by chris ware, charles burns, michael cho, and many others:



is this old news?

Cool! Never heard of it before! Thanks'!

Love those covers! Some really nice ones in there. Reminds me I have to attempt reading White Noise for about the 5th time. I just can't get into it.

Some examples of excellent work there, thanks for posting this. I know if I hadn't already, these covers would sure make me want to read these classics. Here's to hoping younger generations can pick up these books and be equally inspired.

This is amazing. Everyone kept his/her style. They even have Thomas Ott in there !
In the end, screw those classics and go hunt down the books by the cartoonsits who did these illustrations

They also did a set with famous tattooers doing covers, Not as cool but interesting none the less.

do some of your collect the same book multiple times with cover variants like you would with comic books or toy colorways?

It's old news to be me but so very worth mentioning - great post!

It's worth mentioning Seth, Chester Brown and Jason by name as well - favorites of mine.

Penguin has always had a pretty sharp design sense, a truth I've noticed from a lifetime in used book stores. If you're interested at all I'd highly recommend this book:

It's mostly a visual history but has plenty of interesting and well-written text to carry the pictures along.


I'd forgotten until I searched for the above cover, but this thread ties in to another recent Whatever thread:

One of the contests from Work of Art last year was to design a cover for Penguin Classics!


@edited because apparently I lost all ability to spell and punctuate earlier today...

Thanks for the reminder about the Time Machine cover. I completely loved it, I just hate the fact though that they had to comepletely ruin the entire presence of it with their stupid branding. It is completely unnecessary, ruins the artist's work, goes against the whole spirit of these excellent Penguin classics covers, and could easily have been placed on the back or elsewhere if it was absolutely necessary.

For me they don't have the same appeal as toy variants or comic variants, purely because the decision is made by a publishing cover rather than an artist. Its doesn't take away from the beautiful covers but it appeals less.

Wow! Very ballsy of them, and a far cry from their well-established formal/traditionalist design approach. When I was a young teen the avant-garde cover illustrations of books published by Grove Press intrigued me enough to explore some great lit ... hopefully these will entice younger readers, too. Gotta wonder, though ... if you buy the Huey Newton book, do you go on the Homeland Security watch list?


Great stuff, thank you for posting.

I'd buy an art book of these covers... Great stuff, thanks for sharing!

Out of curiosity, I went to the Penguin Website/ Online shop. Theses have been coming out for awhile, I guess. They had posters of Moby Dick & White Noise w/ publish dates of 2009. They had some other titles w/ updated covers. I guess this is an ongoing thing. Love the Jason cover for Dharma Bums. Might have to check out the site to see if they offer more posters in the future.