Chris Ware‘s finished rejected cover for Fortune magazine.
Click the image to see it larger, you can probably guess why. It’s filled with little jokes & jabs
(as his work normally does) and awesome.
He accepted the job because it would be like doing the 1929 issue of the magazine, and he filled the image with tons of satirical imagery, like the U.S. Treasuring being raided by Wall Street, China dumping money into the ocean, homes being flooded, homes being foreclosed, and CEOs dancing a jig while society devolves into chaos. (via)
(credit: Comic Beat)
**UPDATE**
This is the cover that made it. Pretty safe.
Those homes aren’t flooded, they’re underwater! *ba dum bum*
$4.99? That is a fortune for that rag. Nice cover, though.
It’s the finest work by Chris Ware I’ve ever seen
Doesn’t he owe a huge debt to Bruce McCall?
Doesn’t Bruce McCall owe a huge debt to…
The problem I’d have with this cover is not that it contains “little jokes & jabs” at corporate American (and the government), but the fact that that’s all it contains. Had maybe 20 or 30 percent of the little illos been jokes, I think everyone has enough of a sense of humor to handle it. But by making the whole thing anti-corporate, it does make it look like Fortune commissioned something with the specific purpose of jabbing corporations, and then everyone things, “What’s with that?,” and that becomes the story, not the 500 list, and the focus of the issue is lost.
They should have had eBoy do the illustration. http://eboy.com/
I hope they run through all my favorite illustrators. I want to see some different interpretations. Al Columbia perhaps?
I think the problem is that the number 500 doesn’t read that well at a glance. That’s the branding for this issue. It needs to pop out of the visual cacophony of the newsstand.
But that is what Chris Ware’s illustrations are. It sounds more like Fortune didn’t research his work well enough to know that.
Just look at his New Yorker covers, they are all a sarcastic response to our culture:
http://laughingsquid.com/the-new-yorker-thanksgiving-covers-by-chris-ware/
http://laughingsquid.com/the-new-yorker-halloween-cover-by-chris-ware/
I like the final cover. Straight out of 101 Cool Photoshop Type Techniques.
Why does it say “soo” over Canada?
Maybe Fortune magazine rejected this cover because it’s just not that good. Ware’s New Yorker work is subtle, mischevious, and true. I particularly like the composition of the 2006 New Yorker Thanksgiving cover, and the marvelous colors of the 2009. They’re great! I just don’t think the Fortune cover compares. That it’s anti corporate America is just icing on the cake.
If the cover had prominently included Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and a few alphabet soup agencies, who are far, far more to blame for the financial crisis than Wall Street — though Wall Street is certainly not innocent — it would have been perfect, and quite a bit more accurate.
Gregory: I agree — all those poor people who were given huge mortgages and are now living in the gutter should be thrown in jail, not the bankers. Why, I heard you personally had to downsize your new car purchases this year — you couldn’t quite swing a pair of Lambos and had to settle for a couple of BMW 7′s. Who do these brown people think they are, anyway? Not to worry, though, Obama’s economic team is the same one that made you rich, so you’ll be back in the cash in no time.
Bobbery: You’re right, of course! I’ve always felt that loaning money to random strangers without so much as asking their shoe size was a smart way to make money. That’s why it’s been done that way in the banking industry for hundreds of years. I’ve never really understood why bankers have a reputation for being “stingy”.
Here’s the recipe, genius. We have a carrot and a stick. The stick was provided by the government. It said to the banks: Loan money according to racial and income quotas or we’ll make things uncomfortable for you. There were two carrots, actually. The first was implied by the government: we won’t let you fail. The second was provided by Wall Street: credit default swaps and all that nonsense.
However, if government hadn’t distorted the market from the beginning, none of it would have occurred. I don’t absolve Wall Street, but it’s just ludicrous to think they caused this. On what planet has any banker EVER IN HISTORY thought that loaning money to random strangers would produce a good outcome? Never, unless said banker either (a) had no choice or (b) felt that the economic consequences wouldn’t accrue to him or (c) both. And (c) is what generally happened, thanks 75% to our friends in the Federal Government and 25% to those on Wall Street.
Gregory: Then how do you explain the way that almost every western country has also had a real estate bubble and subsequent crash due to the same toxic assets/ credit default swaps issue? I can assure you that Britain and Ireland weren’t telling banks to “loan money according to racial and income quotas” but we still have a massive foreclosure issue going on here (especially Ireland, where the government has been teetering on the brink of collapse for almost a year). The US’s problem was bigger because your system is even less regulated than ours. The only places that seem to have escaped, actually, are those with a heavily regulated housing sector, i.e. Germany.
Interesting, that…
Chris Ware is a freakin’ rock star. I love his work, and kudos for his ballsy satirical cover. The one Forbes went with is ridiculously bland.