Welcome back to Cover Snark, where everyone’s favorite shirtless doctor has made a return!
Tara: His wang is the ghost?
Or it’s named Ghost?
Lara: He’s just flexing… right? I mean he isn’t straining with his hands on his nethers? RIGHT?!
Carrie: Whatever he’s doing he’s much more interested in his own penis then he is likely to be about me.
Tara: Carrie, tell the truth. How long have you been waiting for someone that’s half man, half motorcycle?
Carrie: Is the motorcycle detachable? I wouldn’t mind a motorcycle.
Tara: We need him to stop looking at his penis long enough to let us know.
Carrie: He should probably put a helmet on that too, if ya know what I mean
Elyse: He needs an ointment for that pec
AJ: I was gonna say, he’s about to BE a ghost if he doesn’t get that infection looked at
Elyse: It looks like super bad sunburn healing. Like he’s gonna peel for sure
Carrie: I thought maybe it was a third degree burn or scarring thereof.
Catherine: Oh! It’s a tattoo of a woman! Not a terrible injury at all! Or am I seeing visions again?
Also – and I know I’ve said this before – since when are veins sexy? Next time I see veins like that, I want them to be on the cover model for The Phlebotomist’s Barbarian Lover.
Carrie: And…Catherine wins the Internet.
From Amanda: It’s a four armed alien, I want to see what you guys have to say about it.
Sarah: Yup. Four arms. And four nipples and four pecs under which to take shelter from the rain.
Wait I bet I know how this image was made.
Carrie: The arms are disturbing enough (but good for housework or diapering pairs of twins?) but the double set of pecs is NOT OK.
Sarah: Is his name CTRL-C-CTRL-V?
Carrie: On the plus side he can probably wash dishes really fast but think of how much he has to spend on deodorant and custom shirts
Maybe that’s why he’s shirtless.
Sarah: I would imagine that with all the folded skin he gets really itchy when it’s humid, poor thing.
Amanda: I’m getting human centipede vibes and I don’t like it
Elyse: I looked at this and was like “Wait have I been drinking?”
Catherine: I feel like this cover goes both too far and not far enough. Does he have four legs, too? Is he an octopus? And, well, what else does he have an extra one of?
Sarah: IMPORTANT QUERY IS IMPORTANT.
Carrie: ASKING FOR A FRIEND
Tara: Or is he a badly made Russian doll?
AJ: I want to snark on this but every time I look at it I laugh too hard to type
You know what, on reflection, I take it back. This cover brings me nothing but joy. It is perfect and beautiful, 10/10, no notes.
From Carole: Ummm, so many things – Duh head scratch?? Nipple bullseye, plus deodorant commercial and OMG did he wax his underarm hair??
Sarah: I have a strong suspicion that the stethoscope was not part of the original picture.
Kiki: If my doctor turns parts of my body to gold while performing a medical exam: ALSO a problem!
Elyse: I like how the stethoscope artfully frames his nip
Sarah: PEEKABOO NIPPLES!
Catherine: I’m with Kiki. The whole tragedy of the Midas story is that when he touched the people he loved, they turned into golden statues. This is a terrible premise for a romance AND ALSO a major disqualifier for practicing medicine, I think.
Ok, maybe a paranormal romance? Where he’s some kind of closed-off monster hunting type who makes a living selling his remarkably lifelike golden sculptures but is full of angst because he can never find true love or even hug a kitten, which is possibly even more of a tragedy? And clearly the curse needs to be broken at some point (and I’d just like to note that he is almost certainly a virgin hero, unless this curse came on later in life), presumably by the heroine, and you know, I’ve almost talked myself into reading that story.
BUT.
None of it makes the doctor stuff plausible, possible or desirable.
AJ: The nipple is distracting me from the real issue, to wit: Why isn’t his stethoscope gold?
Maya: YES, THANK YOU!!! and his pants!!!
Carrie: WELL SPOTTED AJ
Would read. Maybe he’s NOT a doctor. Maybe he wanted to be one, but he can’t because of the curse, but he wears the stethescope as a sign of mourning?
Catherine: So much angst! That’s it for sure!
EllenM: if your stethoscope isn’t gold are you EVEN a DOCTOR.
‘Tis the week of photoshop wrongness (like most weeks, I guess).
“Is his name CTRL-C-CTRL-V?” Excellent.
The top one at least escapes that, but I find ‘oily veiny lumps’ look really offputting.
Cover 1: is he relieving himself on the motorcycle!?
Cover 2: I can’t look away! This is awful, one of the few times when an illustrated cover would’ve been better. There’s probably many examples of four armed aliens on deviant art (some of them may even be dressed from the waist down?)
Cover 3: it’s a medical romance series, though I have yet to see any kind of doctor in that state of undress.
@Empress I got Arnie flashbacks! The bodybuilder prominent arm veins look has never been appealing, at least not since the late seventies.
I have movie references!
Re CTRL-C-CTRL-V: In 1972’s campy classic “The Thing with Two Heads,” when Rosey Grier’s girlfriend first sees him with Ray Milland’s head stitched to his shoulder, she asks the question any woman would ask: “Do you have two of anything else?”
