Welcome back to Cover Snark!
From Jennifer: Nothing says vicious raider like pausing the fight for a barre routine…
Sarah: Do you think the other Banished Alien Warriors get SO MAD when this guy is on the team with them? “OH HEY! Y’all, I have the perfect synchronized rescue routine for us! Places everyone. And 5 and 6 and 7 and 8!”
Amanda: It looks like he’s lifting his leg to air something out. Maybe whatever that green swirling mist is.
Sneezy: How come only one arm is in Anime Land?
From Pam G: So here’s your typical font-infested cover with the vast stretch of veiny, metallic, over-abbed torso, topped with a faceless head and accessorized with a bit of wolfy side-eye. But wait, there’s more! What makes this truly unique is the leather jacket with ruching and . . . his navel! At first I thought he didn’t have one, so I applied my trusty magnifying glass and–dayum–it looked back at me. Malevolently!
Sarah: Malevolent Navel is the name of my new line of organic superfood cocktail mixers. But this person just gets water because I’m very concerned for their hydration.
Elyse: We’ve got Adonis belt veins and a nipple pointing downward for our bingo card!
But for serious, if I was about to engage in sexy times and saw that above peen vein, I would be like “maybe we should go to urgent care just in case.”
Sneezy: He looks like he has an early onset of zombification. His skin looks so papery and ashy, like it’s a run in with a table corner away from ripping and falling off in hunks.
From Melodie: This knight is so very angry and we have so many choices of why. Because they covered half his face with the author’s name? Perhaps he’s mad at himself for putting on his gauntlets first so he couldn’t put on anything to protect his torso? Because he’s standing in a fire? His umbilical hernia? Most worryingly the blood seems to be coming from under his pants so maybe he is angrily rushing to the doctor’s office.
Sarah: “Oh, buddy, big feelings!”
Amanda: This hurts my eyeballs.
Elyse: I am… Iron Man.
Sneezy: Is it just me, or does the vambrace look weirdly truncated and the gauntlet shrunken? I feel like I’m supposed to believe there’s an arm and hand under there, but there doesn’t look like there’s room for one.
Claudia: Centipede man!
Shana: I’m merrily skipping to get free books when I see this very dour dude.
What about this says playtime?
Sarah: Play what, terrible charades?
Claudia: I’m getting hung up on the scarf!!
Sneezy: No. Smog is not a toy.
The Play with Me dude looks like the type to cheat on his SO in a sleazy hotel. In fact, he’s on his way out, buttoning up as he goes.
That’s the Tower of London behind Sir Dark Knight of the Angry Face and the Wonky Abs. I know that area’s a bit of a tourist hellhole, but it’s really gone downhill.
Actually, the more I look at Lord Tetchy, the weirder he gets: along with the dress-zipper abs, he has very short arms (elbows usually line up roughly with your waist, hands fall mid-thigh-ish), coupled with shoulders that are so enormously wide I’d be amazed if he could scratch his left shoulder with his right hand.
When I look at some of these, I do wonder if AI is responsible for quite a few covers now. I don’t know if this is one of them (I’ve seen enough bad art generated by purely human ingenuity) but considering the random assemblage of peculiar anatomy and stock photography, I wouldn’t be surprised if that lot was generated by an algorithm.
@Empress of Blandings: That’s the Tower of London — Thanks. I KNEW I’d seen that building before, but couldn’t place it offhand. I was one of the tourists once upon a time. At least it’s more or less period appropriate, unlike the Elizabeth Tower, which shows up on the cover of all sorts of Regency romances.
At least the Raider has some protection against the sword resting on his shoulder, I bet his team mates make him wear it because they’re fed up of having to stop and dress the wounds he used to get when he insisted on posing like that. And he’s not dehydrated, but him producing all that green mist is not enticing.
Leather that falls into pleats is going to be too soft to offer much protection if the second dude comes off his bike, assuming that is meant to be a biker jacket rather than a posing jacket, and damn is he dehydrated, so he’s not going to be riding well, so the weird torso is going to look even worse after he comes off. Because he will.
Sneezy it’s not just you, I wondered if he was mad because he’s actually lost his hand and they were out of his size in replacement arms, it would explain the very off proportions.
I’d steer clear of the last chap, he looks as if he takes his playtime far too seriously, been there, done that, which is why I don’t play bridge.
