One of Us is the Original

A reader pointed this out to us via Twitter this morning.

Here’s the cover of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s One of Us is the Killer, which was released on May 14:

And here’s the cover for Alan Averill’s book The Beautiful Land, which was just released last week:

Dillinger’s album art is credited to Brian Montuori (art direction, ink drawings, handwriting) and Daniel McBride (computer tweaking, assemblage), while the cover Averill’s book is credited to Judith Lagerman — with the caveat that the feather pictures was specifically taken from Shutterstock, an image licensing company. In fact, a very quick search of Shutterstock shows that they have a whole lotta pictures of black feathers. And the feathers on the cover of DEP’s album and the cover of Averill’s book aren’t exactly identical — so it’s entirely possible that this is just a coincidence, or a case of two entities licensing similar images from Shutterstock during the same time frame.

Except… that dripping ink. The ink is not, as far as I can tell, from Shutterstock. Now, again — the dripping ink isn’t in the exact same position on either feather, nor is it identical on either feather. So it could just be a coincidence.

But if it is, well… it’s certainly a STRANGE coincidence, isn’t it?

Discuss your theories as to what the what went down here in the comments section below.