Welcome back to Cover Snark! Let’s get into it.
Susan: Ma’am – ma’am, I need you to stop right there and put down the disembodied hand.
Wait, no, it’s a coffee, I retract that snark and go back to my original “Did you know you’ve got a tree in your hair”.
Amanda: I love that in the terms of fading in and out of time, the coffee cup is the last or rather first thing to materialize.
Sarah: Much like you should put the bunny back in the box, you should put the tiny historical people back in your coffee cup.
Susan: And in further eye test questions: does this look like a minotaur or a very angry rabbit?
Lara: Angry rabbit gets my vote!
Amanda: Has anyone seen Tank Girl? Getting hot kangaroo man vibes.
Susan: I’d forgotten about the kangaroos, but now you mention it!
Amanda: That movie feels like a fever dream.
Tara: I was thinking muscular topiary.
Amanda: A hot muscular topiary seems like a job for Chuck Tingle.
Sneezy: Angry rabbit needs a vet. His skin being so messed up that he looks like a radioactive iguana. Probably has something to do with why he’s angry.
Claudia: It’s a Jackalope to me!!
Sneezy: Doesn’t it also look like he has a teeny tiny little jewel box?
Sarah: It is so frustrating when one is a royal rabbit and one’s housekeeper puts one’s royal tiara too far away.
From Susie T.
Sarah: When I was younger, I wished my hair would do that long, smooth, wavy thing, but…did he just drop her? Is she climbing him? Is he a climbing wall? Does he have a sunken living room? I have a few questions is what I’m saying.
Shana: Does he have one tiny arm?
Amanda: Maybe he has one of those conversation pits.
From Jenna: Please please please include this title in your next cover snark!
Sarah: Have we discussed this one already? The abdominally gifted aliens against a skyline are starting to blend together.
AJ: I think we did but it was a different cover? He was a cat guy in the other one
Oh no wait! It was another book in the series, that one was an alien ARCHITECT that needed a nanny
Claudia: I get it, nannies are hard to find, and maybe harder yet if you are an alien.
Sarah: I would really like to believe that alien societies value care work more than we do and compensate amply with full benefits.
Maya: But not shirts
Claudia: Yeah, they DEFINITELY do not value shirts. Maybe they are so evolved they do not need to worry about any of the middling stuff we earthlings need to keep an eye on.
Amanda: Tasha Black’s covers never fail to disappoint and I feel like we should send her a fruit basket.
I’m not sure that alien pilot is actually an alien. He comes across as the result of a science experiment hybridising humans and heirloom tomatoes or marrows or something.
Supplementary hypothesis: maybe it was an accident like in The Fly but instead of an insect getting into the equipment someone left their lunch where they shouldn’t?
The Alyssa Drake book is giving me strong vibes of that one, ah, drat, can’t remember the title or author and a cursory google isn’t helping, but probably late 70s or early 80s cover with the nude dude and the lady sagging against him at half-mast (well, I don’t think dude would have at half-mast but thankfully that’s about the only bit of him you can’t see). Anyway, that one, it reminds me of that one.
@Empress: Tender Is the Storm! (Acronymed as TItS, which is… apt.)
English-language readers were deprived of another bare-butted, tata-humping cover the Spanish-language version got to keep. It appears here, directly after TItS.
https://sweetsavageflame.com/author-spotlight-johanna-lindsey/
@Lena – thank you, that’s the one!
Thank you also for the linked post about Lindsay’s covers which was a fun and interesting read. Although… I’d forgotten that I had my big drawing tablet plugged into to my lappy. The big drawing tablet is set to mirror my screen so I had giant romance butts scrolling down for all the family to see (luckily I realised before anyone came past!)
Robert McGinnis is one of my favourite illustrators, doing gorgeous covers in a variety of genres. He’s probably most renowned for his Travis McGee series covers: https://www.pinterest.ca/ajohnson1309/travis-mcgee-original-covers/
He’s now in his 90s & still painting; his most recent work is a series of covers for some Neil Gaiman reprints: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/156605.Robert_McGinnis_covers_for_Neil_Gaiman
Yes, I am a book cover nerd.
Do those weird tiger striped abs make him an alien?
On the first two, I get it, it’s hard to get a decent cover that catches the eye and tells people about the story in a way that makes them enthusiastic to read it AND is within your budget…
The time-travel/ghost? one, I think a few tweaks from someone with a graphic design degree could really improve the look. The Beast one…you know what, it’s perfect and I love it. It reminds me of early 2000s horror games with their big chunky polygons. I LOVE early 2000s horror games and big chunky polygons. I could totally see it moving in that ‘unaffected by gravity and clearly superimposed on the background’ way.
A Perfect Plan definitely reads less like “don’t leave me you big hunk of Man, no one makes me feel the way you do” or “fellatio imminent, prepare for impact” and more like “oh geez sorry I thought you were closer to the chair, my arms just gave out.” Also that hair could use a rinse, on both of them…
Alien Pilot, I must say I’m disappointed with. I understand the limits of modern modelling and what the greater Romance reading audience will look for, but ‘just a guy, except he’s green’ is such a bland alien design. I can’t tell if the kid is supposed to have Avatar stripes (cat aliens, not element benders) or if she just got into the fingerpaints. The fingerpaints would drive home the ‘daddy needs a nanny’ angle more…
Get the crunchy green jackalope to play the alien pilot. I think there’s a market for it.
@hng23 Those are lovely. Very taken with those Gaiman covers. I do appreciate that style of illustrated cover very much.
Can anyone else see a smiley face in the backpack in Dark Blue Wave?
I have had an angry rabbit and that is pretty much what she looked like when she was in a mood.
@Kkelly, I noticed that, too!
Oops, apologies for that extra k, @Kelly.
Have always liked the Travis McGee covers. My husband and I read pretty much the whole series during his treatment for his first cancer, those books just kind of dragged us along.
On a somewhat related note, is it just me or are there a lot of romance covers where the guy or the torso have a really bad spray tan or maybe bad photoshop? They are turning up skin tones that are making me think of hemochromatosis or severe jaundice or some other unfortunate problem.
Oh, criminy, Poe’s Law strikes again. When we had the earlier Alien Whatsit Wants a Nanny, I honestly never imagined that there really, literally was a series.
My first thought on the Drake cover was the someone PhotoShopped a couple of old-skool models onto a generic historical background. Second thought, after looking at his back and shoulders – he’s morphing into the Hulk. Maybe he turns into the green alien pilot.
Is that a young John Travolta in a Perfect Ptan?
I admit, my first impression when seeing the Perfect Plan cover was that the dashing hero is winding up a punch to sock the dashing heroine in the jaw. On a second look, though, I don’t think that T-rex arm is long enough to reach her.
If you have a chance, look at the new cover for Beast Unburdened. It’s certainly different, although it might deserve a cover snark if it’s own….