Book Cover Illustrations

For decades The Sun supermarket tabloid has been a familiar sight for those standing in checkout lines at Wal-Marts, grocery stores, and other businesses. Owned by American Media (also the owner of The National Enquirer and the non-defunct Weekly World News), The Sun regularly carried stories that were sensational and (let’s be truthful now) far-fetched if not outright concoctions. Toward that end, the masthead of many issues included the disclaimer that readers should “suspend belief for the sake of enjoyment.”

But the sensational stories did provide a lot of laughs from the skeptical and perhaps a few frights for the more accepting.

As one might expect in looking over my artwork, some of my illustrations seemed well suited for the magazine’s stories. Not surprisingly then, about a decade ago I was contacted by art director Susan Chapel who asked about the possibility of using my artwork in their magazine. I was just starting in the illustration business, and taking on The Sun (as well as the Weekly World News which was still publishing at that time) as clients was a godsend.

Working with the publications did have a few surreal moments, and often it seemed that reality had parted to give me a glimpse into some alternate universe where bat boys lived in the attic and Aunt Edith had been given a ride home in a UFO. It was not rare to find myself in a very matter-of-fact discussion of what was needed in the way of aliens, werewolves, or other creatures to be covered in an upcoming story.

Once the surreal took a deadly turn; in 2001 photo editor Robert Stevens who worked with pictures submitted both to The Sun as well as Weekly World News became the first victim of the anthrax attacks that occurred that year (many think that American Media was targeted due to a less-than-complimentary story did about Saddam Hussein).

I’m sad to report that last week I got a call from Art Director Susan Chapel telling me that The Sun would be going out of business, much as had with its sister publication Weekly World News a few years earlier. It was an end of an era for both the print industry as well as for me.

Recently looking through the collection of illustrations I’d sent to American Media for use in its publications, I was struck by just how strange some of these pictures are — and decided to do some sharing of the better ones. So without further ado, here are a few of the illustrations I created for both The Sun as well as Weekly World News.

First those aliens and their spacecraft:

Of course demons and Satan were represented in a few stories:

Skeletons were surprisingly common — sometimes in roving bands, and once with Satan (himself armed with a submachine gun and with a face looking suspiciously like that of the artist):

Occasionally the stories proved dead on, such as one about romances developing over the Internet as well as one about how airport security might become very obtrusive in the future (basically leaving passengers “naked” due to new invasive equipment). Today those stories don’t seem so far-fetched.

A few pictures seemed seriously warped. I’m not sure what the stories were about as I didn’t have access to the tabloids. But perhaps the speculation is nearly as much fun.

And a few illustrations with death and things that had risen from the grave:

I had a lot of fun creating artwork for the wild and wooly stories appearing in these tabloids. My encounters of the strangest kind with The Sun (and the folks working there) will be sorely missed.

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Artist Duncan Long creates magazine and book illustrations. You can see more of his artwork in his Illustration Portfolio