This week's City Paper is extra special to me because it marks the cover debut of my good friend Edward Pettit. (You know Ed, Secret Dead Blog reader. He's the guy who mistakenly believes he lives in the 19th century.) Ed wrote a great profile of George Lippard, Philadelphia's first best-selling author back in the 1840s. But beyond that, you could even say that Lippard was the Pete Dexter of time, stirring shit up in his own penny newspaper on a weekly basis. Far as we know, nobody beat the hell out of Lippard, but he did die young. Oh--you know that whole myth about the Liberty Bell cracking on July 4, 1776? Lippard wrote that, too. But forget my shorthand version. Check out Ed's piece for the real thing.(The cover illo is by CP regular Bill Westervelt, and depicts "Devil-Bug," a nasty creature from The Monks of Monk Hall, Lipppard's best-known novel. I was talking this over with Reseca Glasser, our art director: Doesn't Devil-Bug need to have his own plush doll?)
0 Comments