Los Angeles-based cartoonist and illustrator Jay Howell — creator of popular zine Punks Git Cut — was working on an animated series called The Forest City Rockers that caught the attention of Fox. They recruited him to create art for their new show Bob’s Burgers , about a family that runs a hamburger joint next to a crematorium. Since then he’s been developing a pilot for Nickelodeon, while also working on a new zine called Dark Wave . Today, however, it’s his drawings on Harlequin novels that got us excited.
The cartoon-style drawings are set on the title pages of the mawkish best sellers, conceptualizing the art-text relationship in funny ways. “I was in a thrift store maybe six months ago and I noticed that the titles in these books were just so funny,” Howell said in a recent interview. “I was doing all these drawings about people reading books with funny titles, [because] I really like making up fake names and fake book titles. Then I saw those books, and it was just so perfect.” Click through to see Howell’s lanky and monstrous characters take over the pages of Harlequin novels in our gallery below.
Image credit: Jay Howell [Spotted via Booooooom]
Image credit: Jay Howell
Image credit: Jay Howell
Image credit: Jay Howell
Image credit: Jay Howell
Image credit: Jay Howell
Image credit: Jay Howell
Image credit: Jay Howell
Image credit: Jay Howell
Image credit: Jay Howell