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Diabolus by David St. John (Fawcett Crest, 1972)

Contributed by Christopher Bentley on Jan 15th, 2022. Artwork published in
July 1972
.
Fawcett Crest T1725. Cover art by
Source: www.flickr.com Ron & Sandra Lightburn. License: All Rights Reserved.

Fawcett Crest T1725. Cover art by Jeff Jones

After having made an at-the-time unique font use submission for Davison Arabesque where there is a mixed-case use thereof for Of Course You Can Sew! by Barbara Corrigan, I am in the very fortunate position to be able to make a second submission for this font in mixed cases, with the very kind permission of Ron Lightburn at the Sandra & Ron Lightburn site.

The title is set in yellow and in all upper case, admittedly. However, the name of the author, and the word “by” before that is in white and thankfully also in mixed cases.

The rest of the text on the cover appears to be set in Helvetica, going by the upper case G at the beginning of the word “Gripping”.

[More info on ISFDB]

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  • Davison Arabesque
  • Helvetica

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3 Comments on “Diabolus by David St. John (Fawcett Crest, 1972)”

  1. Thank you, Christopher!

    This David St. John is not identical with the poet of the same name who was born in 1949. The author of this book rather is E. Howard Hunt (1918–2007), a CIA officer who used several pseudonyms for his writings, including David St. John. Looks like he was an awful person: Hunt was involved in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état and the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. As one of the Nixon administration “plumbers”, he plotted the Watergate burglaries and other clandestine operations. For the latter, he was convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping, eventually serving 33 months in prison.

  2. Oh dear! Somebody with several not-exactly-finest-hours!

    Never mind, in my typical leg-bone-connected-to-the-etc. sort of way would you believe that all this connects with a couple of my contributions to Fonts In Use, specifically the covers for The Young Generation and The Best Of The Young Generation.

    When my older brother was getting together a book about all things 1972, it being a very significant year for him in many ways, I gave him some help regarding those personal recollections and – because he was away on his own at the time – I could tell him about a funny recollection of mine of a summer Saturday evening at my aunt’s house, where I recall seeing Argent in a Pop programme whose name I’d forgotten. This was, thanks to the excellent site TV Pop Diaries, the very short-lived show 2 Gs And The Pop People, specifically the edition (24th June) that went out as the Pop singer, Helena Vondráčková, was celebrating her 25th birthday away in Czechoslovakia, Helena Vondráčková being Valérie Čižmárová’s predecessor at the Divadlo Rokoko.

    The title of the show was based on Dougie Squires’ second all-dancing, all-singing act to follow on from the aforementioned The Young Generation, Second Generation.

    One week earlier, on the edition that went out on the day of the Watergate break-in, Slade made something of a ground-breaking performance of “Take Me Bak ’Ome”, where some of the Second Generation troupe imitated the members of the group. I love the one ‘being Don Powell’ (the Drummer)! I think it was one of the many ‘Lindas’ of the troupe, Linda evidently being a very popular name for young ladies at the time!

  3. I thought I had a screenshot from the opening titles to 2 Gs And The Pop People showing the ‘Linda’ whom I thought was that dancer next to Don Powell!

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