Scrappers Covers

A Tale of Two Covers: I typically have 2-3 hours to lay the cover out for the free weekly paper I work at. It’s not much time, but I’m used to working with it.

This week I lined up an awesome piece of art from Tom Neely to let folks know he would be at the Stumptown Comic Fest and to remind readers that Conan comic books are cool.

I didn’t even think about the bombing in Boston. Probably because the cover of this Portland Weekly has nothing to do with Boston and terrorism. But someone else at the paper said it was insensitive, so we had to change the art an hour before sending the cover to the printer.

I only had this awesome fun photo by Bob Renno to work with. I had it because I tried putting it on the cover twice already and got vetoed because it was too crazy. This time though it got the go ahead and after stripping the design down to the raw basics, we had a new cover.

Somehow, this is my job? To take a cover that’s too crazy and make it even crazier. At least with the cover that went to print we’ll just have to defend our right to party. The other cover we’d have to defend our right to be assholes.