Poe Facelift

Late last year I previewed the cover of an imminent Edgar Allan Poe collection from penguin.



See that post for the background to the cover, but in brief it's a collage by Richard Hamilton, altered by Harland Miller, with text cut-ups provided by Stefanie Posavec. And I really like it.

Now, though, that Poe book seems to have been given a facelift, and it will look like this:



The art is now one of Harland Miller's oil paintings derived from old Penguin covers.
Another, much funnier, example is this:



I do like Miller's Penguin paintings, but this particular use as a cover doesn't seem to be that inspired, especially compared with what they already had. I'd be interested to know what inspired the change.

Miller, by the way, is also a talented writer. His Slow Down Arthur, Stick to Thirty is an amusing novel, and he also wrote First I Was Afraid, I Was Petrified, a novella about suffering obsessive-compulsive disorder, illustrated with found photographs of stove knobs set to 'off'.



More of Miller's Penguin paintings can be found in his collection International Lonely Guy.