Cover to cover: the LeftLion team pick six personal favourite covers

#3, February 2005
Artwork by Coverage and SmallKid (Kid30)

Issue three was our first foray into printing in colour, just the cover and back page. As part of the ‘art edition’, we asked a load of local artists to decorate a Hello my name is… sticker and turned those into the cover collage (we still have the originals somewhere).  It nicely represents the collaborative and inclusive approach to how LeftLion was back at the start, and still is now. The issue itself had some amazing interviews: Scorcayzee, Popx, Dilk and Toby Kebbell, amongst others.  It was impossible to imagine at that time where LeftLion would take us.
Al Gilby, Co-Founder

#55, October 2013
Artwork by John Blanche

Games Workshop is a global institution and it’s odd to think their world headquarters is in Lenton. We interviewed their art director John Blanche and he asked to do a cover. We were blown away! Over a beer in Bugman’s bar he told me it was the first piece of work he’d done outside of the Workshop for decades and it was simultaneously about the past and the future, hence the babies with skulls and the Janus masks. We were ten years into LeftLion at the time and it felt prescient. John died earlier this year and will be missed.
Jared Wilson, Co-Founder

#70, August 2015
Artwork by Raphael Achache.

I’ve adored all the covers since I became editor. However, I’m opting for this dystopian 2015 cover which coincided with 1984 coming to the Playhouse. It featured the face of then-editor Ali Emm, wonderfully warped over the novel’s early paragraphs. I love the old scrappy censored masthead and stark monochrome aesthetic. I’d just started writing for LeftLion and reviewed the play. It was bleak, but later that evening I hopped off to the Outstanding In A Field festival (organised by INFL) which was a lovely, weird juxtaposition.
Sophie Gargett, Editor

#80, July 2016
Artwork by Mark Leary

I’ve had the privilege of working with many incredibly talented artists throughout my eleven years at LeftLion, so choosing just one cover feels almost impossible. I could have chosen our beautiful 1920s-style cover from Issue 150, or the one from Issue 88 that always reminds me of the video game BioShock. Instead, I’ve chosen the girl with the umbrella from Issue eighty by Mark Leary. It was the first cover I worked on, and I loved the mix of photography and Photoshop, along with its sense of innocence and playfulness. It later inspired my own cover illustration for Issue 181.
Natalie Owen, Head Designer

#141, November 2021
Artwork by Leosaysays

LeftLion exhibited the infernal macabre with the November 2021 issue cover, making it my favourite.  The artist, Leosaysays, drew on themes of Hell and the Seven Deadly Sins, which was the theme of the issue, making it a ghoulishly unique one. The chaotic vulgarity of this cover makes me reminisce about a morbidly grim interest of my own: macabre periods of history. The depiction of hellish suffering reminds me of the barbarism of the medieval times; whilst the particular detail of the stapled-up face reminds me of the Victorians, their obsession with death, and how they handle their deceased.

Eliza Waddington, Marketing Assistant

#185, July 2025
Artwork by Beth Gillespie

Issue 185 of LeftLion featured an interview with artist Caroline Locke, whose work about Sherwood Forest’s Major Oak tree was on display at Nottingham Castle, so it made sense that the cover should feature a Major Oak-inspired illustration. Derbyshire-based illustrator Beth Gillespie sorted it out for us, and smashed it out of the park, depicting how nature surrounding the tree helped preserve it for centuries. Now that the Oak has sadly died, I like returning to this illustration: for me it just evokes how it feels to relax, on a warm day, in nature, and disconnect from the world.
Caradoc Gayer, Assistant Editor 

See LeftLion's entire back catalogue at leftlion.co.uk.