Sarah: A Lifetime Original Movie: Not Without My Head! – Juliana Marguiles goes on a bad ‘shroom trip, and finds her head has been poorly cut-and-pasted onto a book cover beneath a man for whom “The Fairy Ring” means something entirely different. One-and-one-half stars.
Candy: I’m not sure if this cover would be improved or made worse if I viewed it under the influence of some good old-fashioned psilocybin.
I’m thinking “not,” because that thing is a bad trip if I ever saw one.
I’m also slightly disturbed by the way the the cover looks more like exceptionally bad Inara/Wash Firefly ‘ship fanart.
Sarah: Trixie curled her hair around one finger and giggled in that high-pitch, wind-chimey way of hers.
“Thore, I get that your brother is the Tower of Golden Shower, and your cousin is The Fistin’ Piston. But why are you called The Amber Inferno? And why do you order your AssBlaster Burgers with extra saffron and sweet potatoes?”
“…Thore? What’s that smell?”
Candy: Look, I’m just saying: with a title like Amber Inferno, I expect a cover that looks sort of dark and broody and atmospheric, not a shitstorm of purple and My Little Pony on steroids and glittery crap. And what the fuck is up with that, anyway? Somebody needs to sign up for Glitter Pen Anonymous like DAMN. Unless those are pegasus turds we’re seeing?
Sarah: Now that men with hair extensions and multi-finned tails have been added to the US Team, synchronized swimming competition will never be the same.
Candy: Why is the naked girl trying to show off her cheerleading routine while being hauled around by a demonic merman? And why does her hair violate all the laws of physics? Is that what she’s cheering on? “Two four six eight, guess which law we really hate? Gravity! Gravity! GRRRRRAVITY! Woohoo, woohoo, go Spartans!”
Sarah: Please sit down and place your head between your knees in preparation for the following complimentary statement:
Damn. Nice buns.
Now, why he had to mess them up with some Sharpie marker drawing and a sacrum tattoo, I have no idea. I think the lower back tattoo is just the strangest thing. It’s like an ink warning: If I keep bending over, it’s ass crack ahoy!
But what the hell is going on with his arms? He’s admiring his bicep while She-Ra humps his wrist and pulls his hair – you had me at the buns but you lost me at wrist-humping She-Ra.
Candy: Riding a winged horse while wearing nothing more than a bra and a really skimpy garter belt. Right. That’s a GREAT idea. But maybe there’s no such thing as saddle rash in Heaven?
And as for the guy’s tattoos: the one on his sacrum looks more like an arrow pointing the way to especially obtuse people. Between the hair, his completely clean-shaven body and the fact that his chest and ass are bigger and perkier than a Playboy Playmate’s? I’m thinking that at the very least he likes to switch hit, if you know what I mean.
Hey now, nothing wrong with purple ;).
I think I have seen fanart better than that first cover. How did those heads make it past, anyone…? Doesn’t someone have to approve these?
I must resist the urge to go look up what in the hell Amber Inferno is about. And the mermaid thing. Really. Must. Not. Go. There.
Is it suppose to mean something to the plot that the Dream Warrior guy is standing nakid playing with his shiny ball? Sarah is right though, nice buns, wonder how much is real.
My eyes, my eyes!
Maybe I’m missing something, but fairy-ring-boy seems to be missing his right upper arm. There’s nothing connecting his elbow to his shoulder.
Mr Amber Inferno seems to have his sword perfectly placed to slice off my little flying pony’s wing as it comes back up.
And why is Tinkerbell trying to poke dream-warrior-boy’s eye out?
I think I need some of those shrooms from the first one.
I’ll make this short and sweet:
The first one is just so badly PhotoShopped. And I thought all those doctored pictures they have on comedy shows like SNL, Late Show with Letterman, and Late Night with Conan O’Brien were bad—at least on those shows, the doctored pics are funny. This isn’t.
Second one looks like a My Little Pony coloring book on acid.
Third one: what is the deal with making love with mermans/mermaids? How the heck is she gonna get penetrated when the bottom half of him is all mackerel? This is why I began to question The Little Mermaid after being taught about sex and sexual organs. That SNL sketch with Reese Witherspoon as The Little Mermaid at least gave the explanation that she had genitals, even if they were fish genitals. Anyway, my point is mermaids and mermen falling for humans in romance novels is almost as frightening, nonsensical, and disturbing as the romance novels where the heroine is pregnant or is already a mom.
4) When it comes to scoping out guys, I’m not into their asses as much as their chests, but DAMN! That’s the kind of ass you can take a wooden fraternity paddle to in a friendly sexual game of spanking the bad boy (or just some friendly pinching/grabbing). This cover doesn’t look too bad, except for the demon lady on the horse and the tattoos on those pert and perfect buttocks. His ass is not a female castmember from Laugh-In, to have weird sayings and drawings painted on for our amusement.
Why does the fairy ring boy have some sort of mutilated racoon pelt stuck to his skull?
Damn! Nice ass! Too bad the rest of the cover sucks big ones.
And the My Little Pony thing? It’s like a bad flashback to someone’s troubled childhood, and now the glitter ponies are back for their revenge. And they brought scary friends.
Picture #1: Looks like a bad collage – like the type of ransom letter a kidnapper would send if he didn’t know how to read. It means: “I have your orgasmless widow in my leafy, plaid-lined lair. If you call the police, I will feed her those poisonous mushrooms. Leave 100 litres of Aquanet under the deserted Bridge if you want her returned alive, and still orgasmless.”
Picture #2: I think they ripped off the cover picture from my 5-year-old niece’s diary.
