Harlequin Needs Heads

by SB Sarah Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 03:15 AM

In a failing economy, it becomes essential to any business to recycle and to seek alternative means to cut costs. Such as? Stock imagery! Hey, when you find a hot image with expansive man-titty, you work that for all it is worth. For example?

image

image

But wait, there’s more! It seems Silhouette has discovered that they can also use all the heads that were chopped off from all those headless cover illustrations, and invite those poor lost craniums to gallivant about their covers. How charitable! How fortunate, particularly for Bonnie Vanak!

Witness the evidence:

More,more,more!>

Comments

Picture of Fionn Fionn said on...
11.12.08 at 04:04 AM

Oh god, poor Ms. Vanak. *wince* That is one of the worst PS cases I’ve seen in a good while yet.

spamword: didnt43

Says to herself, “Oh no, they didn’t!” 43 times

Picture of Chris Chris said on...
11.12.08 at 05:17 AM

*boggles at the bad*

Picture of ev ev said on...
11.12.08 at 06:08 AM

Poor Vivi- sharing a cover. and a badk ps at that.

Someone could make a real hobby of looking for crap like this.

Never mind.

Picture of Tracy Wolff Tracy Wolff said on...
11.12.08 at 06:09 AM

Wow!!!!  I can’t believe they did that.  Poor Bonnie!

Picture of Silver James Silver James said on...
11.12.08 at 06:21 AM

Owwww. Just….oww.

Picture of LoriSusan LoriSusan said on...
11.12.08 at 06:22 AM

And the covers are unattractive too. What a shame.

Picture of Midknyt Midknyt said on...
11.12.08 at 06:36 AM

Ah, my five minutes of Bitchery fame, at last!  :)

Bet Bonnie didn’t know her heroine got around so much.  I like how the top guys seem to be saying, “Ooh, I like it up the hershey highway,” whereas bottom guy is more of a “Yeah, I like it up there, so what’s it to you bee-yatch” kind of a guy.

Although I guess they would all be bottom guys then, now wouldn’t they?

spamword: long64.  Does that make it better that a short 69, or worse?

Picture of Ann-Kat Ann-Kat said on...
11.12.08 at 06:41 AM

Yikes. And that’s a word I haven’t pulled out for a while, but damn that was painful to read (and look at). My heart bleeds for Bonnie and the poor man who’s head and body are being exploited so purely from that gawdawfulpshawp.

Picture of Carolyn Carolyn said on...
11.12.08 at 06:50 AM

And on the last example the woman looks like she has a skull eye!  Because her eye shadow no longer makes sense either.  No wonder he looks so concerned.

Picture of Kathsan Kathsan said on...
11.12.08 at 08:07 AM

Aren’t there laws against this?  It should be a whole subsection.  “Concerning Photoshop and Book Covers.”  In most cases the punishment is only having your house wallpapered in the offending cover, but the truly unlucky have their own faces Photoshopped on.

Picture of Anya Anya said on...
11.12.08 at 08:17 AM

This is just wrong b/c it’s a rather yicky/unattractive picture to begin with and then they have to go and use it not once but three times.  My sincere condolences to Vivi and Bonnie.

Picture of seadanes seadanes said on...
11.12.08 at 08:55 AM

Also, what’s with the weird shadow that makes it looks like her head has been severed from her body? And who thought these were hunky man meats we would all want to look at? Eeeewwww.

Picture of El El said on...
11.12.08 at 09:41 AM

In the third one, she seems much more vampiric.

Picture of Joanne Joanne said on...
11.12.08 at 09:46 AM

Really, the heads don’t bother me as much as the fact that they replaced the female model’s hands with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s.

Picture of Deb Kinnard Deb Kinnard said on...
11.12.08 at 10:01 AM

Since #2’s title is “The Empath”, I wanna know: if she’s that emphathic, doesn’t she understand the neck-gnaw WILL HURT HIM? Sheesh!

Spamword: business29. Yeah, I know it’s a business, but enuff pshawp aready. Recycling is for glass, metal & paper.

Picture of Roslyn Holcomb Roslyn Holcomb said on...
11.12.08 at 10:45 AM

Why do I drop the ‘s’ at the end of head? Harlequin Needs Head. Hmmm, don’t we all?

Picture of Teddypig Teddypig said on...
11.12.08 at 11:22 AM

It says… Bite my nipples hard!

Picture of sadieloree sadieloree said on...
11.12.08 at 12:54 PM

It’s not just the shadow on his neck that makes it wonky in the last cover. The pasted in face is lit from a completely different direction! He has shadows on the opposite side of his face from all of the shadows in the rest of the image! Yikes!

Picture of Elizabeth Wadsworth Elizabeth Wadsworth said on...
11.12.08 at 02:56 PM

Hey, at least the dude had the courtesy to wake up for the last one.  But really, recycling the same cover twice for the same author - come on!  Surely they could find something a little bit different, or at least flip the image or… something.

Picture of Julia Julia said on...
11.12.08 at 03:26 PM

While looking at the covers… why did I get the image that the woman was pulling the poor guy’s nipple while taking his shirt off? o.0

Picture of Jennie Jennie said on...
11.12.08 at 03:31 PM

I’m still shaking my head at giraffe neck vs. no neck.  Yikes!

Picture of Jinni Jinni said on...
11.12.08 at 05:45 PM

This just bites (pun intended).

series81 - how many times they used this picture in the series.

Picture of StephanieL StephanieL said on...
11.12.08 at 08:24 PM

To me the girl seems to be saying “Yup.  Looks infected to me”.

What amazes me is how versatile they attempted to make Mr. Creepy.  Apparently creepiness works well with a city scene, some sort of castle-like structure with lame photoshop birds, AND a forest.

Picture of Wryhag Wryhag said on...
11.12.08 at 10:39 PM

Oh, yay!  Drool cups are making a comeback!

Picture of clare2e clare2e said on...
11.17.08 at 04:02 PM

I hate to stand up for something like this, so I won’t exactly.  I’ll only mention that two of these yucko covers are for the short, e-book-only paranormal program Nocturne Bites.  For these little 15k wonders that go straight to download, they’re not commissioning original art, I guess, but they want it to have the Nocturne look and branding.  However, the program is so new, I’m surprised they’re already reusing gnaw-shots.  On our website at womenofmystery.net , I recently highlighted more Harlequin cover abuse.  In that case, it was Mira and a Carla Neggers cover that was super-shady.

day57- I feel like I’ve been NaNo’ing for 57 days.

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