Happy Cover Snark Monday!
Claudia: Not horrid but I can’t stop looking at the way her eyes are oddly spaced.
Also smudgy?
Sarah: One of her eyes is way bigger than the other. She looks like Angie Harmon
Claudia: So odd!! I hope it’s just some fluke with the tweet announcement I saw.
Elyse: She looks drunk.
Shana: Her arms look oddly proportioned too.
Lara: I thought she was rolling her eyes…
Carrie: I think she looks mischievous and also like all her body parts are stuck together from different Barbie dolls.
Sneezy: Ken doll seems similarly Frankensteined.
From Liz: It’s been a few years since college medieval history, but I don’t remember chain mail short shorts.
Sarah: Those are going to be all over fitness instagram, just wait.
Amanda: Chainmail shorts! Chorts?!
Sarah: CHORTS. HA!
Sneezy: Chorts: Pinching off bloody bits of your balls and nipping holes for your slong to shine through today!!!
Elyse: Those are going to leave some weird tan lines.
Catherine: You may mock, but there is a serious issue in play here. For decades, men on the covers of sword and sorcery novels and D&D games have risked heat stroke, wearing full body chainmail in all weathers while women have been cool and practical in chainmail bikinis.
I think it’s a great step forward for meninism to allow men to wear these summer-weight chainmail board shorts.
Really, it’s just awful the way we have been forcing men to eschew practicality just for the sake of a more pleasing aesthetic. I won’t hear a word against these shorts.
Tara: I also appreciate his safety-first approach, wearing underpants underneath.
Sarah: Boxer briefs and chorts is a winning combo
Lara: Is he holding… a helmet?
Sneezy: Or a pint sized metal speaker, pun intended. He’s also wearing just the one gauntlet.
From Lisa: 1. To me, this cover is less “rage against the heavens” and more “Dude, maybe you should try FiberCon?”
2. The blurb clearly states the hero is wingless, so I don’t know whether the cover is a lie or a spoiler.
Sarah: Oh, that poor man.
Elyse: Omg he needs to moisturize.
Tara: Drinking more water might solve a few problems for him.
Elyse: Or see a dermatologist, really.
Tara: True. Or maybe move somewhere with a better climate?
Claudia: And add more fiber to his diet.
Sneezy: This Rorschach test is making me not feel so good.
Catherine: he’s going to hurt his back if he keeps on like that…
Susan: Who wants to tell him that wings usually attach to your spine, not your sternum?
Amanda: Uh…that’s Arnold
Sarah: and Uma Thurman?
Tara: Why is the light reflecting off her boobs?
Amanda: Maybe the suit is made of latex.
Sarah: That one button is doing a lot of work. a LOT. That button obeys Sexist Physics, in that only in a particular kind of imagination do buttons work that way.
Amanda: Yep, normally it’s the weird gap peephole.
Claudia: My cousins and I used to call it “the smile.”
Elyse: She wants to dance like Uma Thurman, Bury me ‘til I confess.
Catherine: He looks very reanimated.
I’m not sure the reanimation worked properly though.
Sneezy: Sexist physics also upchucked some kind of…blazer-bra
I’ve worn shirts that have sewn in cups/bras. Itchy as shit and defeats the purpose of being in the Itty Bitty Titty Committee.
They’re only useful after the cups are cut off.
Susan: I’m with you, I can’t work out how that blazer is fitting like that at all. How is it fitting under her boobs like that?
But seriously, I can’t unsee this being someone’s Terminator fanfic.
Woah! If you thought the robot lovers Arnie cover was bad check out the Amazon profile of the author (Gary L M Martin) and his other works.
That guy thinks he’s the greatest sci fi writer of all time. We’re talking delusions on the level of Empress Theresa here! (That book cover is also snark worthy).
On the “Building Robot Lovers” cover, that shade of pink and the suit’s cut (brazer notwithstanding) just shriek “megachurch preacher’s wife!” so my personal alternative plot for that book involves an intergalactic celebrity missionary’s wife secretly taking a job at in a sex-robot factory’s R&D department to make ends meet after her husband is caught taking kickbacks from Martian sweatshop owners. Then she meets Arn01d.
Also, those suprasternal notches look sharp.
I’m not sure ‘Terminator’ is the direction you want to be going in if you’re building robot lovers.
That first one is a come-hither look gone terribly awry.
Sometimes, a book title and cover are beautifully matched and have just perfect synergy. THAL is one of those pairings. Seriously. Ask yourself “what would I draw for a book named ‘THAL’?” And you would get something very, very close to that cover. You might play around with other ideas, but sooner or later, you would end up with a sternum-winged grunt toward the heavens doing unspeakable things to a glowing blue orb.
Or if you saw that book cover and had to guess what it’s title was, you would think – “THAL. That book is obviously a ‘THAL.'” (What? “Fly the Friendly Sky Warrior”? “The Sky Warrior is the Limit”? No – it’s a “THAL.” All caps.)
All I can think about with “Robot Lovers” is that SOMEONE is going to be getting a Cease and Desist letter from Arnie’s attorneys this week!
Hahahah-I saw Building a Robot Lover as a recommendation of the “you might also like” sort when I bought Strange Love by Ann Aguirre a little while back after reading about it here (I feel like I even made a comment about it?) And also agree that the Robot Lover author’s bio on Amazon was weirdly aggressive!
A friend suggested the other person on the cover with Arnold could be Lindsey Lohan?
I’m Only Wicked With You: OK, props for managing to stick with a single font for the entire title … but does the current generation of book designers not understand how Title Case works? That should be a lower-case “w”, dammit.
