Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (special gift edition)
Special gift edition design by Archie Ferguson
I've never been a big fan of the designs for Christopher Moore's books, but the new gift edition is pretty fantastic: faux leather, gold-edged pages, red bookmark ribbon. Forgot to check if the words of Jesus (or Joshua, as he's known in the book) are in red. Buy this book from Amazon.com
Here's the non-special, don't give as a gift edition:
9 comments:
Archie's version is so beyond kitschy that it works wonderfully. Great stuff.
Wow, Archie, I'm jeal.
I like the graphic seriousness of the pun on the first cover, but my heart goes out to the original. It's like Saul Bass Mets your last David Pearson post...
I would shit my pants if I opened a hotel drawer and found the new gift edition of this book calmly sitting there. Literally. And then I would log on to Amazon and get myself a new pair of BVDs...
Ahaha, now I want to place the gift edition of Lamb in the next hotel room I find myself in. :-)
But seriously, though, I love it. A friend and I saw it on the paperback tables at Borders the other day and it instantly grabbed our attention. We would have each purchased a copy if we weren't poor college students. :-D
This fake-Bible concept is a rather blatant rip-off of "The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick-Up Artists" by Neil Strauss.
The Lamb version is actually several years old....before The game I think
pf, your claim is absurd, regardless of which book came first. The idea of a fake Bible has been done plenty of times (see, for example, David Byrne's The New Sins, published by McSweeney's in 2002). In any event, the Neil Strauss book looks to me like a proverbial "little black book," not a Bible.
I like the way Archie Ferguson integrated the interiors with the cover -- the whole thing is done with the appropriate level of obsessiveness. Kudos!
The imitation leather edition of The Lamb (Oct 23, 2007) does not predate The Game, but jose is right of course that the fake Bible thing has been done before. When I first saw the new edition of The Lamb, I immediately thought of The Game (recently acquired), though I should have thought a little harder since I have a copy of The New Sins from a few years ago. The point though is that the concept is not original.
Secondly, jose, I'm not sure that The Game is supposed to look like a little black book, being that the page edges are gold gilt, but again, I could be wrong. The interior design of The Game certainly bears absolutely no resemblance to a Bible and, to me - what with all it's cheezy comic book type illustrations - is at odds with the cover. At any rate, thanks to jose for calling me on my error.
pf, sorry if I came across a bit strong -- the accusation of "blatant rip-off" is thrown around a bit too easily these days, in my opinion. Having had the experience of honestly arriving at an already-done solution, I prefer to give fellow designers the benefit of the doubt. In any event, your response was very gracious.
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