Intensive Scares: The Paperback Cover Art of J.K. Potter

Vintage horror fiction fans are well aware of American artist J.K. Potter, born Jeffrey Knight Potter in California on this date in 1956. His macabre photorealistic imagery decorated the covers of dozens of small-press hardcovers, various magazines, and plenty of paperbacks throughout the Eighties and beyond, most often for such genre heavyweights as Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Charles L. Grant, and Karl Edward Wagner, along with many other writers in the fantasy and science fiction fields as well. 

With its surrealistic blending of collage and contrasting elements along with ghostly hues and piercing eyes, Potter's art probably unsettled and attracted as many readers as it repelled! Here is a  sampling of his paperback work:

Horror Fiction Help XXIV

Some recent emails I’ve received from people hoping to find these forgotten horrors. Thanks in advance for helping to ID them! 

1. A children's horror book from the late 80s or early to mid 90s, a collection of short stories. One was about a party of kindergartners who make paper lanterns and march around, disappearing over a hill never to be seen again. Another about a child in a yellow raincoat getting hit by a car. It also included a story about a kid staying home from school "sick" but the sickness was actually that he was a werewolf or something. Found! It's a 1989 Scholastic collection:

2. Cover art: a man sitting down at a table, either with silverware in each hand or eating food, and a pig standing on two legs (possibly dressed in an apron or chef's outfit) holding a butcher's knife behind his back. (ed.—Argh! This one sounds sooo familiar!) Found! It's the 1968 Penguin edition of: 

3. 1970s: Two boys are abducted by a flying saucer, controlled by what seem to be human-sized aliens with an insectoid look. But the kids figure out all's not as it seems: the "aliens" are really evolved ants who have been living underground for ages, and they're using the UFO as a cover story for whatever their real plans might be. I don't remember much else, except that 1. I learned the word "chitin" from this book, and 2. in the scene where the kids first discuss this theory, they know the ants are listening in, so they use a private code where you spell out words with the initials of made-up names (e.g. for "ants" it'd be something like "Remember when we hung out with Amy Nugent and Todd Smith"). Found! It's a 1981 kids' book:

4. Two or 3 young kids (a teen and one much younger I think) visiting an aunt or similar. They take a train, I think, and the woods surrounding the station are covered in nightshade/belladonna. The aunt lives in some kind of old mansion and has a weird man servant/sex demon named Jared or Jarad.

Cool for Cats

When You're Ready We Can Share the Wine

 

Thomas Tessier: The Paperback Covers

Author Thomas Tessier, born on this date in Westbury, CT, in 1947, has long been one of my personal favorite horror writers. One of the first books I reread when I began this blog was Finishing Touches, which I hadn't read since the late 1980s. It's an erotic horror masterpiece, filled with a fatalistic conviction that I find irresistible—and featured a credible mad scientist too. He forayed into the devious mind of a stalker in Rapture and made his shocking sociopathic behavior seem rational. Nightwalker, his second novel, is an ambiguous tale of lycanthropy praised by both Stephen King and Peter Straub. Not too shabby!

 

Tessier's short work was published in many horror anthologies of the late '80s and into the '90s, and these should not be overlooked. Stories like "Food," "Evelyn Grace," "In Praise of Folly," "Addicted to Love," and "Blanca" brim with a wit and fearlessness that is too often absent from horror fiction; they never fail to disturb, provoke, disgust, and chill the reader. And I can't ask too much more from any horror writer than that.

 

 

Jaws Paperback/Movie Preview Booklet

What an unexpected item to add to my collection! I didn't even know this piece of ephemera existed till now: a stapled booklet the size of a mass market paperback that previews the "upcoming" film adaptation of Peter Benchley's massive bestseller from Bantam Books, Jaws. A little edgeworn and torn, it was given to me by crime novelist, journalist, and fellow New Jerseyan Wallace Stroby, who sent me an ARC of his new book with this surprise stuffed inside. 

I forget exactly how Stroby and I met online. Probably through his own blog, maybe when he'd posted his terrific 1990 interview with Clive Barker, which I recalled reading when first published. He'd reviewed some books for Fangoria back in the vintage era, which he mailed to me some years ago (and he included a CD mix of Springsteen rarities too). He told me he picked this up at a bookstore giveaway around 1974 or early 1975. Anyway, enjoy!