Friday, December 05, 2008

The Ugly Covers Archive & Caption Contest

If you grew up in the 80's and 90's, your library would have looked very different. And not just because of the changes in technology, collections, and architecture that we've implemented over the last couple of decades, but because of the covers. Book covers.

They were ugly. Those book covers were so ugly that their shadows were ashamed to be seen with them. They were so ugly that they weren't just hit with the ugly stick, they got the whole log dropped on them.

We've compiled the most ridiculous of the ugly covers, from the terrible watercolor artwork to the awful 90s designs, so that we can all... make fun of them. Every Friday, we'll be presenting you a new cover from the archive and asking you to caption it. We'll hand-pick the funniest from the comments and feature them on the blog.

Okay, first up: Captain Hawaii, by Anthony Dana Arkin



We'll kick things off with some staff captions:

"Not spiders, not bullies, not even a barcode can stop... CAPTAIN HAWAII!" ~Joseph
"Captain Hawaii: Captain America's Mid-Life Crisis Baby" ~Holly
"brb i haz a waterfall in mah pantz" ~Karen
"Spiders and sharks... OH MY!" ~Cat

What do *you* have to say? Let us know in the comments, and see if you can get featured in the next edition of the "Ugly Covers Archive"!

~Joseph
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Main

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The cover for Chain of Fire is pretty awful.
The one where they're all raising their fists in the air?
Katie and I captioned that as "Raise your hand if you're on crack!"

Anonymous said...

Not even Captain Hawaii is impervious to the unflattering effects of high-waist pants.