Robert Downey Junior on the Dark Knight cover really needs to deal with that belly button lint.
What is going on anatomically with our Barre Raider’s legs? His standing leg seems to have evaporated somewhere around mid-thigh maybe, although the shadows make it hard to tell, and his raised leg seems to be getting skinnier as it disappears off-page. It’s already disproportionate by upper-mid-thigh.
Maybe he’s actually a djinni? Don’t their bodies sort of transition into smoke or light as you get towards the feet? I know absolutely nothing about exercise routines for the djinn community. Maybe he’s trying out a human disguise but is not used to having human legs yet.
Wild Nights with a Lone Wolf desperately needs hydration
“Hotel D” is really a Tardis and this is fan fic sexytimes Dr. Who! ;-o
Except, yeah, he looks a little creepy.
Rescued by the Raider: Thought #1: Oh, gosh, equality at last. How nice to see a male warrior dressed in the skimpy minimalism generally associated with large-breasted women in video games. Thought #2: Wouldn’t those leather straps around his shoulder seriously impair the mobility of his dominant arm?
Wild Nights with a Lone Wolf: This is not, of course, the first entry in the Four Fonts category … but for sheer mismatchedness, this must qualify for some special award. And–the usual inevitable question–can the nearest medical professional step in and explain the extraordinary amount of real estate between navel and pubic region?
The Dark One Dark Knight: Uh… Say what now? Is that the volume title and series title all jammed into one, and if so, what’s “De Russe Legacy”? Are we talking genus Derusselegacy, species darkknight, subspecies thedarkone, or perhaps the other way around?
Incidentally, if this is about medieval warfare, someone should tell the architect that square towers are a bad defensive choice, what with all those vulnerable corners. And the lightning rod really ought to be on the tallest one; you can’t just pick a tower at random and hope the lightning finds it.
Play with Me: If ever a face said plainly “You look like you’re new in town, so how ’bout you and me playing a friendly hand of poker” … it is this, it is this.
That wolf is waiting expectantly for his Snausage treat to appear.
@ Empress of Blandings, I suspect the art director for Sir Angry Iron Man insisted that both the face and the sword had to be visible on the cover and shortening that arm was the only way to do it.
@Star that disappearing leg bothers the heck out of me. Your explanation is better than anything I could think of. Djinn it is.
Rescued by the Raider: That’s a canine-personality-dominant shapeshifter, and the tree he was trying to pee on fall down, so…
Wild Nights with a Lone Wolf: Sadly, the wolf really is the star here. His sideeye is for the poor quality at the meat market — “Listen, my order was for 45 days dry-aged, not three months! And I’ve got guests coming for steaks tonight, not for stew in three days!”
The Dark One: Love to see what happens with that gauntlet when you try to open your hand. I’m not sure it’s going to work.
Play with Me: That’s not smog, that ghostly Halloween mist. Either that, or he’s an apparition arising out of swamp gas. I’m not sure which is less romantic.
This post, and especially the comments, gave me a much-needed laugh. Thanks!
As for Sword Guy, er, Angry Sword Guy – does that narrow it down enough? I didn’t notice the belly button until I read the comment, and now I disturbingly can’t stop thinking about it. I cannot figure out what they were trying to do there. Did the digital painter get overly enthusiastic with the ‘splatter’ feature? Did he have an unsightly belly button so they used a plug to hide it but didn’t realize the plug would be more obvious?
I’m bothered by the fact that Dark One’s sword has no edge. It’s completely flat where the edge should be. Between that, the “K” stabbing him in the eye, and the non-functional gauntlet, no wonder he’s peeved.
I kind of though Raider was wading through viscous glowing goo, not mist. Also, that harness looks painful. His sword arm appears to be made in pieces, like an articulated doll– the hand has a ball joint that pops into the forearm, which pops into the elbow.
If you follow the eyes, wolf hasn’t even notice dried up guy. Why does dried up guy’s body end right below his pockets?
Rescued: just looks uncomfortable.
Lone Wolf: perhaps with his coloring he was really a lone vampire?
Dark Knight: blood splatter is a turnoff
Play: looks like a DIY ID photo for work that HR said no to.
I think the Lone Wolf has had too many wild nights, as he appears to have caput medusae abdominal vein distension, which suggests liver failure.