October 2016
I’ve never, ever been satisfied with the original covers of the Alcatraz books.
The original American covers were misfires. Though I like the illustrator, the direction the publisher had him take for the books just never worked. They were a busy CG and photography mashup that ended up looking like a collage.
However, I understand their difficulty in trying to figure out how to capture these books. Publishers around the world have tried all kinds of tactics, and none have ever really clicked. The problem is that the books are an epic adventure comedy mix, and that’s hard to convey without looking silly. Many countries take one of two approaches. Either they just put abstract symbols on the cover, kind of avoiding the issue, or they try to make them look like Brandon Sanderson epic fantasy novels—which I think is unfair. Readers need to know going into these books that they’re intended to be lighthearted.
That’s why I like Tor’s take on these so much, painted by Scott Brundage. The following images are, for the first time, covers that capture the feel of the books. Explosive, fun, but also decidedly strange. After we got the first few sketches, I knew we were heading somewhere incredible.
Getting good covers was a primary goal for these reissues, but there was more we wanted to do. These books practically scream for interior illustrations. So we contacted Hailey Lazo, an illustrator who had done some Alcatraz fanart we liked online. She sent us some sketches and we fell in love with them, immediately hiring her for the project.
Each of these books is packed with drawings of characters, places, scenes. Many of them are little inserts rather than full page spreads—and they match the tone of the books perfectly. If you have the old editions, you might want to consider an upgrade.
We needed one last piece to make these editions special. In the first book, Alcatraz comes across a map of the world—one that stuns him, as it contains new continents he’d never heard of. Nothing evokes just how bizarre all this is more than seeing it laid out in visual form as a world map, and so it was time to call in Isaac (cartographer for Mistborn and the Stormlight books, among others) to give us his best Alcatraz map.
It has been printed in full color on the inside of the jackets. That’s right—your hardcover book jacket doubles as a poster map of the world. I love this idea, and I would like to try it out for future books like in the Stormlight series. It seems pretty handy to be able to pull off the jacket, set it out, and use the map for reference while reading.
This is only on the print edition, and only on the hardcovers, so give them a look!