Illinois

Divya Srinivasan's artwork for Illinois came through an unlikely connection: she had illustrated Sufjan Stevens for The New Yorker, he saw it, and reached out asking her to create the album artwork while she was living in Chicago.

Srinivasan's detailed illustration combined Illinois iconography with whimsical, densely layered imagery — Abrahamand Mary Todd Lincoln, the Sears Tower, Al Capone smoking a cigar, Black Hawk, UFOs, and Superman flying over the Chicago skyline. Superman's inclusion referenced Metropolis, Illinois, which officially declared itself the superhero's hometown in 1972.

The Superman controversy began before release when Asthmatic Kitty's own lawyers flagged potential copyright concerns. Contrary to widespread reports, DC Comics never sent a cease and desist letter. Asthmatic Kitty proactively asked retailers to hold sales on June 30, 2005, while they contacted DC directly. DC handled the situation graciously, allowing existing inventory to be sold while requesting Superman's removal from future pressings. The first 5,000 vinyl copies featured balloon stickers covering Superman before he was removed entirely from later versions, creating multiple cover variations.

The illustration rewards close looking in a way few album covers do. Srinivasan's style — intricate line work, flat washes of color, a folk-art sensibility that sits somewhere between children's book illustration and broadsheet woodcut — carries the weight of the album's ambition without announcing it. The cover doesn't frame Illinois as a place so much as a mythology, every figure and landmark given equal visual standing regardless of historical scale. Al Capone and Abraham Lincoln occupy the same illustrated world as UFOs and a fictional superhero, which is more or less exactly what Stevens was doing musically — treating the mundane and the mythic as continuous.

For the 10th anniversary edition in 2015, Srinivasan replaced Superman with Blue Marvel, a Chicago-born Marvel Comics superhero, for whom Asthmatic Kitty properly obtained permission. The album won the PLUG Independent Music Award for Album Art and Packaging of the Year in 2006, and Paste Magazine ranked it seventh among the decade's best album art.