Last month, Eric Hanson got used to seeing his  artwork on television: John Waters was doing his book tour for “Role Models” and hosts like Letterman and Craig Ferguson were displaying Eric’s perfectly eccentric hand-lettered cover for the TV audience to see.

“Stephen Colbert took issue with the cover art, which is in pencil,” Eric tells us. “I think he complained that it was ‘too white.’ Mr. Waters explained that it was by a ‘very famous illustrator named Eric Hanson.’ Which is when my phone began to ring.”

“I especially liked it when Waters described the drawing style as that of a neurotic 8-year-old." Neurotic, perhaps, but utterly sophisticated. Susan Mitchell art directed, elegantly, for Farrar Straus.