Let’s enjoy some pre-Valentine’s Day Cover Snark!
From Jen: There are just no words to describe how bonkers this looks.
Sarah: Ok COME ON NOW. How would a mermaid ride a motorcycle? Side saddle?!
Elyse: And one handed, holding a sandwich.
Sarah: And why is the dinosaur that looks like a phallus SMIRKING about it? Like to see you try it, Dickhead.
Tara: Even the unicorn is judging the dinosaur man. No one likes an asshole.
From Maeve: Submitting this for a future Cover Snark. They made some unfortunate choices with the water in this cover.
Sarah: Yes. Unfortunate choices were made, yes.
Elyse: Does Dr. Nips have an associate in urology?
Sarah: Paging Dr. Leak?
Amanda: This makes me have to pee.
Amanda: That’s not how shadows work?
Susan: I’d be more okay with it if the shadows didn’t suggest everyone had extra foot-legs
Sarah: Are those stilts?
Shana: I just can’t get past how the shadow-baby is apparently watching their shadow-parents “make a baby”
Claudia: Overalls and second or third-stage pregnancy is… an interesting choice! All I can think of are those bathroom trips!
Elyse: Those are shadow demons.
Elyse: I’m not the only one who read “Garlic” right ?
Sarah: Nope. Looks like garlic.
Sneezy: He looks like he’s showing off a faceless head he severed.
“Yeah, back in the day some dudes even preserved their proof of work in honey to show their clients. Technology really came a long way these days. Didn’t they, Bob?”
Shana: Where’s the bottom half of Monsieur Garlic’s body?
Sarah: I see a knee. I thought it was a garlic clove but it may be a knee.
Okay but…is Garlic himself paranormal but has a job enforcing, say, municipal bylaws for the town council? Or is he an enforcer for a paranormal council? Hopefully neither — he looks like he’s about 13 and I wouldn’t listen to him about the proper sorting of recyclables OR why I shouldn’t summon a demon.
With a pen name like “Stix Hiscock” I would be disappointed in any less than that cover. Is there a blurb?
I swear we’ve seen the Prehistoric Fantasy Menage before–if so then it’s a classic, if not it’s a new old favorite of mine
As for Iron Ember, that’s not usually what they mean by “rippling abs” I don’t think
Okay as a rule I don’t dislike cartoon covers unless they have that cheap “put together in 2 minutes” feel, same as bad photoshop covers, but this one hits a lot of my Dislike buttons in ways I don’t know if I can fully articulate. So I will attempt: The bright pink background is eyestraining and at the same time not pulled together with the other color choices; a shade of blue like the characters’ clothes might work better, or a paler purple. The characters’ faces have nasty smirks that don’t say “sassy romcom” as much as “douche canoe.” The shadow choices could work, I know what they’re going for, but they’re a little too disjointed–I think it’d be better if the entire “ground” was in shadow and the couple-shadow was centered, as if the individual-shadows were overlapping due to the spotlights on each of them. For that matter, the woman’s shadow should still have the same hairstyle as the “real” woman for consistency. The costume choices are…not great; the man’s is pretty generic but I think the plaid is a little too busy for the cover, while the woman’s not only looks inconvenient for pregnancy but looks unpleasantly tight (I keep thinking how she’s going to sit down in overalls that tight without it squeezing something uncomfortably…just me?). Admittedly I’m highly biased because I detest plotlines revolving around babies and pregnancy, so I’m not inclined to like it to begin with.
That definitely says “Garlic” and then changes quickly when you doubletake. I want it to be a vampire romance. …Wait why is his elbow resting on a floating chicken breast? Maybe instead it’s about a supernatural chef. Specializing in supernatural Italian food…now I’m hungry…
At first, I thought Garic was wearing a red tutu whilst holding a swaddled baby in a most unorthodox fashion. It’s an indicator of how much Cover Snark I’ve consumed over the years that I was completed unfazed by my initial impression of what I was seeing.
Dinosaur head guy is wearing flannel pajama pants. Why?
Am I the only one who saw the shadow baby-making couple and thought it was a dinosaur? I can’t unsee it now, and frankly, am disappointed that they seem to in fact be humans.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned the Garden Gnome before – if this is a menage I really don’t want to know (except if there ist a F+ review).
