The Horror! The Horror! (1)

What's that? You don't want to read my long, involved, boring story of why there have been no posts for ages? Well, fine, be like that. Have some covers instead.

These are the six Penguin Horror books released a couple of months ago, a series "curated" by Guillermo del Toro (whose introduction is fortunately far better written than the vampire books he 'wrote'). The covers are the work of Penguin design supremo Paul Buckley. I wasn't sure sabout them when I'd only seen thumbnails online, but in the flesh they're luridly wonderful, using a range of expensive cover treatments (neon ink, silver ink, SuperMatt varnish--the one that feels like rubbery skin--and spots of viscera-like gloss varnish) to make them tactile and unsettling.

Click all images for embiggening...

Each cover makes use of a different fluorescent ink

Most series would reuse the same bit of distressed/damaged art for the back covers, so full marks for giving each book its own piece of nastiness

All the page edges are black as well, to add to the atmosphere

Here the books are shown with a tiny graveyard, for no useful purpose whatsoever

Del Toro's introduction (the same in each book) seems to suggest that at one point Henry James's The Turn of the Screw was meant to be a part of this series. It would be interesting to see how Buckley combined the over-the-top nature of the series design with that book's more restrained horrors.