Physical Appearance

Most of the characters in Good Omens get very little in the means of physical descriptions, but Crowley does get his fair share. Right away at the beginning of the story, Crowley has several introductory paragraphs describing his human form.

Nothing about him looks particularly demonic, at least by classical standards. No horns, no wings... Crowley had dark hair and good cheekbones and he was wearing snakeskin shoes, or at least presumably he was wearing shoes, and he could do really weird things with his tongue. And, whenever he forgot himself, he had a tendency to hiss.
He also didn't blink much.
~ page 6

Crowley's trademark accessories are, of course, his sunglasses. He's always wearing shades, even, as Hastur puts it, "when he dunt need to."

The extent of Crowley's physical description pretty much ends on page 15, when Mr. Young glimpses Crowley as "a young man in dark glasses." Just for the sake of redundancy, Crowley is again described from the point of view of some firefighters on page 237 as "an extremely agitated young man in dark glasses."

Throughout the book, however, Crowley's physical movements and facial expressions are often described in terms reminiscent of snakes and serpents. As in, "he snaked a hand over the metal" of a paintball gun, or, "Crowley smiled like a snake." And yes, he does hiss - often at Aziraphale. Crowley's final line in the book reads as follows:

(To Aziraphale:) "Let me tempt you to some lunch," he hissed.
~ page 358

And then there's the thing with his eyes... Crowley's eyes are never described until page 239, when his shades are knocked off his face. "Yellow eyes with slitted vertical pupils were revealed." Snake's eyes, of course. I personally would assume that his eyes don't always appear that way, since Crowley does have to deal an awful lot with normal humans almost every day, and eyes like that might be somewhat off-putting to your average human being. But then again, Crowley does wear those sunglasses an awful lot of the time, too. Are they merely for style, or does he actually use his glasses to hide something...?

Crowley also has wings. But not always. It would seem that wings denote Crowley's one true shape, as described in the climax of the novel.

The coats of Aziraphale and Crowley split along the seams. If you were going to go, you might as well go in your own true shape. Feathers unfolded toward the sky.
Contrary to popular belief, the wings of demons are the same as the wings of angels, although they're often better groomed.
~ page 341

The illustrations by David Frampton found throughout the book show Crowley with black wings and Aziraphale with white wings. The three tiny illustrations of Crowley are scanned below. Click on the thumbnails for a larger image.

Several other artists have illustrated Crowley on the covers of various editions of then novel, although most of these illustrations contradict the textual information about Crowley's appearance (as is usually the case with cover illustrations...). For example, check out this illustration of Crowley used on the cover (and the interior) of the 2006 Harper Collins hardcover edition:

Those bat-wings and that pointy tail would appear to specifically contradict Crowley's description in the text of the novel. Remember, on page 341, it is specifically stated that Crowley's wings are feathery. And Crowley isn't supposed to have "horns," although I think that if he wanted to gel his hair into horn-shapes like in the illustration above, then that's his decision.

You can find large scans of other cover illustrations here.

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Important Note: Page numbers in reference to quotations from the book refer to the 1996 Ace mass-market paperback edition.     Disclaimer: Crowley, Aziraphale, and Good Omens are owned and copyrighted by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Excerpts and quotes from the novel Good Omens used throughout this site are reproduced without legal permission, for which I can only hang my head sheepishly and apologize. However, this is a FANSITE, meant in the name of fun, and not intended to make a profit. The lovely model in this site's header graphic is an endangered Eastern Indigo Snake, in a photograph courtesy of SeaWorld.org. Brushes used in the header graphic are courtesy of Paper Flowers.