Sometimes it feels so long since the last Cover Snark and sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday!
From Vestusta: Came across this while checking out library books the other day and I am highly amused by that tattoo placement relative to his nipple. Epic duckface? Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?
Sarah: Even the panther looks confused.
Catherine: Rudolph the red nosed reindeer had some very fancy 80s eye makeup.
Elyse: Oh man that tattoo is just made of regret.
Amanda: Definitely can’t unsee the reindeer face.
Elyse: That’s like the tattoo they use in an ad for laser tattoo removal.
Tara: That cat looks like it’s just going to turn to the camera and start talking like Salem from the 90s version of Sabrina
Charlotte B: I thought the eyes were the nipples of the face. How am I to interpret this?
The panther is definitely wondering what it did in a former life to deserve this.
Catherine: So is the tattoo. It has exactly the same pained expression on its face.
Charlotte B: The tattoo is definitely silently judging him…for the rest of his life.
Lara: Are the claw marks also a tattoo? Or a scar? If he’s a shifter, does that mean he scratched himself?
Sneezy: He’s being judged by a panther and his own goddamned tattoo, and has what looks like badly made temp tattoos that are supposed to look like scars, yet he looks remarkably proud of all his life choices.
Also, is it just me, or do his nipples not match? It looks like one boob is bigger than the other, too.
AJ: Charlotte B, thank you for the phrase “the eyes are the nipples of the face.” It is extremely cursed and I’ll be sharing it with everyone I know immediately.
Also are her eyebrows wings, or are her wings eyebrows? Discuss.
Amanda: Someone didn’t use sunscreen
Elyse: I’ve had a few red awakenings and it’s such a pain. I figured that all would have stopped when I got out of my teens but nope. CSI bedsheets.
Catherine: Oh, ouch. I’m feeling sore just looking at that.
Elyse: It’s weird that it’s just the neck. It’s like he fell asleep under a beach umbrella and his friends were dicks and didn’t tell him to move later on.
Tara: I think it’s an infection from the tattoo
Claudia: Oh Tara, that’s very good, lol.
Tara: Everyone knows it’s important to choose a reputable tattooer…
Maybe he got it done in some dude’s kitchen. That’s how you get a blood infection.
Sneezy: He might have skipped sunscreen or got in contact with a craigslist tattoorer in order to ‘awaken’ the ‘red.’
“I AM NOW THE LOBSTER LORD!!!!”
Sarah: I’m thinking it’s really bad sunburn, so bad it’s swollen, and the hem of that shirt is probably agony. Been there, dude.
Susan: I don’t think this guy is supposed to look like a hipster who wants to tell you about his new tech startup.
Elyse: He’s high isn’t he?
Catherine: Oh, he looks shady as. I would not buy a used car from that man.
Tara: What if he’s just confused?
Catherine: Actually, looking at his arm position, I think he’s taking a selfie, which suggests he thinks he looks hot. Tinder profile pic?
Amanda: Isn’t that the Star Trek man?
Susan: I can’t work out if he’s just wearing a short-sleeved hoodie or what.
AJ: Andy Serkis? Is that you?
Sarah: I keep thinking this guy looks like someone, or a face merge of some people…Chris Pine and Kenny Loggins?
Tara: And a young Benecio Del Toro.
Sarah: OH yes.
Susan: My brain keeps going “Karl Urban and someone with a bad dye job” and Karl Urban does not deserve that.
AJ: I mean to be fair, Karl Urban has had some pretty bad dye jobs.
Sneezy: I don’t remember what the Backstreet Boys looked like, but he’s giving me Backstreet Boys vibe.
From Fairytalegirl: Something extremely weird seems to be sprouting out of this guy’s neck.
Sarah: I thought that was a shark. Eating him.
Elyse: He needs antibiotics.
Sarah: For the shark?
Elyse: For whatever is happening with his chest.
Tara: Aaaaangryyyyy shark! do do do do do do
Sarah: I just spit water EVERYWHERE.
Catherine: Ah yes, that’s my earworm for the day sorted.
Tara: My youngest is four. if nothing else, I’m glad that my hell did that.
Charlotte B: Going deep nerd here but it looks like he’s about to go full Tetsuo.
TETSUO!!!!!!
KANEDA!!!!!
Elyse: He looks like a Street Shark (hey 90’s!)
Sneezy: Maybe this is what happens when Teletubbies tries to evolve like a Pokémon.
Lara: I confess that I didn’t have my glasses on when I first looked at the cover… I thought he had SIR tattooed on his chest. Then I thought is was SIS and now… I have no idea
AJ: WHAT is HAPPENING in my EYEBALLS
I zoomed in to try and figure out what’s happening to his neck and it did not help
Susan: …Does this man have SS tattooed on his chest, because if so I am Concerned
…Or are those supposed to be numbers?
Sarah: I think it is 818 but I thought at first it was SIS
Tara: I can’t imagine those abs would be fun to tattoo
Sneezy: …what if he looks like that in part because he got tattoos to exaggerate his boobs and abs?
