Master artist Joe Marciniak strikes again — with whimsical cover for new book, “The Roving I”

Joe Marciniak, master artist who designed cover and inside illustrations for "Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates,” has followed up with an incredibly lighthearted front cover for “The Roving I.”

Marciniak self-portrait

The cover features a walking cartoon body of the author, Woody Weingarten, replete with an à-propos pot belly — and uses a real photo for the head, replete with elongated, cartoonish nose. The whimsical illustration represents the tone of many of the 70 favorite columns the writer has selected for the anthology (which he, for fun, refers to as florilegium, a word he admits he’d never heard of until a few weeks ago).

BAIPA, the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association, voted Marciniak’s “Grampy” cover best in the 2021 children’s book category. The fantasy, not incidentally, was co-authored by Weingarten’s granddaughter, who was eight at the time it was written, 70 years different in age.

“The Roving I” contains scores of the writer’s memories — including his partner earning a slot in his Little Black Book, a woman carrying her sister’s “miracle baby” inside her for nine months, and Robin Williams transforming himself into a talking vagina.

Weingarten also wrote a third book, "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer." Details of all three are available on his website, https://woodyweingarten.com.