Chew #5: Take a Close Look, There’s a Brilliant Inside Joke on This Cover
I always get excited when I get to see a preview of a Rob Guillory cover illustration, unlike so many other artists his work always features a wonderful sense of humor (and he’s not afraid to get cartoony). But when I came across the cover of Chew #5 I was a bit let down once I started out of the box: I mean yeah there’s a cannibalism joke, but it’s not that funny and the picture is a bit stark. But then I looked just a tiny bit closer, and what I found made me realize that this was perhaps the best Guillory cover to date:
The first thing you start to focus on is the ear, it seems kind of an odd choice given the bloody hands on the opposite side of the table. But then you think, wait if it’s not his fingers but his ear — where did it come from? At that point my eyes darted up to the mirror, and there was a self portrait of Rob Guillory. The fact that it’s in a mirror is a play on the idea of self portrait, but it’s also a well known reference the famous Norman Rockwell self portrait which shows the artist looking into a mirror.
But then I got the real inside joke within a joke: Guillory was also making a reference to Vincent van Gogh who painted a series of self portraits which featured his missing ear. Even funnier yet (not for van Gogh but for us) he cut off his own ear in a fit of rage — and in a sense Guillory has done this to himself in a virtual manner.
To me this is the best cover I’ve seen all year…