We had to smile at this True Detective from October 1975 featuring a man armed with what looks like a rolled up magazine chasing a terrified woman. Perhaps his behavior seems harsh, but hey, you’d be mad too if someone went potty on your new carpet. Despite the silly cover, True Detective was actually a venerable publication that launched back in 1924 as True Detective Mysteries. But after decades of success its audience shrank throughout the ’50s and ’60s as paperbacks and television grew in popularity. This caused both a decline in budget (bye-bye handpainted cover art) and an increase in gimmickry (hello sexualized cover photos). Once True Detective made this shift to photographs, its aesthetics became seriously hit-and-miss. The above cover is a whiff, but you can see an example of a home run here. True Detective finally ceased operations in 1995, by which time it was a shell of its former self. But even at its nadir, it’s worth examining if only for the laugh factor, which means we’ll be sharing more of these ridiculous ’70s covers in the future.
