Monte Beauchamp’s book, Popular Skullture is a refreshing look back at the early days of mass culture print publishing, when skulls still evoked a sense of the macabre. Skulls are no longer scary symbols of death, poison, or motorcycle outlaws. As design elements they are so popular now that they appear on baby clothing. They’ve become kind of boring, because they’ve lost their punch.
Apart from a couple of short introductory pieces at the beginning, the book consists entirely of skull-themed cover art from pulp magazines, comic books, and paperback novels. With an eye for the imaginative, Beauchamp has selected covers that make clever, odd, and funny use of skulls.
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