About This Cover:
Issue Date: March 2, 2009
On the Cover: Bernie Madoff
Photographer/Artist: Darrow
Bernie Madoff’s historic swindle was one of the biggest stories in New York — and the country — this year. In its March 2, 2009, cover treatment, New York magazine eschewed familiar business-magazine conventions for a bold, daring, and somewhat gruesome depiction of Madoff as the Joker. The artist, Darrow, takes a banal-but-emotional news photo of Madoff and turns its subject into “the grinning, bloodshot-eyed Joker, the diabolical supervillain who delights in terrorizing Batman’s Gotham City,” as the Associate Press described the cover in a story on the economy’s new villains. (The cover ran the Monday after the Academy Awards; the gamble was that Heath Ledger would win and his image would be in the forefront of people’s minds.) The sheer audacity of Madoff’s pathological stunt, plus his inscrutable smile and physical resemblance to the comic-book villain, made the Joker an ideal embodiment of the notorious schemer.
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