GQ cheekily mocks Vanity Fair for its 2018 comedy issue cover featuring a series of phantom limbs

Back in January of this year, Annie Liebovitz’s cover of Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood issue went viral after a dodgy photo edit left Reese Witherspoon with three legs and Oprah Winfrey with three hands. In a celebration of the day Twitter users came together for a good laugh, GQ has pulled inspiration from the blunder for its comedy issue.

Featuring three high-profile comedians – Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae and Sarah Silverman – the cover shows the trio dressed in glamorous dresses, sprawled over each other with phantom limbs appearing all over the place. The star of the show makes an appearance in the form of an extra hand poking out between Sarah Silverman’s legs. Although clearly poking fun at the original Photoshop mistakes, GQ issued an “apology” before anyone could say anything.

“GQ would like to apologise to Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae and Sarah Silverman for the egregious mistakes made in the process of creating the cover for our 2018 comedy issue, the latest in our pantheon of mostly annual love letters to the funniest humans we know” the magazine writes on its website, adding that, “our intention was to celebrate the three super-funny superstars, who are all that is smart and perceptive and riotous and necessary in comedy right now. We deeply regret that the results violated GQ’s rigorous standards of editorial excellence and the laws of nature.”

The publication’s sarcasm only continues as it then goes on to write: “In an effort to ensure that an error of this magnitude never happens again, and because this sounds like the right thing to say, GQ will be conducting a thorough internal audit of our cover-development process.”