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There was some debate as to whether or not this was really a lost wacky, or was intended for some other series. Jay Lynch made several statements to the effect that it is indeed a lost wacky. Below are three Jay Lynch quotes on the matter:
- "Around the time we were parodying magazine covers, we also did parodies of bestselling book covers. But ultimately it was decided that the kids didn't know what the cover of the Godfather and other bestsellers looked like in the first place...so they were never used.
There was also another series that never came out...which was parodies of covers of classic type books like Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island...and Saunders did a dozen or so paintings for that series. But that series didn't have a black border around each image.
This Clodfather is a lost Wacky. There are some others....I think one is of the cover of the Exorcist...
Jay"
- "The magazine covers and the parody book covers were always intended to be Wacky Packages. The Saunders book cover thing with the skeleton on it is one card from a non-wacky series that never came out. If the owner of the art looks at it with a magnifying glass...the skeleton is xeroxed from another painting, and retouched with paint by saunders to fit it into this proposed bookcover series that never came out. The classic bookcovers thing is still ANOTHER series that never came out...and these were not parodies of contemporary bestsellers or genres like diet books. These were parodies of books kids were given to read in school like Treasure Island and Robinson Carusoe. So the imagery wasn't a parody of any particular edition of these books...it
would just be something like a play on the title...and a painting of the new premise created by the play on the title. I don't remember the gags...but say it would be "Robinson Fatsoe"...and the illo would be a fat guy on an island in a Caruso suit.
Jay"
- Regarding the larger size of the board Clodfather is painted on, Jay says: "When Wackies were done, instead of scanning art for printing , the art was photographically color-separated. In order to save money on this, the original wacky art was trimmed to remove as much of the white borders as was comfortable, and rubber cemented to a piece of mounting board with maybe 10 or 12 illos mounted to each board. Then it was photographically separated, and the resulting negatives were stripped into the golden rods which begat the plates which produced the proof sheets. So Clodfather was never trimmed...so we can assume it was never color separated and proofed. But still, it was intended to be a Wacky."
