Vintage German Panther Books

(Click any image to see the full scan)

From Bruno Schmidt come several in a series of German Panther paperbacks that mirror American cover art from Gold Medal paperback originals.

MOST of the American titles and authors are copied faithfully in the German books ... except for the first example, which takes the art from Little Sister, by Lee Roberts, and puts it on The Slaughtered Lovelies by Don Stanford.

If you study the pictures carefully, you'll find that the cover art has been reproduced very well ... though not exactly.

The practice of other artists copying cover art from U.S. covers was not at all uncommon during this period. I'm still not sure exactly WHY it was done this way, but the practice occurred extensively with Canadian, British, Australian and German publishers. The covers were artistically copied rather than simply making a photographic copy of the art itself ... or painting an entirely different scene.

Many other Panther covers can be seen in the "Non-US Publishers" section of the website (or the Updates).

All the Panther covers seen here are courtesy of Bruno Schmidt.

The "Little Sister" cover above is courtesy of Paul Eng.