Take a trip down Lois Lane

November 3, 2010 in Archives, Magazine covers, Personal promotion | 7 comments

Geeky mag injoke ahoy with the new cover of Gym Class. I’m afraid I might well be to blame.

I’m also responsible for the cover story – the great Mr Lois agreed to a 30-minute interview, for which I scheduled an hour just in case. Two hours in, I’m late for my next meeting, and he’s only got as far as question four.

A few choice excerpts:

“[My school was] the greatest seat of learning since Alexander sat at the feet of Aristotle.”

“Harold called me up and he said, I never saw a cover like this in my life. I said, Yeah, that’s my job.”

“My covers promised a hot shit magazine. If you bought it, and you said, Dull, boring, dull, as you turned the pages, the cover would have been ludicrous.”

“If I had the backing today… I’d do a magazine that would knock you on the goddamn ass, and millions of people would [read] it.”

And just wait till you hear who played second base for Esquire‘s softball team the day that George came to play.

The man can talk, the poor shrinking violet that he is. I’ll post an audio excerpt or two up here soon, to whet appetites while we wait for Gym Class to come back from the printers. Fun.

  3. Gary Cook’s avatar

    Gary Cook on November 5, 2010 at 10:34 am

    It would be really interesting to hear about Mr.Lois would make a singular magazine stand out from the thousands of magazines on sale today. Back in the conservative market where Esquire quickly gained a large market share, a bit of controversy or some clever visual wit was enough to set you apart from the crowd. Not any more though. Those things are standard, if not outmoded. How would Mr.Lois construct a magazine that was so different, and still answer to the marketing and advertising people that now have so much control?

    Looking forward to listening to the excerpts Andrew.

  4. James Kelleher’s avatar

    James Kelleher on November 5, 2010 at 11:54 am

    That cover! Immaculately tasteless; brilliant.

    Gary: I suspect Mr. Lois would tell those people to go fuck themselves. There’s no problem in creating unique cover design for the newsstand, the hitch is in finding editors and publishers who will have the guts to take risks and stand behind them.

  5. Andrew’s avatar

    Andrew on November 5, 2010 at 12:38 pm

    Agreed, James.

    It should be noted that Lois only did the covers for Esquire, and never had to meet the ad sales or publisher teams, nor take the heat for the consequences of his proposals. That responsibility fell to Harold Hayes, the editor who would meet with Lois once a month at the Four Seasons to buy him lunch and tell him the stories for the next issue.

    Still, for a man with no actual publishing experience, he’s not short in self confidence about his abilities. Or about anything else.

  6. Andrew’s avatar

    Andrew on November 5, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    By the way, Lois admits as much about the difference between him and Hayes. I’m paraphrasing from memory right now as I’m traveling and don’t have the interview in front of me, but he said something along these lines:

    “People used to say I had big balls for making these covers. Hayes was the guy with the big balls – he actually printed them.”