Crunch, Crunch, Crunch

If the brains behind the Streatham & Brixton blog ever decide to expand their series on Bad Book Covers to include magazine covers, then I nominate the Winter 2011 issue of the CJA's Chess Journalist, shown here.

Yes, the CJA's flagship publication has started appearing again after the untimely death last year of its former editor, John Hillery, whose photo graced the cover of the June/Sept 2010 issue of the same magazine. Both of the latest issues are available as PDFs on the index page for the The Chess Journalist (ChessJournalism.org).

Teasing aside, the CJA has been hit hard over the past two years, starting with the death of CJA President Jerry Hanken in October 2009. It's a credit to the new interim editor that the quarterly journal has been published at all, even if he was responsible for that awful cover art -- 'Cover design by Mark N. Taylor' -- with its novel use of chess pieces as teeth. I'd say it's even worse than the Ghostly Fischer Images that I spotted last year.

When it comes to chess art, be careful what you say. One of S&B's posts, Bad book covers XVII, ruffled the publisher's feathers: NEGATIVE COMMENTS ABOUT THINKERS' PRESS INC COVERS.

[Bob Long:] I've said it many times, there are strong chess players out there who know don't know jack about business, any kind of business. And for some reason they criticize the work of others. Better check that plank in your own eye bud before you start looking for the splinter in mine.

Speaking of Thinkers' Press, does anyone know what happened to its blog (thechessmuseum.blogspot.com). The most recent post was dated 3 June 2011.