Clayton Cubitt, ‘Join Or Die’ 2007
At which time I wrote:
“Here’s my cover for the limited edition of the brilliant Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis.
Warren’s perhaps one of the most influential comic book creators working today, having created the infamous series Transmetropolitan. He also has a legion of hardcore socially maladapted fans spread out across the internet, following his every word with cult-like attention. Space monkeys to his Tyler Durden, so to speak. They get tattoos of his work, and dress like his characters, and when he asks them to do things for him they do it (the way true fans should work, people).
He’s also, like me, infatuated with the kind of scab-picking of perversions that the internet enables. We share the most horrible links we can find with each other, in a game of one-upsmanship to see who can make the other blink first. Usually neither of us does, so it can get pretty bad.
So, when it came time for me to create the cover I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to reference the cover of the mass-market edition’s use of Ben Franklin’s Join Or Die snake with an infamous internet image, Daddy Fucked Me, which plays into Warren’s interest in extreme body modification and net perversion, and his fans tendency to go too far for him. Almost as if a deranged fan loved his book so much he carved its cover graphic in his arm, and then we used that for the cover.
So it works on several levels for me. One, I just think it’s a strong image, and carries heavy symbolism related to the book’s dystopian but perversely admiring view of America, and how hardcore the Founding Fathers were. The fact that it plugs into Warren’s interests (and mine) and comments on his fan base at the same time, while still being such a simple image, makes me happy.”
Some people loved it, some people hated it, at the same time.