Picture #3:“It’s true – you totally won’t get pregnant if we do it in the water!”
“Well then, yipee!”
Picture #4: Good luck finding a doctor who’ll give you an epidural with THAT lower-back tattoo, dearie. Hee. Still, though, that is a healthy posterior. Dude doesn’t have to worry about hard chairs – he carries his own cushion everywhere!
Am I the only person who looked at #2 and thought the author’s name was Bareback? These covers are always so much more fun at the end of the day when my brain is only half working.
The first thing I thought when I saw that second cover was “hey! She looks like Michael Jackson” And when I saw the merman “hey! He looks like Pierce Brosnan – only with way too much hair!”
Piers Anthony has this novel called Mercycle that has genetically engineered merpeople in it. He actually explains how merwomen and -men can have sex with each other and humans. Read it when I was 15 and still cannot get the image of (to paraphrase) a panel of flesh moving to reveal the sex organs.
“still cannot get the image of (to paraphrase) a panel of flesh moving to reveal the sex organs.”
When I was a kid I had a Bionic Woman doll who had these doors on her arms and legs where you could open them and see the tiny little bionic workings. Do you think it would be something like that….only MUCH more disgusting?
KariBelle-
For some reason, I always got a vision of something like the pregnant Barbie from the mid 90’s. She had a pregnant belly that you *pop*‘d off to take the baby out and *pop,* the flat, well toned belly appeared. But yeah, the bionic doll comparison works, too.
OMFG – I have officially injured myself laughing at this site. “ass crack ahoy” indeed. You never see that warning when you need it. Then there was AnimeJune with her ransom note for the illiterate. You all oughta come with warning labels. Someone less grateful for a damn good laugh might sue.
Y’know, I don’t know what “Amber” has to do with it, but consider the position of the heroine, the hero, and the phallic sword… it sure looks like Bend Over Boyfriend meets My Little Pony through the magic of Photoshop.
As for Mr. I-sat-on-wet-paint, he looks a little unhappy (or perhaps constipated) — I wonder if that’s because the pole dancer/Valkyrie has buried her sword in his left eye?
Oh dream warrior I will now blind you so you cannot admire yourself anymore. That will teach you not to look at ‘Moi’! Poke poke – take that!
Below is where the plastic mannekins are, and Above is where Legless has to take them – if only they were made with moveable limbs and hair and not hard plastic, he thinks in frustration.
I thought the first cover said Hairy Ring – I was thinking chick needed to put some Veet strips on that….then I realised it could have applied to him too.
Noone’s gonna toss your salad dude, unless your stuff is well groomed.
On the cover with Ass Tattoo Man, the chick on Pegasus is a direct swipe from an old Boris Vallejo cover. E.g. http://www.myth-and-fantasy.com/pegasus/pgallery11.html
Hmmm…wonder if they really do defend their copyright if someone brought that cover to their attention.
That’s one incredibly obvious ripoff! One would think that would be illegal.
Not to mention Mr. Tatoo’s skin is a completely different shade than the rest of his body. It looks like they photoshopped someone else’s ass onto his body. Perhaps that’s why he looks so perplexed? Wait! I don’t remember getting those tats! Where’d this one on my arm come from? I must have been more stoned than I knew.
Hmmmm, I wonder how junk is in DeSalvo’s trunk…
When I first saw the cover of the first book I thought it said “The Hairy Ring.” Oops.
Amber Inferno Pony’s wings are on wrong. If she flaps them, either she’ll knock off her annoying riders, or AmberMan’s gonna skewer the right one with his very pointy sword. Either way, the next page will be a mess.
And I want to read about Mr. SeaMonkey’s first lesson in evolutionary biology.
I really, really want to see an end to these computer-drawn covers.
I never thought I’d ever wish for a plain old clinch cover.
Me, me!
The Fairy Ring guy looks like he caught the bad end of an autumn leaves kindergarten collage.
“Not to mention Mr. Tatoo’s skin is a completely different shade than the rest of his body.”
I think that orange-ish color is part of the waaaay overused Photoshop lens flare.
Is that merman’s bitch there Julia Roberts?
No, she doesn’t have that horse-teeth smile like Julia Roberts. Looks more like a male to female transsexual with hair extensions and arthritis.
“On the cover with Ass Tattoo Man, the chick on Pegasus is a direct swipe from an old Boris Vallejo cover.”
I was thinking I’d seen it before—and the mermaid, too. So I took a look, and the merman’s tail is an obvious swipe from a Boris/Julie mermaid, here. Just flipped it horizontally, stuck on a different torso. Sad.
Am I the only person who looked at #2 and thought the author’s name was Bareback?
For a second there I thought it was Amber Inferno … :red:
About those covers with rip-off images, is it a surprise, really, considering the fact that both covers are from New Concepts Publishing?
If you check NCP’s backlist, you’ll find that almost every NCP cover is a “disguised” mish-mash of copyrighted images. The cheekiest one to date is the one they used a promo image of Brad Pitt in Troy as, with a couple of artistic adjustments, a book cover. I think they’ve removed it as I can’t find it now.
A while ago I emailed a complaint to NCP about one book cover that used a copyrighted image and they did sod all.
Aiyeeee!
Their wings are pastede on yay! is all I have to say to #s 2 and 4. Especially #2.
My eyes!
The fairy ring guy is definitely having sex with Michael Jackson.
Also, it’s probably bad that the first thing I thought when I saw the girl on the merman cover was, “Hey! It’s Cordelia from Buffy the Vampire Slayer!”