Harlequin Needs Heads

In a failing economy, it becomes essential to any business to recycle and to seek alternative means to cut costs. Such as? Stock imagery! Hey, when you find a hot image with expansive man-titty, you work that for all it is worth. For example?

image

image

But wait, there’s more! It seems Silhouette has discovered that they can also use all the heads that were chopped off from all those headless cover illustrations, and invite those poor lost craniums to gallivant about their covers. How charitable! How fortunate, particularly for Bonnie Vanak!

Witness the evidence:

image

As Midknyt pointed out, the shadow left from the original head makes this image seem most wonky, as “it leaves her with the world’s mightiest chin shadow as a result.” And we won’t even mention that odd pattern of spatter on his chest. No, wait, YES WE WILL. Ew! 

Someone alert Photoshop Disasters. There ought to be awards for p’shopping that bad. We can call it the “P’shawp.”

[Thanks to Midknyt for the linkage.]

Categorized:

General Bitching...

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  1. Fionn says:

    Oh god, poor Ms. Vanak. *wince* That is one of the worst PS cases I’ve seen in a good while yet.

    spamword: didnt43

    Says to herself, “Oh no, they didn’t!” 43 times

  2. Chris says:

    *boggles at the bad*

  3. ev says:

    Poor Vivi- sharing a cover. and a badk ps at that.

    Someone could make a real hobby of looking for crap like this.

    Never mind.

  4. Tracy Wolff says:

    Wow!!!!  I can’t believe they did that.  Poor Bonnie!

  5. Silver James says:

    Owwww. Just….oww.

  6. LoriSusan says:

    And the covers are unattractive too. What a shame.

  7. Midknyt says:

    Ah, my five minutes of Bitchery fame, at last!  🙂

    Bet Bonnie didn’t know her heroine got around so much.  I like how the top guys seem to be saying, “Ooh, I like it up the hershey highway,” whereas bottom guy is more of a “Yeah, I like it up there, so what’s it to you bee-yatch” kind of a guy.

    Although I guess they would all be bottom guys then, now wouldn’t they?

    spamword: long64.  Does that make it better that a short 69, or worse?

  8. Ann-Kat says:

    Yikes. And that’s a word I haven’t pulled out for a while, but damn that was painful to read (and look at). My heart bleeds for Bonnie and the poor man who’s head and body are being exploited so purely from that gawdawfulpshawp.

  9. Carolyn says:

    And on the last example the woman looks like she has a skull eye!  Because her eye shadow no longer makes sense either.  No wonder he looks so concerned.

  10. Kathsan says:

    Aren’t there laws against this?  It should be a whole subsection.  “Concerning Photoshop and Book Covers.”  In most cases the punishment is only having your house wallpapered in the offending cover, but the truly unlucky have their own faces Photoshopped on.

  11. Anya says:

    This is just wrong b/c it’s a rather yicky/unattractive picture to begin with and then they have to go and use it not once but three times.  My sincere condolences to Vivi and Bonnie.

  12. seadanes says:

    Also, what’s with the weird shadow that makes it looks like her head has been severed from her body? And who thought these were hunky man meats we would all want to look at? Eeeewwww.

  13. El says:

    In the third one, she seems much more vampiric.

  14. Joanne says:

    Really, the heads don’t bother me as much as the fact that they replaced the female model’s hands with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s.

  15. Deb Kinnard says:

    Since #2’s title is “The Empath”, I wanna know: if she’s that emphathic, doesn’t she understand the neck-gnaw WILL HURT HIM? Sheesh!

    Spamword: business29. Yeah, I know it’s a business, but enuff pshawp aready. Recycling is for glass, metal & paper.

  16. Why do I drop the ‘s’ at the end of head? Harlequin Needs Head. Hmmm, don’t we all?

  17. Teddypig says:

    It says… Bite my nipples hard!

  18. sadieloree says:

    It’s not just the shadow on his neck that makes it wonky in the last cover. The pasted in face is lit from a completely different direction! He has shadows on the opposite side of his face from all of the shadows in the rest of the image! Yikes!

  19. Elizabeth Wadsworth says:

    Hey, at least the dude had the courtesy to wake up for the last one.  But really, recycling the same cover twice for the same author – come on!  Surely they could find something a little bit different, or at least flip the image or… something.

  20. Julia says:

    While looking at the covers… why did I get the image that the woman was pulling the poor guy’s nipple while taking his shirt off? o.0

  21. Jennie says:

    I’m still shaking my head at giraffe neck vs. no neck.  Yikes!

  22. Jinni says:

    This just bites (pun intended).

    series81 – how many times they used this picture in the series.

  23. StephanieL says:

    To me the girl seems to be saying “Yup.  Looks infected to me”.

    What amazes me is how versatile they attempted to make Mr. Creepy.  Apparently creepiness works well with a city scene, some sort of castle-like structure with lame photoshop birds, AND a forest.

  24. Wryhag says:

    Oh, yay!  Drool cups are making a comeback!

  25. clare2e says:

    I hate to stand up for something like this, so I won’t exactly.  I’ll only mention that two of these yucko covers are for the short, e-book-only paranormal program Nocturne Bites.  For these little 15k wonders that go straight to download, they’re not commissioning original art, I guess, but they want it to have the Nocturne look and branding.  However, the program is so new, I’m surprised they’re already reusing gnaw-shots.  On our website at womenofmystery.net , I recently highlighted more Harlequin cover abuse.  In that case, it was Mira and a Carla Neggers cover that was super-shady.

    day57- I feel like I’ve been NaNo’ing for 57 days.

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