Jan 09
Joachim Comments: Doing the fish dance! Steps: 1) make sure you have a fish head, 2) limp wrists, 3) and a steady gurgle.
Published 1973
Joachim Comments: Doing the fish dance! Steps: 1) make sure you have a fish head, 2) limp wrists, 3) and a steady gurgle.
Published 1973
January 9th, 2013 at 9:35 am
Did the fish just happen to be swimming by his head at that moment?
January 9th, 2013 at 10:09 am
I note once again the use of bubbles to prove we are underwater. As if the fish and its spongiform undersea colleagues were not enough.
January 9th, 2013 at 10:16 am
It’s weird, it looks like he’s wearing trousers but he isn’t.
January 9th, 2013 at 11:09 am
Pity that fish is obscuring his vision. Otherwise he’d be able to see the sea urchin that will presently meet his toes.
January 9th, 2013 at 12:07 pm
I see Robert Griffin III posed for this one post-injury. 🙂
And, in a few weeks’ time, NO-ONE will get that joke!
January 9th, 2013 at 3:08 pm
So, it’s about a guy with terrible grammar?
January 9th, 2013 at 4:05 pm
If this was the cover of some obscure French re-print of ‘Sailor on the Seas of Fate’ it would be perfect.
January 9th, 2013 at 4:07 pm
[sings] ‘You can dance if you wannoo, you can leave your fish behind/Coz your fish don’t dance and if they don’t dance then they’re/No fish of mine.’
January 9th, 2013 at 4:53 pm
Finding bad Moorcock covers is like shooting fish in a … oh, wait.
January 9th, 2013 at 9:34 pm
Cover also used for the book HOW MANKIND WILL SURVIVE GLOBAL WARMING: A Radical Transformation Proposal.
January 9th, 2013 at 11:16 pm
This is what happens when Mr. Bean goes deep sea diving.
January 9th, 2013 at 11:22 pm
I have got to know if that cover has anything to do with the contents.
January 10th, 2013 at 1:12 pm
The positioning of his hands worries me more than anything else. It’s as if naked fish-hat man thinks he’s Jimi Hendrix but playing an inverted air-piano.
January 10th, 2013 at 1:34 pm
James Bond notwithstanding, the English clearly don’t make very good assassins.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:25 am
Well, he’s dancing with the fishes, isn’t he?
I don’t recall any fish-men in The English Assassin, but it’s Moorcock so odd things are likely to be happening in the corners when you aren’t looking.
January 12th, 2013 at 1:23 am
Okay then. WTF? Really? I mean…WTF? Either someone believes so strongly in Mr. Moorcocks writing abilities and name cache that nothing can possibly deter readers. Or….his publisher would like to see him a drooling, babbling madman on the dole, waving copies of this book about screaming “You see this? I WROTE THIS! And THIS is the COVER they put on it! Rotten miserable..mumble, drool, stagger..”
January 12th, 2013 at 1:51 am
I know this was published forty years ago, and Mr. Moorcock survived this attempt on his sanity, but surely it must be nice to have the occasional copy of your back catalogue sell…rather than, say, showing up here?
January 12th, 2013 at 7:37 pm
Oh, those are bubbles. At first glance I thought fish-head was getting his yummy pellets.
January 15th, 2013 at 12:07 am
I love how he looks like he’s about to seriously punt that urchin!
January 20th, 2013 at 12:32 pm
@Tat Wood. Nonsense. You just don’t understand the fine art of underwater assassination, English style. There you are, happily scuba-diving… when up to you dances a naked man with a fish for a head. While you are still paralysed with astonishment, he deftly and with unerring aim kicks a sea-urchin at you. Its spines pierce your wetsuit, injecting you with poison. You die. Assignment complete.
January 30th, 2013 at 8:44 pm
I think the English Assassin is the fish – it seems to assassinate people by dragging them into water and sitting on their heads
February 1st, 2013 at 3:47 pm
Editor: What?? His name is Morecock? Ok listen closely, we need to distract the reader, yes. Take his mind off the name. Yes. Ok listen up you troglodytes, I want an anorexic male, without genitalia, oddly short lower legs, no toes, bad shading and yellowish skin. Give him the head of a red snapper. Have him dancing the chicken dance and having an orgasm, frollicking around some underwater shrubbery and 4 (you listening) only 4 air bubbles!!
Yes Man #1: Genius, sir, sheer genius!!
Yes Man #2: I want to have your babies sir!!
Editor: (wipes brow) ok one problem averted. Now give me that copy of Alotta Fagina’s new book, I am on a role.
December 5th, 2013 at 8:44 am
Due to a misunderstanding by a Hollywood producer who had never read anything by Moorcock (or any book other than the TV Guide), the movie rights to this book were bought for 2 million and we’ll soon see this trailer:
“She was a woman yearning for the sea… he was a man of the sea. Paraplegic Pictures presents an Anthony Minghella film… Julia Roberts… Hugh Grant… THE ENGLISH ASSASSIN.”
January 22nd, 2015 at 1:10 am
THE ENGLISH ASSASSIN DANCE!
January 23rd, 2015 at 12:25 pm
@Tat Wood: Great. Now I want to see someone lift a piano and play it behind his back. Good luck ever seeing anyone do that.
“The 2013 winner of the Movers’ Guild Annual Naked Underwater Marathon was a man wearing a fish on his head for a scuba gear. (later disqualified for having lost his piano)”
April 17th, 2015 at 3:44 am
Given the surreal and to my mind incomprehensible nature of this book, the cover may be totally accurate for all I know.
August 27th, 2015 at 12:35 am
Fishman looks like he’s doing a little-kid airplane run. Not that that adds to the [in]sanity of this cover.
August 10th, 2016 at 1:40 pm
The recovered ‘Underwater Menace’ #2, however, does serve to rehabilitate this cover’s cheesy reputation.
August 11th, 2016 at 5:56 pm
FWIW, the English assassin, Jerry Cornelius, has spent a couple of years under the sea, comatose in a sarcophagus, at the start of the story. He has staring eyes like a mad gull though, not a puffer-fish head.