covers- BACCHUS no.28

I headed into my third year of Bacchus, without having missed a month, although in the third and fourth years the schedule would slip down to ten issues per year and then eight in the fifth and sixth. That's sixty altogether in six years. For most of that time, If I missed a month of Bacchus, there would be something else to take its place, either a big collection or a 48 page special such as the Birth Caul. In this third year I found quite a few of the cover predictions were hopelessly off course by the time we came to draw the issue. With this one I thought we'd be up to the collapse of social order and the advent of Bacchanalian chaos, but a couple of short chapters were inserted to delay that, such as the one titled 'the murder Ballad'. If I remember correctly, Nick Cave had just recorded his duet with Kylie Minogue, which had her playing the dead girl floating in the pond. With Minty Moore we came up with the idea of the blues singer narrating a murder ballad in rhyme and I pulled out the oil paints once more, unused since the Bacchus color Special cover. The printing on this cover was the single most heartbreaking dissapointment in my whole publishing career. So, (1) is the black and white small scale cover solicitation image. (2) is how it looked in the Diamond catalogue. Pete Mullins inked and colored it I think. Interestingly, the story described here would be in the following issue (see next post) but this cover idea was kicked out a second time and thus never used. (3) is my prepress color-correct proof of the painting, which has never been seen anywhere before. Click for an enlargement. Seeing it as it was meant to appear, for the first time in ten years (I sold the original quickly) I felt quite moved, recalling all the tragic feelings I tried to put into it. (4) is the dismal end result of the print job. For a couple of hours I felt like giving up.

In fact, what impresses me more than seeing the actual colours after all these years, is the fact that I was able to put it out of my head and get on with the next issue and the one after that. And the covers of those issues would create their own particular problems. Actually, no, what terrifies me the most is that this was all ten years ago.