Re Dr. Nips: In the brilliant Mystery Science Theater 3000 airing of “The Girl in Gold Boots,” when the heroine dances to a song titled “Everything I Touch Turns to Gold,” one of the bots yells at the screen, “Yeah, well what happens when you touch gold?”
The alien’s four nipples are right there, demanding acknowledgment that this is no simple copypasta.
What are the chances the worldbuilding addresses whether the deodorant industry on that planet is socialized to prevent extortionate price gouging or B.O. is a marker of economic status?
OMG I don’t I can’t even
You Bitches have really outdone yourselves this time. Not sure if that calls for kudos or rotten tomatoes.
Four-armed alien horror reminds me of those Animporphs covers where the kids turned into progressive stages of animals.
Ghost: Never mind the picture– except, wait, is that FUR growing on his right shoulder? Dear God, why?
Anyway, ahem, I was going to say: Never mind the picture, I’m hung up on the title. “Lords of Carnage” does not point to the character traits I would be looking for in a mate. And if that is his line of work, it does seem as if ghosts would be an inevitable byproduct, unless he is very particular to destroy only property and no living thing, in a sort of inverse-neutron-bomb contruct. But doesn’t the word “carnage” etymologically require some bloodshed?
Within Alien Arms: I am, once again, stuck on the wrong part of the picture, in this case the very top. Those full lips simply don’t go with that skin tone. Is the alien a hermaphrodite, female from the neck up and male from there on down?
Then again, does anything go with that skin tone? Is this a hint at a non-Earthly metabolism, or is our polybrachiate hero standing too close to a rocket launch?
@Elyse: I looked at this and was like “Wait have I been drinking?” No, it’s OK, Elyse, you’ve got about 48 hours to go before you are driven to the bottle again.
The Midas Touch: I don’t think he is scratching his head in puzzlement, wondering why the stethoscope didn’t turn to gold. He’s checking whether his Mysterious Alien Implant is still there. Anyway, the stethoscope is easy enough to explain: someone in surgical gloves carefully draped it over his neck, and he hasn’t yet laid his bare hands on it. Come to think of it, if you are cursed with the Midas touch, a profession that allows you to spend the entire day masked and gloved would seem to be ideal.
Wait –
what if he’s a radiologist and he never has to touch people, just examine charts & tests & stuff. And so he wears gloves or uses other methods to keep xrays and readouts from turning to gold until he’s done. But then after that, when he’s giving the patient the news – he can hand them over a personally handled copy of their charts so that they can pay for their medical bills.
I may be completely wrong about what radiologists do.
I don’t think I’m wrong about a stack of gold paperwork being useful for medical costs.
It still doesn’t explain the bare chest and jeans with a stethoscope.
@MsCellanie: I was going to say gloves would just turn to gold and make feats of manual dexterity cumbersome, but how do we even know contact with his hands is the problem? The stethoscope proves the touch of his neck and chest is non-transformative, so there’s clearly not a general prohibition against skin contact. Given the nature of the genre, maximum conflict would ensue if the offending member dwelled in his golden undies, which is primarily a social problem and wouldn’t require significant accommodations in most occupations.
And now I want to read something that includes labor laws regarding the supernaturally affected (which will be largely disregarded/unenforced if mapped to the ADA, but that’s what allegory is FOR).
And the almost snorted coffee out my nose award goes to:
“Is his name CTRL-C-CTRL-V?”
Also, that cover gave me serious Goru from Mortal Kombat vibes…and that is not a good thing.
Those four arms don’t look properly functional either. I mean, the top set has restricted range of movement because of the bottom set. I’m not sure he could even get the bottom set into position to do ANYTHING. So all of the hot, sweaty, itchy skin folds with none of the fun(?).
And no, bulging veins are never sexy. Concerning, yes, but sexy, emphatically not.
@Catherine = Many years ago, I worked as a phlebotomist while in med school. I then became a pediatric intern who had to start IVs in babies. I would sit on the bus on my way home and stare at people who had veins kind of like that. Not in a sexual way.
Perhaps the doctor in The Midas Touch touched the four-armed guy and he was turned to gold. Would explain the skin tone ….
To be a contrarian (the heat and humidity here are making me cranky), I find the model on “The Midas Touch” kinda attractive. I did notice that most of the comments relate to the title, whereas the comments for the other books relate to the actual covers. At least Dr. Midas looks human, although that may be how he fools people into letting him touch them. If I saw the Lord of Carnage or Mr. Four-Arms alien on the subway I’d know to change cars immediately, but Dr. Midas could sit down next to me and I’d have no clue of the danger until it was too late.
The hair of Dr. Midas bothers me– is it bouffant (sp?), or pulled into a Gibson Girl style chignon?
I think Mr 4 arms has 1 set in front of, rather than directly above, the other, to judge from the shadows and position. Think chest arm segments one behind the other sort of like a human centipede. And now i have that extremely weird “Centipede” song from the 80s stuck in my head. Drat.
“Sarah: Is his name CTRL-C-CTRL-V?”
Thank you for making my morning. You also owe me a new monitor b/c of the coffee I just spit sprayed laughing.