Monkey Island 2 Cover with LeChuck and Crew — Print & Oil Painting

Read this one from the bottom upwards. Ropes and a rail across the base, a man in a blue coat scrambling backwards at the left, then the great red and green bulk of the zombie in the middle, then his two raised hands, then the lettering, then the night. The eye is walked up the canvas in stages and the pace is entirely controlled.

The figure at the centre is a skull in a hat. Bare bone at the brow and cheek, a black beard hanging in ropes, a broad hat with a skull and crossbones and a gold band, a red coat crusted with buttons and buckles over a wide sash. One hand holds a pin. The other dangles a small doll in a nightshirt with pins already through its head.

The man below is doing what anybody would: leaning away, mouth open, one hand raised. He is drawn small enough to be no threat at all and detailed enough to sympathise with. A monkey clings to the shrouds behind his head.

The paint is thick, warm and old-fashioned, ochre and oxide red under a heavy blue night, with the title lettered in yellow across the top and a painted signature down in the lower left corner. It looks like a paperback jacket from a much earlier decade, which was always the intention. Part of our Monkey island collection. The same scene is repainted in a looser hand in the night version, and the first game's cover is the skull mountain.