• by Amy Corr , Staff Writer @MediaPostOTL, September 8, 2008

Do you know Dexter Morgan? If you're unfamiliar with this fictional TV character, pick up one of your favorite magazines and chances are you'll be treated to a full-page introduction.

To promote the third season of the popular Showtime series "Dexter," the network created ads that parody popular magazine covers, using the same typeface and layout as the magazines.

Michael C. Hall, the actor who portrays Dexter Morgan, blood spatter analyst by day, serial killer of murderers by night, is the cover boy of each ad. Ladies, make sure you're seated when viewing these ads. They're that good.

Magazines parodied are Rolling Stone, Us Magazine, GQ, Interview, Esquire, Los Angeles Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Details, Wired, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.

If you can't appreciate the sheer hotness of Michael C. Hall (OK, I'm a huge MCH fan), you can certainly appreciate the copy that accompanies Hall in each ad.

"How to get laid (out on a slab)" and "Bad guys get finished first," are cover lines found on the mock-up cover of Esquire magazine.

Details magazine dons the copy "American Homic-idol" and Rolling Stone copy sings, "He's got a way with murder."

The ads were created by Showtime's in-house ad agency, Red Group, with help from Initiative, the network's media agency. Each ad is running solely in the magazine it parodies, so, for example, the Wired mock-up will run only in Wired magazine.

In addition to the print campaign, billboards and bus shelter ads are running in New York and Los Angeles.

"We felt that after the success of season 2, combined with season 1 airing on CBS last spring, the show was really becoming a pop culture item of sort -- and what better way to demonstrate it than by tapping into magazines that set the tone for what's cool and [what's] not..." said Stuart Zakim, vice president of corporate public relations for Showtime Networks.