Wednesday, November 13, 2024

The Necronomicon

Normally, when we feature a copy of the Necronomicon it's all fleshy and spiky and evil-looking.  Today is a little different.  Raphael Kretz was kind enough to send over his take on a mass-market paperback version of the infamous tome.  It's a joke that's been done before, but his version is a very specific take that I find hysterically funny. 


Long story short, I recently read Phil Baines’ book Penguin by Design, on the book covers used by Penguin Books through the years. The way my mind works, It wanted me to immediately put together the appropriate grids for different historic versions. And the way my mind works, further, is that it tells me something very silly, which I then have to heed or it will haunt me for weeks.

After spending half an evening, this came out, and while I found it funny in a ridiculous way, I also realized this is probably so specific as to be funny only to a very specific intersection of demographics.

I present, Penguin books’ post-war publication of The Necronomicon, well typeset and affordable for the common man. (I was pondering for a bit whether it would rather be a Penguin Classic, but the idea of the book of unspeakable horrors as an inexpensive nonfiction publication for a broad audience seemed way funnier.)

 


 Right click and open the image in a new tab to download the full-sized version.

1 comment:

CrawlingChaos said...

Too funny. I've had the idea of designing a cover for a modern "wisdom from an ancient forign culture" book like The Secret or The Four Agreements that you'd find displayed in the self-help section of a big chain bookstore... only the title is Al Azif. 😂