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| DALEKS copyright BBC TV and the Estate of TERRY NATION |
Here's the same Dr WHO book four times over with three different covers. Anybody got any preferences? (There's a slight shine down the spine of the clear cover-sleeves, which isn't on the actual paperbacks.)
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I'm guessing that the one in the top right is from the early 70's, as back then they were bringing out quite a few series of books to cash in on the fads of the time and I think it's the same artist who did the covers for them. That style he used seemed to be all over the place at that particular time.
ReplyDeleteOne series of six or seven books featured Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name character, and his covers for them were excellent; I wish I still had them, although I don't know if the stories themselves would stand up.
He also did covers for a series of Kung Fu books that were obviously written to cash in on Bruce Lee's fame, but I can't remember the name of them. There might even have been a novelisation of Enter The Dragon itself.
GB, the book is a 1977 reprint of a 1973 edition, and the artist's name is Chris Achilleos. He's clearly 'channeling' Ron Turner's Daleks, so that, along with Hartnell's image on the cover, made it a 'must have' for me. I really like the BBC Books cover, but my favourite, I guess, is the original 1965 paperback as that's the edition I had as a kid. (Not the original one, but a replacement.)
ReplyDeleteSomewhere I've seen a side by side comparison of the book cover and Turner's original panel, can't recall where though.
ReplyDeleteI like the original as well.
ReplyDeleteThe Armada Publishing has sparked a memory of a series of books with different coloured lions on the spine as an age or reading skill guide.
I think I had a copy of Dumas' The Three Musketeers with a red lion.
But that cant be right because it was a dark green linen hardback cover.
It was a school prize for english that I received in the last year of primary school.
I probably won it because I was a reader and readers were scarce in my school.
I have been unable to sleep soundly for a couple of weeks now and I have been thinking much too hard tonight.
I had another look at the covers and I still prefer the first cover.
The montage style was standard to my young eyes. It may have impressed me when I was younger but not so much now.
That's interesting, DSE. It's easy to see he imitated Turner's style on the Daleks, but I didn't know he'd done an actual swipe.
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That first cover sure has plenty of atmosphere, Baab. And isn't the figure of the Doctor extremely enigmatic-looking?
The Kung Fu series that Gey Blabby mentions could well have been K'ing Kung Fu, credited to the pen name Marshall Macao.
ReplyDeleteThere were seven books, though only four of them were published in Britain.
Go to http://vaultofevil.suddenlaunch3.com/index.cgi?board=various&action=display&num=1144092285 and you can read some more about the series plus, best of all, see the four UK covers and all seven American covers
Ta for that, D - will take a look.
ReplyDeleteMy grandparents bought me the ORIGINAL original of this book as a holiday present in the 60's in hardback and obviously that:s my favourite version although I did later get picture 2 as well. Sadly the dust jacket has long gone - I think it had Bill at the Tardis controls? I remember drawing pictures of the glass Dalek as they described him!
ReplyDeleteThere's a picture of that dustjacket somewhere on the blog, JP. And yes, it had ol' Bill at the console, if I recall correctly.
ReplyDeleteThe Achilleos cover gets my vote. I grew up reading the Target Doctor Who novelisations in the early '70s and I've always loved Achilleos' work. As to his swiping - he loved his Kirby "krackle" didn't he? That familiar "cosmic energy" visual popped up on many of his covers. In fact, there's a direct swipe from Kirby on Achilleos' "The Three Doctors" cover - Galactus' hands...
ReplyDeleteI'll have to keep an eye out for that, Cerebus - ta.
ReplyDeleteDavid, thanks for that link to the Kung Fu book covers and the info it gives about them. To be honest I have absolutely no memory of the stories themselves, just the covers by Achilleos. It's possible that he also did the covers to some British collections of Robert E. Howard that I had back then.
ReplyDeleteKid, a lot of the books mentioned here - like the Dr Who from the sixties - are ones that I would find while spending a Sunday afternoon wandering around The Barras. I didn't go looking for anything specific, but I rarely came away without finding something interesting. I once found a dirt-cheap but immaculate set of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
Ah, the good ol' Barras - ye cannae whack 'em.
ReplyDeleteThe Achilleos cover is my favourite too because it's the first one I saw.
ReplyDeleteOur school took delivery of about half a dozen Target reprints yesterday, thanks to a project called TargetWho.
And is that a project you initiated, Dougie? They'll soon all be fans of books about Doctor Who.
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