Cover painting for our second Ren and Stimpy paperback book collection, from 1993.

The story here was that one of the Marvel editors wanted to call the book "Tastes Like Chicken" and got the okay from his boss to do a die-cut cover. The idea was to cut a bite out of every cover to make it appear as though Stimpy himself bitten it. I painted the cover, and drew a drawing of the bite that was to be taken out of each cover, so the people who would make the die could use it as a guide. The die was in fact made and everything was going as planned...

...That is, until some Marvel flunkey saw a die-cut proof of the cover, and then checked to see if the pre-order catalog mentioned a die cut cover. It didn't. So the flunky actually called the printer to tell them not to use the die-cut, and they didn't. So the books went out without the bites, thereby null-and-voidifying the joke. That's show biz!

Like some of the other old covers, the characters were painted on a sheet of acetate, and the acetate shrunk over the years. After some reconstructive surgery in Photoshop, I present it here for your amusement.