Bitchin' Blog Posts
Harlequin Needs Heads
by SB Sarah | November 12, 2008 | Wednesday at 2:15 pm | 25 CommentsIn 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?


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:

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.]
Filed: General Bitching
Tagged: silhouette, harlequin, cover snark, cover makeovers, cover copycats, cover comparisons, bonnie vanak


Fionn said on 11.12.08 at 03:04 PM
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
Chris said on 11.12.08 at 04:17 PM
*boggles at the bad*
ev said on 11.12.08 at 05:08 PM
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.
Tracy Wolff said on 11.12.08 at 05:09 PM
Wow!!!! I can’t believe they did that. Poor Bonnie!
Silver James said on 11.12.08 at 05:21 PM
Owwww. Just….oww.
LoriSusan said on 11.12.08 at 05:22 PM
And the covers are unattractive too. What a shame.
Midknyt said on 11.12.08 at 05:36 PM
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?
Ann-Kat said on 11.12.08 at 05:41 PM
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.
Carolyn said on 11.12.08 at 05:50 PM
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.
Kathsan said on 11.12.08 at 07:07 PM
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.
Anya said on 11.12.08 at 07:17 PM
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.
seadanes said on 11.12.08 at 07:55 PM
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.
El said on 11.12.08 at 08:41 PM
In the third one, she seems much more vampiric.
Joanne said on 11.12.08 at 08:46 PM
Really, the heads don’t bother me as much as the fact that they replaced the female model’s hands with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s.
Deb Kinnard said on 11.12.08 at 09:01 PM
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.
Roslyn Holcomb said on 11.12.08 at 09:45 PM
Why do I drop the ‘s’ at the end of head? Harlequin Needs Head. Hmmm, don’t we all?
Teddypig said on 11.12.08 at 10:22 PM
It says… Bite my nipples hard!
sadieloree said on 11.12.08 at 11:54 PM
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!
Elizabeth Wadsworth said on 11.13.08 at 01:56 AM
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.
Julia said on 11.13.08 at 02:26 AM
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
Jennie said on 11.13.08 at 02:31 AM
I’m still shaking my head at giraffe neck vs. no neck. Yikes!
Jinni said on 11.13.08 at 04:45 AM
This just bites (pun intended).
series81 - how many times they used this picture in the series.
StephanieL said on 11.13.08 at 07:24 AM
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.
Wryhag said on 11.13.08 at 09:39 AM
Oh, yay! Drool cups are making a comeback!
clare2e said on 11.18.08 at 03:02 AM
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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