Cover Art for SCREW #514, by Mary Wagner

Cover Art for SCREW #514, by Mary Wagner, dated January 8, 1979
(special thanks to Walter Dickinson) 

Five SCREW Covers by Sophie Cossette!

July 8, 1996

December 9, 1996

July 28, 1997

January 26, 1998

August 30, 1999

Toronto-based cartoonist Sophie Cossette was kind enough to send me a care package stuffed with her excellent SCREW covers a few months back, and I'm only just getting around to posting them now. How lame is that? 

These beautifully-drawn covers all date from the mid-to-late 1990s, and if there's a common theme, I'd say it's lovely ladies doing nasty things with shellfish, (ten extra points for the severed head of Ron Jeremy!).

Be sure to pick up Sophie's recent book SINEMANIA here!

Will this be my final Goldstein? Cover art for XPOSE Magazine, 2/7/14

Will this be my final Goldstein? 

Cover art for XPOSE Magazine, 2/7/14, art direction by Kevin Hein.

SCREW #478, cover art by Nicola Cuti

SCREW #478, cover art by Nicola Cuti

SCREW #1,370, cover art by Scott Cunningham

Drawn when TV series "The X Files" was at the apex of its popularity, UFO afficionado Scott Cunningham shows us what agents Mulder & Scully get up to in their off hours. 

Issue dated June 5, 1995

FARE THEE WELL, SMUT PEDDLER: Al Goldstein RIP (1936-2013)

Al Goldstein has taken the elevator to the big edit meeting in the sky. 

I'll leave the obit-writing to the professionals.

You'll find those here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/nyregion/al-goldstein-pioneering-pornographer-dies-at-77.html?pagewanted=all

And here: http://observer.com/2013/12/al-goldstein-founder-of-screw-magazine-has-died/

All I have to add is this: Some people rear up in horror at the sight of pornography, and there's not much to be done about that. When considering porn, I think it's important to keep this in mind: some of our greatest artists and writers, (along with countless hacks) have turned to porn in the interest of scraping together a living. What they may have been surprised to discover in porn, (along with a modest paycheck) was artistic freedom. And THAT'S what I owe Al Goldstein.

SCREW #1,349, cover art by Kim Deitch

Collector Thomas Stein recently put in a request to see the one and only SCREW cover drawn by underground comix legend Kim Deitch. It just so happens I have a copy, and here it is! 

I chatted with Kim Deitch about SCREW a few years back. A frequent contributor to '60s hippie papers like the East Village Other, Kim told me that the secret to the success of those publications was that they generally included one or two photos of nude hippie gals. Such photos were guaranteed to pique the prurient interest of curious straights. When Al Goldstein and Jim Buckley launched SCREW in 1968, their strategy was to outdo the hippie papers by cramming the pages of their nascent sex tabloid with oodles of naked hippies in full filthy frolic. SCREW would remain a going concern for nearly four decades, while the East Village Other and its psychedelic brethren evaporated almost as quickly as a DMT trip.

The issue is dated January 9th, 1995. 

SCREW #398, cover art by Wallace Wood

Recently, collector Thomas Stein told me that he'd acquired an issue of SCREW from the mid 70s with cover art by Wally Wood. I started salivating as soon as he described the drawing to me, since this was clearly a Wood cover I hadn't seen before. Tom was kind enough to pay me a visit and let me pull a scan of the cover, which I am now happy to share with all you lovable SCREW Cover Art blog readers. It's SCREW #398, dated October18th, 1976.

SCREW #1,143: Cover art by Sabina Van der Linden

This issue is dated January 28, 1991. I know next to nothing about Sabina Van der Linden, but this cover has always stood out in my memory as one of the strongest 1990s-era SCREW covers I've seen. Any additional info on this artist would be greatly appreciated by your humble archivist! Beaucoup thanks go out to SCREW alum Ken Pastore for sending me this cover, 

(plus a few others that I'll post soon).

Cover Art for SCREW #1716, featuring cover artist Hawk Krall

Here's a late issue of SCREW drawn by Philly cartoonist & chef Hawk Krall. At least I assume that the issue dates from the paper's waning months, since Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes is being chastised in the cover lines. It was Hynes who prosecuted the employee harassment case against Goldstein that drove the final stake into the bloated pornographer's black heart.

This is definitely a pre-bankruptcy issue, published while Goldstein was still in charge, (SCREW #1804 being the first issue of SCREW's brief post-bankruptcy, post-Goldstein period, roughly December 2005-November 2006). I'm guessing that this is a Fourth of July cover, seeing as there's a bigass flag waving proudly behind the big asses.

Dating this issue is pretty much impossible for me, since this cover comes, not from my own moldering archives, but from Hawk's personal collection of SCREW covers. Hawk contributed a wonderful strip to my recent book TYPHON Vol.1, (available here). At a recent TYPHON event, Hawk was kind enough to hand me a disc containing scans of several of his own excellent SCREW covers, as well as some choice selections from SCREW's bygone days. And so, SCREW #1716 is just one of several covers I'll be offering from the Hawk Krall collection in the weeks to come. When you're done looking at SCREW #1716, why not check out Hawk Krall's website? I'm sure you'll enjoy the visit.