Favourite\memorable FF covers

[CharlesX]

This talk about BVP's cover has set me thinking about my and our favourite FF covers. What are your most favourite or memorable FF covers?
   The greenspine COH cover has to rank highly, I think it is a world better than the generic one which later 'replaced' it. SOTA and LOTSW have covers with a sense of mystery and wonder matching their contents.
   Flipping it a little, Sky Lord and EOTD have covers as ugly and uninspired as the gamebooks themselves.
   By the way, I think the BVP cover is pretty cool  .

[Law]

Couldn't disagree more. Les Edward's Creature of Havoc cover is absolutely captivating compared to the garish, spoiler-laden cover from the Puffin range.

Though I could be biased as I also love the even more gory rendition of the Manticore for the Wizard edition of the Shamutanti Hills as well, the bloodier and edgier the better.

Wait, scratch that, even as a wee bairn I though the Wizard edition of Armies of Death was trying way too hard to look serious.

Out of the original run, my favourites have to go to Phantoms of Fear and Space Assassin for being the most demonstrative and fitting jackets for their titles. They have aged the best I feel.

[tyrion]

My favourites:
Forest of doom
City of thieves
Deathtrap dungeon
Temple of terror
Demons of the deep
Stealer of souls
Spectral stalkers
Legend of the shadow warriors
Hardback assassins of allansia
All of the sorcery! series

[The Count]

Vault of the Vampire
Legend of the Shadow Warriors

Demons of the Deep

Black Vein Prophecy
Siege of Sardath
Temple of Terror
Chasms of Malice
Midnight Rogue
Scorpion Swamp
House of Hell


For non-Puffin
Return to Firetop Mountain (Scholastic)
Deathtrap Dungeon (Wizard 1)
Caverns of the Snow Witch (Scholastic)
The Shamutanti Hills (Wizard 1)
The Seven Serpents (Wizard 1)
Starship Traveller (Wizard 1)
Sword of the Samurai (Wizard 1)


Phantoms of Fear looks better as an illustration than as a cover

[CharlesX]

Dec 11, 2021 21:58:05 GMT Law said:

Couldn't disagree more. Les Edward's Creature of Havoc cover is absolutely captivating compared to the garish, spoiler-laden cover from the Puffin range.

You're right, the newer cover is by any objective terminology definitely the better of the two, just for me I thought the Puffin one was more colourful, appealing and alien.

[Law]

Dec 12, 2021 6:33:54 GMT CharlesX said:

Dec 11, 2021 21:58:05 GMT Law said:

Couldn't disagree more. Les Edward's Creature of Havoc cover is absolutely captivating compared to the garish, spoiler-laden cover from the Puffin range.

You're right, the newer cover is by any objective terminology definitely the better of the two, just for me I thought the Puffin one was more colourful, appealing and alien.

I know what you mean, shame there's not more vibrant green covers in the Puffin range, like CoH and PoF.

Do Deathmoor and House of Hell count as sufficiently resting on that part of the spectrum wheel? CoT and BBW too maybe.

[Wilf]

Favourite covers?

Anything by Ian Miller, especially House Of Hell, Creature Of Havoc, and Citadel Of Chaos.

The Puffin covers of Forest Of Doom and Deathtrap Dungeon are rightly celebrated classics.

Temple Of Terror, Rebel Planet, Demons Of The Deep, Beneath Nightmare Castle, Crypt Of The Sorcerer, Star Strider, Daggers Of Darkness, The Riddling Reaver, Out Of The Pit, and Titan were all given excellent covers by Puffin.

Deathtrap Dungeon, Return To Firetop Mountain, and Bloodbones were all given excellent covers by Wizard - the first time around.

I'm not a particular fan of covers that don't depict scenes in the book, so whils the paintings themselves are perfectly good, I don't understand how The Rings Of Kether or The Crimson Tide got their covers.

Black Vein Prophecy has a terrible cover. Keep Of The Lich Lord has a boring cover which is overwhelmed by the title. Legend Of The Shadow Warriors... much the same to a lesser extent. Puffin's Legend Of Zagor looks like a cut and paste job, and none of the five images get enough room. Deathmoor is a bit naff.

Wizard's covers are nearly all inferior to Puffin's. City Of Thieves and Temple Of Terror have boring covers; Crypt Of The Sorcerer, House Of Hell, and Forest Of Doom have particularly naff covers (with two of them suffering by being much poorer versions of the originals); and Eye Of The Dragon's is too zoomed in for my liking.

I quite like the unusual red colouring of the original 2D cover of Citadel Of Chaos.

And it goes without saying that all the Scholastic covers are fucking shit.

[kieran]

My favourite FF cover is definitely Battleblade Warrior. The colours are so lush and vivid and it's hard not to like a lizard-man flying atop a pterodactyl. Pity the book itself is pretty mediocre.

[a moderator]

Dec 12, 2021 21:01:27 GMT Wilf said:

I'm not a particular fan of covers that don't depict scenes in the book, so whils the paintings themselves are perfectly good, I don't understand how The Rings Of Kether or The Crimson Tide got their covers.

I think Rings is supposed to be Zera Gross. Looking different to how she appears in the internal artwork, but the artists might not have had the opportunity to compare their interpretations of the text.

How do you feel about the cover of Tower of Destruction? I've seen one reviewer assert that it doesn't depict a scene from the book. When I pointed out how closely it matches what happens at the start of section 309, they rather stroppily disagreed on the grounds that the sky in the picture wasn't as dark and cloudy as it was in the text. 

And it goes without saying that all the Scholastic covers are fucking shit.

I liked the one for Citadel (even if it does show the Ganjees in the wrong room). If the interior illustrations hadn't been such garbage, I might have been tempted to get a copy of that one.

[Wilf]

Tower's cover isn't particularly great, but I have no problem with it, either.

[bloodbeasthandler]

Dec 12, 2021 21:01:27 GMT Wilf said:

And it goes without saying that all the Scholastic covers are fucking shit.

This baldly-stated hostility to the new era covers made me laugh out loud.

Pop over to magnamund.com and have a butcher's at the sort of covers Lone Wolf books are getting now. Stuff like this: 



Now compare that with the proposed cover for the upcoming rerelease of Stormslayer in April 2022: 





We had some superb covers in the original FF range, and people have already stated some of them.
I used to try to copy them with various degrees of success.

I really like Jim Burns' Freeway Fighter, Talisman of Death by Peter Andrew Jones, and House of Hell, all the McCaigs ... and really the standard is incredibly high overall.

[a moderator]

The new Lone Wolf covers may be nice, but the changes to the text in the reissues make FF's track record with edits look good. Oh, there is the occasional improvement, but way, way more often, it gives the impression that the person responsible thought, "The people who read these books aren't very clever. I'd better spell things out more clearly to make sure that they understand."

I'd prefer not to have anything 'kiddified', but I'll take a more child-friendly cover over dumbed-down writing any day.

[nathanh]

Forest of Doom cover introduced me to FF, so it'll have to be that one.