Gorean within me and I shall summon Buttercup who is asleep at the foot of my couch and order her to my furs.
Dafydd o Abertawe
I think most of those old White Dwarf covers were pasted up from existing pieces of Fantasy/SF art from the 1970s, a bit like these covers here. Games Workshop did commission the occasional piece of cover art in the eighties, but most was recycled from paperback book covers.
DeleteNorthern Tracker Wrote.
ReplyDeleteLovely Covers, much better than the recent covers. Do we have a source for these?
If memory serves, the recent line of covers was contracted out to an Indian Art Farm, and designed to be not to sexy.
Perhaps if she can be spared from the other duties set by Emma, Chloe could be set to construct a set of covers for the John Norman Novels.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteNorthern Tracker Said:
ReplyDeleteCovers, I got covers. Up until his illness (and I think untimely death) Simon van Meygaarden aided by Jon Ard maintained a bibliographic site of John Norman books, listing every edition, and hence every cover of Gor he could track down. This includes Russian, French, German, Japanese and other world language editions.
The main site is here. http://work.tcjn.info/index.htm
Relevant to this discussion is the Covers page, here: http://work.tcjn.info/bal.htm
And the Covers Browser: http://work.tcjn.info/coverbr.htm
There's one glaring error in the covers pages. The 'special artwork' section has a number of covers for the various hardboiled action/thriller books ('Zero Cool', 'The Venom Business', 'Odds On' etc) by 'John Lange' from the early seventies. Although John Lange is John Norman's real name, this isn't the same John Lange. I do however like the idea that Norman published a whole series of 'two fisted' thrillers that no one knew about... ;)
DeleteSuperb research Sir
ReplyDeleteDafydd
Tal Emma,
ReplyDeleteAt first look, I can make out at least some of this group seems to be signed by Boris Vallejo. The only work I definitely recall seeing in fantasy collections in the past is the one associated with Kur of Gor. It really looks prehistoric rather than Gorean and I'm sure it originally had nothing to do with Counter Earth.
Thanks for this interesting extra and thanks to Northern Tracker for the reference link.
Yes, Master, none of the art is original - it's a series of photoshop composites of old Frazetta/Vallejo of a style in keeping with the old Ballentine/DAW editions. I wouldn't be surprised if the Kur of Gor pic was originally from art created to illustrate an Edgar Rice Burroughs book as there were a lot of them published in the early seventies with that kind of art.
DeleteI must say I agree with Emma, the recent series covers haven't been that good, with Quarry probably being the worst.
ReplyDeleteI think on the whole I preferred the Chris Achilleos covers to the Boris ones and I used the British cover of Raiders as reference when constructing Yashina's ship the Larl of Thassa.
The Chris Achilleos covers are my favourites too. As something of a book collector I buy any second hand book from the seventies with a Chris Achilleos cover if I see it in a second hand book shop. Not that easy to find these days though. The cover art in that decade was always amazing.
DeleteEmma,
DeleteWhat time do you get up? It is Saturday FFS....have a lie in ....please
Dafydd o Abertawe
Tal Emma,
DeleteChris Achilleos did a number of the White Dwarf magazine covers. (Before it became a rubbish solely Games Workshop advertising tool!)
I am sure some of them were very similar to the early 80s Gor book covers for the UK published Norman works. Some may have been the same?
Dafydd o Abertawe
Northern Tracker replied.
ReplyDeleteJohn Norman is the pen name of Dr John Lange
John Lange was the pen name of Dr Michael Crichton (Andromeda Strain et al) for his 1960s pulp fiction.
Fact is stranger than fiction.