Kurt Andersen ~ magazines: Spy covers 1986

Spy: the covers

Here are the covers of the 71 issues that Spy published -- from October, 1986, to May, 1993 -- while I was at the magazine.

From the beginning, in order to acquire legitimacy in the media-entertainment complex, we enlisted celebrities and quasi-celebrities to pose as models, and continued doing that for most of the covers we produced -- 36 in all, including those with Carrie Fisher, Tracey Ullman, Elvis Costello, Jay Leno, Wynona Ryder, Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert, Jamie Leigh Curtis and Sharon Stone. My favorites among these include Grandpa Munster & Tama Janowitz "Separated At Birth" (December 1987), Milton Berle in drag (March 1988) Chevy Chase making air quotes (March 1989), Bart Simpson vandalizing the logo (January 1991) and Wayne Newton with Mike Meyers & Dana Carvey (January 1992).

The simple super-close-up crop of a paparazzo's photo of Ivana Trump (May 1989) remains, I think, pretty brilliant. Realistic digital manipulation of existing pictures was newly possible back then, but difficult and incredibly expensive -- the first primitive Photoshop software didn't appear until 1990 -- and probably the best of our giant-computer-generated covers were Ted Kennedy being splashed with water (November 1987), Jerry Lewis & Dean Martin brawling for "Feuds" (November 1988), the pregnant naked Bruce Willis (July 1991), Hillary Clinton as a dominatrix (January 1993) and Bill Clinton as Pinocchio (May 1993).