The Art of Rhesus A. Macaque

The Adventures of Rhesus A. Macaque, P.I. inspired years of cover iterations for the various stories or story sets as they were separately published. All of that is OOP now but the world would be worse off without a place to see the climactic results. Welcome to The Art of Rhesus A. Macaque, featuring an array of inspired and astonishing covers from Daniel G. Mawyer's Mad Dog University Press. MDU Press has a history of its own ...

'Permission to Come Aboard' references the circumstances that unwittingly led Reese to join the British Navy's only remaining thermonuclear railgun carrier, H.M.S. Calpis. Reese's dad is also visualized for the first time, in a strikingly accurate portrait.

The 'Macaque Sleuth', as some call him, should go to Mars. I'm convinced, and this is the cover for Marooned if that were to happen.

Of course Reese would unhesitatingly disguise himself as a British Admiral.

Here we see the cover of The Complete Macaque, which actually exists now, but with a different cover and a different title, which is utterly characteristic of these slippery characters. We note the shadowy figure of Reese's partner, Guy Poisson, wearing his best Venetian carnival mask. Guy's actual appearance is not intended for the public gaze. All the best detectives go undetected. A private investigator with a well-known face would be hampered in his investigations, and maybe dragged to the waterfront and tossed in. The waterfront is never far away in the world of Reese Macaque.

Lady Akari's Sake Jar is the most elaborate and deadly case in Reese's long career, and in my opinion as a horribly well educated anonymous critic, the best written. Many things do not exist, but this cover exists and its sparse yet urgent details convince us that we want to read this, probably on an airplane, as soon as we can find it.

Yet another of the great Macaque pulps, published in Uqbar as a major hron and then adapted for the big screen in multiple dimensions as a record-setting GenkiVision audience blockbuster.

Does Macaque ever cooperate with the official police? Yes, he does when he has to, but only for the better good... and the better good is never good for real perps.

Here we have the cover for the sequel to The Complete Adventures of Rhesus A. Macaque. As pointed out in a footnote by the late critic DeQuincy Smith, the Complete Adventures mysteriously does not say what happens to Guy Poisson after Rhesus is forcibly exiled to Paris by the Knights Templar. But... do we already know without having to ask? Perhaps we do. The Prefecture de Police in Paris would not leave Guy Poisson freelancing on the street for very long. Some startling promotions in Guy's future... but of course, Guy was always at his finest in cases of regional and national importance, especially when very quiet diplomacy was needed.

The best for last. I don't know what to say... except when I look at this portrait, I see myself. All I could be. Adrift in an empire of signs.

The Classics

We are back in the real world again. Below are two covers The Adventures wore in various paperback editions. If Renfield in his padded cell ever gives up flies for Macaque versions, the rarest of all would be any two copies that matched. But all the earlier variants wore one or another of these two covers. The first is inspired by the mad imagination of Atlanta writer Greg Dobrazs. I think of it as the Dobrazs cover.

The most recent cover, for at least two text variants. Done by Alexander and Pohakea Mawyer, it's moody and thoughtful and would also work extremely well for Thus Spake Zarathustra or any of Nietzsche's other works. It catches the wholesome seriousness and basic decency of all Macaque's adventures, as well as the fearless and inquiring analytic mind of the great foundational nihilist.

There are other unused Macaque covers and this is the place to acknowledge the fun had with them, but we have probably reached a point ...

Co-author Edward G. Mawyer, in Macaque's younger days. I owe this guy for the climactic book of my 5+ decades as a writer, because he created Macaque. A debt I can never repay in cash or kind, but where the Adventures are concerned there you go.

Another iteration, never used. This one similarly belongs on Twilight of the Gods or The Genealogy of Morals, but with different lettering of course.