Worst book covers

The Well of the Unicorn is a funny one. I looked it up on ISFDB. That cover from 1976 survived only a few years and was replaced when the tile was republished by a cover from... wait for it... Darrell Sweet, surely the worst fantasy artist of all time! Del Rey decided to dispense with claims it was the best fantasy epic ever written though, which probably was a good decision. Sweet's cover is less action-packed (of course, his protagonists usually just stand around looking constipated). I actually like the strange bear/muppet creature.
 
drizzt.jpg


I don't know who this is supposed to be? Is it Drizzt? Is it David Warner? Where does his hair end and his sideburns begin? Why the purple aura?
 
alchemist said:
I don't think that one's so bad, although it's very generic modern-day Urban Fantasy (and I've browsed a lot of UF covers lately)
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I think the cover makes it looks like a paranormal romance novel which it most emphatically is not (and I didn't want people who saw me reading it on the train to think it was).
 
Fried Egg said:
I think the cover makes it looks like a paranormal romance novel which it most emphatically is not (and I didn't want people who saw me reading it on the train to think it was).
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I agree with alchemist - generic, but not awful. Doesn't say paranormal romance to me but I don't know what those covers actually look like. I can see how it might, though, I guess. To me, it looks more like, say, Brunette Buffy the Ghost Hunter.

Speaking of things whose nature the train-folk might misunderstand:

41MckrQoIQL.jpg
 
Her husband's pension and benefits through the Post Office were fantastic, but the prospect of laying a clutch of 10,000 eggs in a stagnant mill pond with Kermit the Frog was just too tempting to resist . . . . Ah, reckless youth! Always at the mercy of caprice and wild abandon!

Further proof that Sturgeon's Law is an immutable fact of the Known Universe. The prosecution rests.

 
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Complete and unabridged - surely that's a tautology?

And... was there an abridged version of this? Perhaps with all the frisky amphibian fun-time taken out?
 
thaddeus6th said:
Complete and unabridged - surely that's a tautology?

And... was there an abridged version of this? Perhaps with all the frisky amphibian fun-time taken out?
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Tautology you say? I wished they'd changed the cover text to "Uncut and Full-Length" so we could watch the censors foam at the mouth in an apoplectic fit. After all, half the fun is goading the prigs and the other half is outsmarting them on their own turf with the help of a few well-placed double entendres. No doubt the Kefauver Committee and the National Legion of Decency wanted to take the scissors to this excerpt:

"But . . . . but, babycakes! How could you? You know I think you're awfully spiffy!", said Brad, his pipe quivering perceptively.

"Oh Brad, don't pout! You know how that makes your jawline recede and your eyes look piggy!", she said as she brushed back her hair with a melodramatic flourish. "You men never could understand that a girl's gotta be free! Yes, free, I tell you! Free!"

"But what does he have that I don't? Aren't you getting free dental through my employer?", Brad said, now with a rhetorical note of triumph. He was sure he had her over a barrel.

"Oh, you poor dear. You never could understand . . . . What he can do with that tongue is soooo dreamy!"
 
Curt Chiarelli said:
"But what does he have that I don't? Aren't you getting free dental through my employer?", Brad said, now with a rhetorical note of triumph. He was sure he had her over a barrel.

"Oh, you poor dear. You never could understand . . . . What he can do with that tongue is soooo dreamy!"
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Just want to point out that I think you have your pronouns mixed up. As the frog beastie is obviously wearing a slit-sided skirt and some sort of diadem it's more than likely what we are looking at here is a prelude to frisky lesbiamphibian fun-time.
 
I would so read that book.

If only because the water heater doesn't look all that happy about it either.
 
Chris, we are clearly misreading what is happening here. The explosion in the skyscraper is the water heater bursting out of the building to save a gorgeous woman, who for some reason was falling to her death from above.

To me the heater is a hero.
 
It's possible that he is some sort of futuristic postbox, hell-bent on delivering her from an appartment block to a new address at incredible speed.

On the subject of aliens and robots stealing human women, I always wondered what Jabba the Hutt's friends made of his strange fetish for women with legs and no tails.
 
Chris Guillory said:
Curt, That ray gun blast. Is it coming from the water heater's head and firing backward, or is it coming from the sky? I can't tell.
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Hi Chris:

Your guess is as good as mine. Since the skyscraper is exploding, I'm assuming the beam is emanating from the water heater's death ray-antenna-blaster thingie. Let's face facts: this wasn't exactly a prestige assignment for the illustrator, so logic and integrity weren't top considerations - only making the deadline and paying that week's worth of rent. And I doubt that the art director cared much either. (Early in his career he probably dreamed of working at Scribner's. Instead he got stuck at a third rate publisher on Chicago's Southside that could barely pay the electricity bills.)
 
Toby Frost said:
It's possible that he is some sort of futuristic postbox, hell-bent on delivering her from an appartment block to a new address at incredible speed.

On the subject of aliens and robots stealing human women, I always wondered what Jabba the Hutt's friends made of his strange fetish for women with legs and no tails.
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Regarding Jabba's gustatory proclivities: everyone knows that the tail is all bones and no protein . . . . but the gams are mostly meat and therefore good eating!
 
Venusian Broon said:
Chris, we are clearly misreading what is happening here. The explosion in the skyscraper is the water heater bursting out of the building to save a gorgeous woman, who for some reason was falling to her death from above.

To me the heater is a hero.
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That's certainly a valid interpretation! Still, I must take exception to the destruction of private property, especially to such a landmark as the Empire State Building. (Just because a 50 foot tall ape climbed it in '33 doesn't mean any old bucket of bolts can trash the place in '53 . . . . I'd say a manufacturer's recall is in order.)
 
Curt Chiarelli said:
That's certainly a valid interpretation! Still, I must take exception to the destruction of private property, especially to such a landmark as the Empire State Building. (Just because a 50 foot tall ape climbed it in '33 doesn't mean any old bucket of bolts can trash the place in '53 . . . . I'd say a manufacturer's recall is in order.)
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Regarding the destruction, yes it might seem a little OTT, but it's all about priorities. If it had been a poor, ugly, old man falling to his death, yes perhaps the our hero might have spent a bit of time looking for a window to open and to exit the Empire State Building without causing a great deal of falling masonry.
 


Her husband was a sorcerer(!) . . . . but hardly a magician in the bedroom. Maybe that's because he's always training his "magic wand" on dead wood instead of blondes. Another classic case of misplaced priorities.

And the only mystery here is how this publication lasted thirty-one issues.
 
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