This last one reminded me of the very old internet meme goatse (VERY NSFW).
For a while, every round-ish thing that had hands on the sides was dubbed an “accidental goatse”
I was also wondering if those are supposed to be wings or eyebrows on the first one. Now all I can think about is April Ludgate from Parks and Rec saying she’s an eyebrow girl.
The guy on the third one looks kind of like a younger, stoned Benicio del Toro. He also looks like he’s trying to make Flynn Ryder’s “smolder” face from Tangled.
Charlotte B’s comment on Cover 1: “…the eyes were the nipples of the face.” should be today’s new age affirmation.
So *that’s* what Emperor Palpatine looks like under the robes.
Actually I’m not seeing reindeer face, it looks more like the Grinch to me with those fluffy eyebrows. No wonder the panther looks alarmed; either he’s about to be hitched to a sleigh with branches tied to his head or his Christmas is about to be stolen.
Mr Revenge does look like Benicio del Toro playing smarmy DJ in The Last Jedi.
And mr Raze looks like he’s clawing his way out of a sandworm that swallowed him. Whatever he’s doing it looks painful. Maybe the sandworm laid an egg on his neck and even if he escapes it’s going to go full Alien on him.
Are we sure Mr Raze isn’t wearing a shark? Like pushed his arms through the Gill slits a is holding the mouth open for that runway pose? It just gives me that cover of Jaws vibe.
Also, is it just me, or is the head on the first cover a bit…off-kilter? Definitely looks photoshopped to me.
On top of all the things already mentioned above, I can’t decide which bothers me more about the last one:
1) The hood is on top of one title letter and under the next one.
2) It looks like he is being expelled out of a green vagina.
That Raze cover is probably meant to be gritty and dark but boy did it make me laugh out loud.
Dear publisher. Dear, dear publisher …
The cover is supposed to make people want to buy the book. It is not supposed to send them straight to the bookseller just to find out What were you thinking?!
It turns out they were thinking this (ellipsis theirs):
Conditioned in captivity to maim, to kill and to slaughter, prisoner 818 becomes an unrivaled and unstoppable fighter in the ring. Violence is all he knows. After years of incarceration in an underground hell, only one thought occupies his mind: revenge… bloody, slow and violent revenge.
All right, then.
I’m pretty sure an alien is about to erupt out of poor Raze’s belly where the X is. He needs Ridley to help kill the alien that is coming and she can also work on the shark that is currently eating him.
To me Mr. Revenge looks like the actor that played the son, Bud Bundy, on “Married … With Children” … It was an old 80s sitcom on Fox…who knows what the actor does for a job these days…maybe it really is him!
Just got a “newly published” book announcement from Amazon for Vampire Regent (Kiss-Mate Shifters Book 3) by Juniper Hart. I’m pretty sure that cover is the original photo for the Raze cover (compare the abs and the chin and the hands). Anyway, there are no tattoos and his neck/shoulder junction doesn’t have that weird whatever that is shown on Raze. It’s unfortunate what a little knowledge of photo-editing software can bring about. (And I sincerely hope I got all the italics tags closed properly when I typed them in.)
Revenge looks like a cheap Harry Connick Jr to me
@Tara: I feel your pain. I have no grandchildren, so lived in ignorant bliss until last Thanksgiving, when my niece’s three year-old twins introduced me to Baby Shark. Endless repetitions of Baby Shark. I thought Barney’s was the worst pre-school song ever. I was wrong.
Also, Ranger needs to figure out what kind of big cat he wants to be. Lions live in prides. Panthers are solitary. Of course, rise of the pride could mean something else altogether…
@Quidnunc: I also thought Harry Connick Jr! And now I can’t unsee it. 🙂
Maybe it’s just because of the tattoo placement, but something about Ranger’s head and neck looks out of place, maybe too far to one side? The bit over the head on Raze looks very balloon-like to me, so it may be an inflatable shark, or a shark that had silicone injected into its lips. Or an inflatable hoodie?
I definitely was seeing Benecio Del Toro.
That head is too small for the body on RAZE, and he doesn’t seem to have a neck. Oh, I figured it out. It’s a mutated Sharknado character. It will be a new movie franchise for SyFy. It’s the role Ian Ziering has been waiting for.
Self-appointed, in-house cover-model maven here: If you’re looking for Harry Connick Jr., this is the cover:
https://www.amazon.com/Roughneck-Payne-Brothers-Romance-Book-ebook/dp/B07QNCL2V8/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=sosie+frost+roughneck&qid=1581475035&sr=8-3
I call it: “If Harry Connick Jr. and Clayton Kershaw* had a really hot baby who did a thousand ab cycles a day.”
*For non-baseball fans: Pitcher for the L.A. Dodgers.
I thought Raze was a Nazi too–instead of SS, I saw the two 8s (88 is a big alt-right thing) and the 1 sort of disappears into his man-cleavage. Not the first impression you want me to get!