I recently picked up a used paperback copy that has a red cover with black lettering (same font as the original hardcover) and a cut-out hole in the cover that lets the picture on an inside splash page show through.
The hole shows a temple with a mushroom cloud rising up in front of its doors.
The entire splash page (when you open the cover) is a two-page work that combines the graphic that shows through to the cover with black and white photographs of WWII, one of which is a larger nuclear explosion. The splash page is dominated by an American sailor chastely standing behind a Japanese woman in a western style dress looking back over her shoulder at the sailor.
Copyright date is 1988.
The sailor doesn't look much like Fabio.
Is this the original paperback?
In any case, the plain red cover with the temple and the mushroom cloud looks snappy. I certainly like it better than the draft graphic in the OP. Too bad they can't use a different one.
-Wapitikev
Axioms Jack seems to live by (inadvertantly or not):
Why he does what he does: "I chose this life. I know what I'm doing. And on any given day, I could stop doing it. Today, however, isn't that day. And tomorrow won't be either." Bruce Wayne, Identity Crisis
On Rasalom: "Water's wet, the sky is blue...and good old Satan Claus, Jimmy...he's out there...and he's just gettin' stronger." Joe Hallenbeck, The Last Boyscout