Book Cover Smackdown! ‘Champion of Mars’ vs. ‘The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21′ vs. ‘The Immorality Engine’
By John DeNardo |
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 at
12:15 am
Hello again, armchair art critics! It’s time once again for another Book Cover Smackdown!
Here are today’s contenders…
Your Mission (should you choose to accept it): Tell us which cover you like best and why.
Books shown here:
- Champion of Mars by Guy Haley (Artist: Dominick Saponaro)
- The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21 edited by Stephen Jones (Artist: Vincent Chong)
- The Immorality Engine by George Mann (Artist: Unknown)
NOTE: Bigger, better cover art images are available by clicking the images or title links.
Related posts:
- TOC: ‘The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #21′ and ‘The Mammoth Book of The Best of Best New Horror: Two Decades of Dark Fiction’ edited by Stephen Jones
- Book Cover Smackdown! ‘Ender’s Game’ vs. ‘Crossovers 2′ vs. ‘The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard’
- TOC: ‘The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Volume #22′ Edited by Stephen Jones
- Book Cover Smackdown! Panverse One vs. Madness of Flowers vs. The God Engines
- Book Cover Smackdown! ‘The Five’ vs. ‘Anno Dracula’ vs. ‘Birthmarked’
Tagged with: Book Cover Smackdown
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Sad, no red eyed baby demon pigs, but there is a robot horse, whether he is possessed or not is a mystery.. I like it the best because the Champ o’ Mars looks like he made a stop on the Jersey Shore first and has a bit of a sunburn making his juice head gorilla frame a lil stiff, and Best New Horror has not used a best new kinda horror image, looks like any old gravestone topper in hell, and Hell is so 1999. Gotta go with robo-horse and his/her Long Rider-esque friend. But that’s just me
I’ll go with The Immorality Engine for exactly the same reasons.
Mike
I think the robot horse wins by a nose.
No contest. Champion of Mars.
I’ll play odd man out….
I think the palette on Immorality Engine is too understated; nothing really stands out, and it lacks some character for that.
For me, it’s a close tossup between Champion of Mars and Best New Horror. I like the color on CoM and the title font has a retro-pulp style that makes it just lurid enough to get my attention. The art on BNH is not groundbreaking, but it reminds me of Clive Barker’s sketches, which is as accurate a portrayal as anything of what I’m going to find in this book, and the understated distressed title font is dead-on perfect for the book.
I’m going to have to go with Best New Horror, as I think it communicates the book best, and partly just because I really enjoy any anthology Stephen Jones puts his hand to.
Not overly fond of any of them, but would go with Immortality Engine largely because of the cool gears, etc around the edge and I like the title and author name font.
I like the first one best. It’s remicent of the old pulp magazines which is a style that goes with the Mars storyline and yet it has some realistic detail in it.
The Mammoth Book of Horror’s cover is nice, but it’s a little too typical of what’s been done in the last decade or so (just my opinion).
The Immortality Engine’s cover does not seem to match the storyline enought (I read the review), in that the storyline tends to be dealing more with the supernatural rather than science and technology that the mechanical horse represents. However, aside from the story it looks well done.
All are very nice but I think Champion of Mars is the strongest. I enjoy the secondary figure and the additional narrative. I also visited the artists website and found a larger image which shows some great detail. http://www.swashbucklestudio.com/swashbucklestudio/zoom_champion_of_mars.html