Flashman Cover Art by Gino d'Achille

“The ideal time to be a hero is when the battle is over and the other fellows are dead, God rest ‘em, and you take the credit.”

In the mid-1980s George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman series was repackaged in the UK with new cover art by Gino d’Achille. The original Flashman artist was Arthur Barbosa, who illustrated nearly every one of the US and UK hardcovers. Barbosa’s Flashy is distinctive (take a look at his first nine covers) but I think d’Achille better captures the spirit of fiction’s greatest cowardly lecher. Sure, some covers are better than others, and I wonder if a couple were painted by other hands following d’Achille’s template. It’s hard to know because the most recent editions skimp on credits. Damned villains! They’ve also photoshopped the original paintings to isolate the Flashy figure, which means you lose sundry nubile breasts and panoramic backgrounds. Ah, I’ll be damned if the publisher is not smothering the old wild ways with their come-to-Jesus hypocrisy! See Tiger and March, which seem to have debuted in the veils of neo-Victorian modesty. Admittedly the revised covers still look pretty damned good, but here are the original d’Achilles in their lusty, unexpurgated glory:

See Gino d’Achille’s portfolio.