If
one shouldn’t trust a book by its cover, we can say too that every book cover
has its own unique story. Having published two books with UPM, I can attest to
that fact.
For
my first, Komiks: Comic Art in Russia
, I simply sent in several color reproductions by the artists I was
examining in the text, and the press’ production staff took it from there. They
delivered a colorful, striking design.
For
my second, Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Ageand Beyond, things started more straightforward but wound up much
more convoluted. The study, as clear from the title, scrutinizes the
representation of death and disability in mainstream superhero comics from the
late 1950s to 1993, a period when numerous series, characters and storylines
reflected egalitarian post-war social change in the USA, including the death
with dignity movement, the rise of hospice, and the emergence of disability as
a civil rights issue.
I
knew right off the bat I wanted an image of the French artist Gilles Barbier’s
installation Nursing Home (L’hospice,
2002) for the cover. The study begins with a discussion of that piece, with its
aged costumed figures wasting away in an institution, as a wonderful example of
the metaphorical use of the superhero body for a national critique. As my
University of Washington colleague Kathleen Woodward puts it in an upcoming
article, Nursing Home “brilliantly
captures this view of America as an exhausted power, its once famed superheroes
now old and tired and incapacitated.” Though not a work of comics, the
installation struck me as one of the most remarkable pieces I’d found in my
research, and the perfect entry point for the very questions regarding
mortality, debility and ideology which I wanted to explore.
 |
| Nursing Home |
So,
when the time came to decide on a cover image, I explored the possibility of
getting the rights to reproduce Nursing
Home. Barbier’s work had made a splashy debut on these shores as part of
“The American Effect: Global Perspectives on the United States: 1990-2003,” a
2003 exhibit at New York’s Whitney Museum of international artists’ responses
to the USA after 9/11. Since then, I discovered, Barbier had sold the piece to the
Collection Martin Z. Margulies in Miami. I reached
them, and they agreed to my use of the piece, though they also informed me they
did not own the copyright; I would have to contact the artist.
Thereupon I wrote the Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie
Vallois in Paris, which represents Barbier. When they seemed to be taking too
long to respond, I asked an old friend in Paris to call them up. That did they
trick: they apologized for misplacing my e-mails and in short order let me know
that Barbier agreed to let me reproduce a photograph of the installation. His
and the gallery’s only price: copies of the book once it came out. Great news!
But
then, another snag: the images the gallery sent me all seemed inadequate in one
way or another: too far away, uninteresting angles. After all, they had used
these pictures to document the piece, not to fashion attractive visuals that
would hold their own in and of themselves. I needed something like the
photograph I had seen in “American Cheese,” a 2003 review of the Whitney show
by Mark Stevens, published in New York
magazine. That article listed the photographer’s name: Tim McAfee.
 |
| Nursing Home |
One
pretty easy internet search later, I had McAfee’s phone number but no e-mail
address. So I just cold-called him. I no longer recall if he answered right
away or I left a message, but in any case we soon got in touch. He graciously
agreed to let me have the rights to reproduce his image of Nursing Home for free.
Voila! I had my dream
cover.
Sadly,
despite that success, I do need to end this post on a sour note. Due a
production error, readers of both the hardcover and paperback versions of Death, Disability and the Superhero: The
Silver Age and Beyond will find
nowhere a credit as it should have appeared: “Copyright
Gilles Barbier. Thanks to Collection
Martin Z. Margulies. Photo by Tim McAfee.”
These very accommodating, generous people deserve that
credit; this post, I hope, at least sets the record straight. After all, many still
compliment my second book’s cover to this day. These generous folks made it
happen.
P.S.
Instead of Nursing Home, I did at one
point muse on Sacha Newley’s portrait of Christopher Reeve (2004), a discussion
of which close Death, Disability and the
Superhero, for the cover. Those
reproduction rights, owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, I obtained
very easily, quickly and for free.
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