@HeatherT:
That first one is a come-hither look gone terribly awry.
Yes, it’s more of a go-thither, only her eyes can’t decide which direction is thither. And if the plot doesn’t have something to say about her unnaturally short arms–woo hoo! women with visible disabilities can be sexy!–I will consider myself cheated.
The Dark Lord: The fine print says “The Battle Lords of de Velt”, implying a series. Is there also a light lord, a grey lord, a beige lord and so on? And, not to be a spoilsport or anything, but what’s he the lord of, and who takes care of administrative essentials while he’s off doing battle? The imagination drifts to an Unlikely Lovers M/M romance involving the dude in chain-mail shorts … and the quiet nerdy one whose job is to make sure the blacksmith gets paid.
Thal: I don’t think they’re real wings. I think they’re a wishful-thinking extension of the tattoos covering his entire upper body.
Building Robot Lovers: Is it time for the Gerunding Noun title format to settle into its long-overdue retirement?
@OuchOuchOuch:
that shade of pink and the suit’s cut (brazer notwithstanding) just shriek “megachurch preacher’s wife!”
All that’s missing is the name tag that reads Serena Joy.
The Dark Lord appears to be sadly underequipped; but as Catherine pointed out, women warriors have been dealing with that issue for decades, so…
Is Thal’s head on backwards? That looks more like his back than his pecs and abs. It would explain his expression.
@OuchOuchOuch, amusingly my browser inserted a “Lonely? Talk to Jesus!” ad right under Robot Lovers, so I assume your theory is correct.
I’ve got my sister hooked on this site and now she calls me every time there’s a Cover Snark post. We grab a coffee (for me) a Diet Mt Dew (for her weirdness) and giggle like 13yr old boys. It’s our Bonding Moment.
and that reanimated Arnie has a ‘really? It’s come to this, has it?’ look on its face. sigh.
The lady on the Robot cover is almost definitely the female Terminator from Terminator 3 – she has a leather red suit that looks like that, which would also totally explain the weird boob shinies.
About The Dark Lord: I am disturbed by the placement of “The.” Is it there to preserve his modesty or to call attention to his junk? I doubt a flaming sword is comfortable to hold when wearing metal oven mitts. Then there is the fact that if he foes into battle with chorts, helmet, flaming sword while the rest of him is exposed to the elements, he us asking for injuries.
Thal: I hope to all goodness that what looks like very strange skin is actually clothing, but I wouldn’t get on it.
Robot Lovers: What a strange cover. Did they have to get permission to use Uma and Arnold’s faces or are they in the public domain?
Are Uma and Arnold lovers with each other? Asimov never mentioned emotion in the Three Laws of Robotics. Or are these robots supposed to service humans? And other lifeforms?
Personally, I always thought Sylvester Stallone had the better body. I saw about 99% of it in Demolition Man.
I looked up some of the other books by Gary LM Martin.
Uhhhhhhh. This guy is crazy. And not in a good way.
No one has mentioned the slim shoulders coming out of Mr. Robot’s muscle shoulders just above his collarbone ruffle.
I only wish I had a tenth of the Robot author’s self confidence. That author page… a long screed telling every other author how horrible their writing is, and he winds it up complaining that his books don’t sell because all the bad authors have gotten us readers used to mediocrity so we can’t appreciate his Jenius.
Methinks there’s a real good reason why he likes the idea of robot lovers.
@angstriddengoddess – I just came from his page. Yeah. Um, no. Ew.
And that screed goes on FOREVER! ick.
IOWWU: The woman is an art student overpainting a Picasso. I can almost see the cubist drawing underneath… (and Louise, With would be capitalized in title case under some house styles and even older CMS, it has more than three letters)
TDL: That’s not a helmet. It’s a mini-keg, and this guy is on the way to an 80s frat party. Which, frankly, explains a lot (including that the boxers aren’t plaid, like all respectable boxers are).
Thal: I got nothin’. Maybe he’s passing a kidney stone?
BRL: There’s a much simpler explanation for the shiny spots. She has no boobs; they really are headlamps. Which, again, fits with the rest of the 80s vibe. Robot Lover, what is victory?
I realize Uma’s boobs are distracting, but they’re not nearly as disturbing as the fact Arnold seems to be wearing a suit of someone else’s skin. {Shudder}
Thal: Am I the only one who thinks those wings are metal and his texture comes from having just been grilled on them? Which might also explain his facial expression.
Chorts cover: he’s wearing metal leg armor, chorts, and stepping in fire. Ouch. And his sword has flames. All of that’s going to burn, especially the nether regions.
I think Uma and Arnold have snap-on chestware.
**oops, or is it chestwear?
From the overflowing “Things That Can’t Be Unseen on Romance Book Covers” folder:
The Dark Lord seems to be expelling a slug from his bicep. Or is it burrowing in?
Also – show of hands: who thinks that the helmet’s crestal* moth showcases a flying monkey from the film version of “The Wizard of Oz”? And who sees an homage to the Jaegermeister label (or as I like to think the English translation must be: “Stabbing Antlers of the Red Death”)?
*Is that a word? If not, I think it is now… and I claim it on behalf of the Isle of Smart Bitchery.
Wait so is the Robot Lovers thing some kind of Batman And Robin/Terminator crossover fanfic? Since she was Poison Ivy but this version of Arnold looks like a Terminator and not Mr. Freeze? Or is it just random Uma Thurman for not reason. I’m both confused and kind of upset by this.