Sometimes annotating this stuff surprises me. Here are the original notes for this cover:

Let’s have an “Adventures on High Seas” type of splash-action page, with the gang (w/Best) fighting pirates on the ship against a blue, cloudy sky. We don’t want to give away outright that it’s a flying ship with this image, but it can hint at it.

Well, I sure don’t remember this! It could’ve been my idea or Phil’s, though my lack of memory of it and the allusion to the title of a gaming manual makes Phil the more likely author. If so, there’s a good chance this was vetoed by Erica. In any case, vetoing it was a good call: fighting pirates on the ship against a blue, cloudy sky was pretty much the art that we were going to give them inside the story, so there wouldn’t have been much contrast, and it would’ve completely broken our practice of subtler, more evocative covers, which were better for keeping you all guessing.