It’s Monday! And you know what happens on Mondays…Cover Snark!
From Reader Lisa: I saw this in my BookBub email today, was immediately perplexed and knew I had to send it to you. That HAS to be horrible photoshopping, right? That head/face is not even close to being in proportion to the body, and the face is far too round and smooth to belong with the chiseled body. And the hair… I just don’t understand. WTF is going on? Is this Highlander so elusive that he has a stunt double for his head so no one can identify him?
Sarah: I wonder if the surprised look is because he doesn’t know how his head became attached to that body, or where all the ab and pec oil came from…
Elyse: I almost screamed.
Is that a joke!?
Amanda: I feel like you can still see part of the shape of the dude’s head underneath the Photoshop.
Sarah: Nope. Not a joke. That’s a real cover.
I know there are some rules about proportion, and I’m pretty sure one of them is not, “The head should have its own climate.”
Carrie: Maybe he’s like the Clancy Brown character in The Highlander and when he repaired his almost but not quite severed head he did it wrong.
Sarah: Maybe this is what happened to all the heads from the years of headless covers we’ve had in romance. I used to imagine them all in a support groups, lots of heads propped up on plastic chairs talking about how good they looked and then SFFFT! their heads were cropped off.
Maybe they’ve fought their way back but haven’t quite found their correct torsos!
Which means the torsos probably have a support group as well.
Carrie: “Sometimes I wonder if she would even still love me if I stopped waxing. I mean, I want to be loved for me, not my glistening hairless quality!”
Amanda: He probably has to wear tanks tops because there’s no way he can fit those biceps into a sleeve without splitting a seam.
Sarah: Wowser. I don’t think he fits in most compact and standard rental cars, either. He’d bend the doorframe.
From Reader Rebecca: I thinks this is “Anne Geddes meets bat wings.”
Sarah: I think it’s Anne Geddes meets DragonTales.
Elyse: Nope
Redheadedgirl: NO
Amanda: Can you imagine the hell these babies are going to wreak once they become toddlers? TODDLERS WITH WINGS?!
Redheadedgirl: Uh…it’s watching me.
Amanda: Anyone else have an urge to boop that nip? “Boop! Put that away!”
Redheadedgirl: “Do we need to have a discussion about what actually is tasteful underboob?”
Sarah: It looks at you wherever you are in the room.
Ask me how I know.
Amanda: I just picture you moving back and forth around your office. “How about here? Yep. What about here? Still looking at me. What if I back up?”
Sarah: Under the futon with the cats? Yup, still looking at us.
Elyse: It’s like the Eye of Sauron except The Nipple of Sauron.
Sarah: I think it’s winking. Wink Nipple.
Sounds like a 70s game show: And here’s your host, Wink Nipple!
Elyse: I’m picturing a plaid sport jacket and that weird long, thin microphone.
GODDAMNIT SARAH NOW I HAVE THE PRICE IS RIGHT THEME IN MY HEAD
Redheadedgirl: Da da dada dada da da!
@ Karen H Near Tampa: Oh jeez. It takes a special skill set to steal art and make it hideous.
I didn’t think it was possible to get worse, but once you know where to look for comparison to the original, the sloppiness and bad aesthetic become downright aggressive.
@ Karen H Near Tampa:
That explains so, so much. Compare And Contrast:
https://www.amazon.com/Must-Love-Kilts-Signet-Eclipse/dp/0451231945/ref=sr_1_1
… and then do the Look Inside thing for a close-up.
The face had to be photoshopped in because the original doesn’t have one. The weird red stuff (lake of blood? or just a really, really dramatic sunset?) is because the artist was so tired from changing the armlets that they just selected the whole lake-and-ship background and applied the Bucket tool. The blanness of the upper sky is because, like most of the face, it wasn’t there at all.
Now I’m waiting for some other keen-eyed reader to identify the source of the face–and maybe a third person to find the original of the shield.
Quick note that the original artwork for Must Love Kilts is published on Aleta Rafton’s website, as well as goodreads.com, and more of the model’s face was shown than ended up on the published book cover.
For what it’s worth, I have always loved the artwork on romance novels and actually started reading romance because of a Fabio cover done by Elaine Duillo for Johanna Lindsey. I still keep books primarily because of the artwork (by which I mean good looking men mostly) and I was a committee member and chair for the Cover Cafe annual cover contest for a few years. As previously noted, this is not the first theft I’ve encountered and I have contacted some authors when I noticed it (one was nice enough to redo her covers and apologize to me and her other newsletter readers). But this sort of thing has prompted Jon Paul to start posting his artwork with watermarks to prevent the thefts.
The Elusive Highlander — wow, I didn’t know Tim Minchin was so ripped.
I think you all are super mean to make fun of a man desperately seeking his stolen breast. The only Secret Lie here is that someone photoshopped just one of Kate Upton’s boobs onto some abs. Where’s the other one? You’ll find out; you have to sleep sometime.
Also, doesn’t the shading of his abs look like a sleeping Krang from the Ninja Turtles?
Collage of weird.
That head,the stolen art…
@Heather T When going into battle, one must always wear a sun hat.
Please check out the cover for “The Texas Valentine Twins”, by Cathy Gillen Thacker.