In 1979, Del Rey/Ballantine Books commissioned Michael Whelan to paint new covers for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars novels, succeeding Gino D’Achille‘s 1973 series.
Following in the footsteps of previous illustration greats like Roy G. Krenkel and Frank Frazetta, Whelan brought his considerable skill in research and detail to give us a more fully-realised view of Barsoomian life than we had seen before.
Collected below are the 11 wraparound cover paintings without text, and three sketches.
Updating the logo to make it dimensional, and using high-quality scans of the original paintings to bring back vibrancy to the Del Rey editions.
And here are a couple with a new type scheme, one that puts the emphasis on the image as opposed to the JCoM branding. I did the series up for personal ebooks.
Design © Scott Dutton 2011
George
For the updated covers you made, for the personal ebooks…you wouldn’t be able to share them privately would you? I’ve been scouring the web for nicely formatted epub versions of the series, or for a complete series epub. If you can, please let me know. I’m a fellow fan and I really like what you did with the cover art (as well as your epub formatting for the books you have available on the site – superb).
Thanks!
April 9, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Scott Dutton
Hi George -
First off, thanks for the kind words about the ebook work.
As far as making these covers available – publicly or privately – as part of ebooks, I’m afraid that the artwork is copyright protected by ERB Inc.
While many of the Barsoom texts are now in the public domain and available from sites like Project Gutenberg, I cannot legally distribute ebooks with Whelan’s art attached to them without a license agreement.
Nothing stops you from sourcing cover art scans and adding them to your own files, but if the artwork is under copyright, they have to be for your reading pleasure only.
Take care -
Scott
April 9, 2012 at 6:26 pm
George
No worries, thanks for the reply Scott. Any tips on where I could find such high-res artwork? Feel free to email me, so I’m not cluttering your blog comments with idle requests. : )
George
April 9, 2012 at 8:11 pm
Scott Dutton
Seek, and ye shall find.
And I’m always happy to talk publicly or privately about books and design. That’s why I set up the blog part of the site.
April 9, 2012 at 10:51 pm
Sparky
Thanks – the JCoM branding looks sweet. Nice design choices. Thanks for the reference.
May 8, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Scott Dutton
You’re entirely welcome.
May 9, 2012 at 10:11 pm
Scott Hughes
Hi Scott
Thanks for this post, really enjoyable and great to see these pictures. I remember buying this series when it came out and I was really impressed with the covers then.
I love what you have done with the covers, very impressive and I agree that they bring the covers to the forefront.
While I understand that you can’t share a complete set with us is there any chance you could share the technique? i.e. Font choice, transparency level etc.
Even better would be a template psd
Thanks again.
Scott
July 12, 2012 at 6:48 am
Scott Dutton
Hi Scott -
The font is a compressed Helvetica. Opacity is less than 100% obviously, but it varied a bit depending on the image underneath.
The cover images were cleaned up in Photoshop, but I do all my layout/typography work in InDesign.
I’m sure a resourceful individual like yourself – appropriately named no less – can create something outstanding.
- The other Scott
July 12, 2012 at 11:49 am
Scott Hughes
Scott,
Thanks for the feedback
August 3, 2012 at 5:37 pm