@Jiobal – Agreed. That garden gnome seriously creeps me out.
The mermaid is also giving the whole situation major side-eye, as she should.
Prehistoric One Horned Menace: This is a joke. Tell me this is a joke. PLEASE say it’s a joke. From the top of the out-of-focus horn to the author’s name, I do not believe a solitary pixel of it.
Iron Ember: Hate to break it to you, author, but iron will not burn to embers. So there will be no need for your hero to vigorously, symbolically or metaphorically p### on it. (And why is he hiding his nipples? I am unaccustomed to such modesty in a cover model.)
THE BABY maker: Close behind the Too Many Fonts award is the prize for ill-advised capitalization. Is it a maker of babies, or a maker who is as yet only a baby? Will future volumes show us the maker as a toddler, as a preschooler, and eventually as a tween?
Garlic: … Oh, whoops, they’ve lost me already. Like the yuletide ABCDEFG HIJKLMOP QRSTUV WXYZ, there’s no ell. What were his parents thinking? “I like the name Gary, but let’s add some ick to it.” Prescient of them if so, because his face just cries out for a sock to the kisser.
Four covers with a grand total of two nipples. This must be a record.
@DDD—I had the same response to Garic. I’ve seen way too many dudes with randomly photoshopped-in babies to blink at someone holding a baby where their knee should be.
I guess dinosaur guy is literally a dickhead.
Mr Iron Ember is reminding me of the problems I had with my toilet this morning. He needs a different kind of plumber, though.
I have a real problem with the Baby Maker cover. The way I interpret those shadows is she is stuck with the baby while he is somewhere else having sexytimes with another woman. She has every right to be side-eyeing him.
WHAT is Garlic leaning his elbow on? It looks too levitating (levitatious?) to be stable enough to lean on.
I have to comment about the maternity overalls. When I was pregnant with my first, I was working as an EMT. I made myself overalls with zipper pockets. They were very practical for work (definitely better than separates, and the pockets meant no equipment belt ). I could still wear the uniform shirt under them. Needless to say, the company didn’t actually provide anything else for me to wear.
Not that I didn’t spend my share of time getting them on and off…
Given the angle I have to assume that Garlic isn’t leaning on anything attached to his body. A generous interpretation would assume he’s sitting on a second person hidden by the red tutu. But I’m going to go with badly assembled Frankenstein monster as no two body parts seem to have come from the same person. What the heck is going on with his left forearm? It obviously doesn’t belong to that bicep. It’s like a Ken doll got a Barbie forearm.
Note to self regarding things now deemed prehistoric: unicorns, motorcycles, mermaids, gnomes, and burgers/hoagies (not quite sure what she’s holding).
I’m having some anxiety about the proximity of the shadow lady’s feet to the shadow baby’s head. Like, everybody just scootch away from each other a bit more, please.
It isn’t deja vu, we have seen the mermaid before… https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2022/10/caption-that-cover-how-much-is-too-much/
That cover is too crazy sauce to forget.
Garlic just looks wrong, he’s missing half his body.
Yes, we’ve seen that mermaid before – it’s rather hard to forget.
Iron Ember was a bad moment to have a mouthful of coffee…
The Baby Maker has me cackling because the shadows make it look like he picked her up pregnant and then WHOOPS out popped the baby!
Giving this Cover Snark entry the title “Shadows? How Do They Work?” left me completely unprepared for the utter bonkers-ness of Prehistoric One-Horned Menage, which I was also completely unprepared to discover I had A: seen previously and B: somehow forgotten. Some things are too mad to linger long in the mind, apparently. Or maybe I’ve just read too many F+ reviews.
Also, I definitely read that as “Prehistoric One-Horned Menace”, which I feel could be equally accurate, especially if we are talking about that dinosaur.
Iron Ember had me cackling even before all the delightful commentary XD
The characters on the cover of Baby Maker are definitely planning to murder each other for their inheritances and you can’t convince me otherwise.
And yes, I, too, am in the “Read ‘Garlic’ and Did a Double-Take” club.