It doesn’t often happen, but sometimes a certain magazine, book or comic cover will catch my eye, and make it inevitable that I’ll have to buy the item (something which might surprise you, given how often I post lengthy rants about derivative book covers, but it’s true).

Just the other day, the cover to the current New Yorker magazine, pictured here, did just that; I’ve don’t live in New York, I’ve never read the magazine before, and all I know about it is that it has a reputation for very rarely having typos or grammatical errors – something which I have no problem with, but it did make me wonder if the magazine might be rather self-regarding or austere to read.

I know what you’re wondering: is it? And I say in reply to your thought-question: I don’t know, to be honest. I bought the magazine the other day, and I’ve briefly skimmed it a couple of times (it seems to contain short pieces by Nabokov and Murakami, which isn’t exactly shabby), but I keep being drawn back to the cover, which I think is a wonderful bit of art (you may need to click on the image to get the full effect).

It’s by Adrian Tomine, who I know does comics work as well (as does Chris Ware, who also does covers for the same magazine). I don’t think I’ve read his comics work, but whatever I’ve seen of his art has always appealed to me for its clean lines and nicely-drawn people; you can see many more of his illustrations – including some more on book-reading themes which were also New Yorker covers – on his website, by clicking here.

I don’t have any particularly searing insight to offer here, but I just wanted to share some art which I thought was elegant and attractive. Hope you like it as much as I do.

[The image above is, of course, © copyright Adrian Tomine 2008.]

*I know that doesn’t make sense, but blame ABC, not me, okay?