Aug 01
Click for full image Miranda Comments: Disproportionate armed wizard holds some kind of jester-headed marital aid. Cover reads, “it could save the kingdom, and entertain at parties!”.
Published 1989
(Average: 7.23 out of 10)
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Miranda Comments: Disproportionate armed wizard holds some kind of jester-headed marital aid. Cover reads, “it could save the kingdom, and entertain at parties!”.
Published 1989
(Average: 7.23 out of 10)Loading...
(9.25 out of 10) (9.18 out of 10) (9.01 out of 10) (8.97 out of 10) (8.93 out of 10) (8.93 out of 10) (8.93 out of 10) (8.92 out of 10) (8.88 out of 10) (8.88 out of 10)
Lastest Tweet
August 1st, 2013 at 10:12 am
@GoodShowSir Ugh, the King dresses like a jester and the Queen’s head is … shrunken
August 1st, 2013 at 11:24 am
His majesty appears to be melting. Can we get some air in here?
August 1st, 2013 at 11:39 am
“Yeah, very nice. Don’t suppose you could hurry up and invent TV, could you?”
August 1st, 2013 at 12:14 pm
“Nevermore shall ye need to make the Queen laugh, Sire. And nevermore shall thy name be Sag-amore, or ‘limp love’ in Anglo-Italian. Nay! Thy ‘curse’ shall become like this sword: straight and true. And ye shall be known throughout the land as ‘His High-ness,’ if thou catchest my drift.”
August 1st, 2013 at 2:38 pm
I have a lawn gnome that looks more realistic than that tree-stump of a wizard. And about that shrunken-headed queen … Oh Dean Morrissey, quite the hack cover art job. I’ll give it a Good Show Sir “10” just on principle.
August 1st, 2013 at 2:39 pm
And another art teacher cries out painfully, “What have I wrought?”
August 1st, 2013 at 3:25 pm
Did “Ringling Bros.” and “Old Navy” explode to give us the king’s clothes? I especially love his jail tattoo (mark of a true king) and the burger king crown!!!
The queen is a mash of disproportioned head, neck and arms. Poor queeny….and poor us for having to look upon this.
Was the writer referring to her frustrated sex life with that title?? There were not alot of options before viagara.
August 1st, 2013 at 9:08 pm
Does the sword sing? Do stand up comedy? Recite Kipling? Card tricks? Guess your weight?
Hell of a left arm on the Wizard.
August 1st, 2013 at 10:16 pm
@fred:
Take up the Sword of Sagamore!
Send forth ye wizard short,
With arms three yards to the inch,
To the waist-legged king’s court;
To wait in robes of citrine,
On royal call and beck–
The microcephalic queen,
His Highness with no neck.
August 1st, 2013 at 11:42 pm
Wait. Shadow of Wizard falls at a different angle than every other shadow. He has obviously mastered Optical Diffuson and Refraction Illusion Magick. Which means we only think we are seeing a flat, lifeless, poorly done cover in a painful color pallette. If we could penetrate the brilliant Couvre ala Crappe spell he cast, why, oh my, it must be spectacular!
August 2nd, 2013 at 3:11 am
Bill Oddie was at a loose end until the next series of ‘Springwatch’
August 2nd, 2013 at 5:22 am
Dalkey’s humor is sometimes broad, sometimes sly, but never funny.
~Name obscured by request
I do suspect the cover is a put on, but it is so poorly done that I’m like, why bother, you know?
August 3rd, 2013 at 4:41 am
This artwork is so strange. I could only call it partial mastery. It’s like the artist studied anatomy but skipped the classes when they were covering necks and torsos.
August 8th, 2013 at 9:20 pm
Tod Browning’s Controversial Masterpiece
THE SWORD OF FREAKS
August 15th, 2013 at 2:37 am
The expression on the queen’s face looks like she’s thinking “I know exactly what he’s thinking and there is no way we are doing THAT tonight!”
September 12th, 2013 at 6:22 pm
Everyone on the cover seems to have man-hands.
January 26th, 2016 at 8:27 am
I’m not sure I would brag if my sword was sagamore than usual.
January 26th, 2016 at 11:48 am
“I hope your tricks better than the last time, old man, or we’ll have to manhandle you out of here again.“
October 19th, 2018 at 12:04 pm
Look at that tattoo! Jester King is a hipster and he knows you won’t pick up on the irony of his costume.
October 19th, 2018 at 1:28 pm
That’s no Queen. That’s Janet from accounting. Well, she’s put on a bit of weight in her middle age but that’s exactly what she looked like in 1989.
#80s hair
October 19th, 2018 at 1:50 pm
Little Wizard: Well, Tiny Talking Head, what haveth thee to say for thyself today? (And make it good for once.)
Tiny Talking Head:
Ask me no questions
I’ll tell you no truths
His Majesty’s wearing
Two different shoes
King: Right. Into the slops bucket with him.
Tiny Talking Head: Oh no not again!!
Queen: I’ve told thee an hundred times, lighteth the candle when you get dressed!
October 19th, 2018 at 3:52 pm
The way the king is looking at the wizard….a harlequin bromance.
October 19th, 2018 at 5:19 pm
Are we sure that’s a sword? Kind of looks like a belt with a killer buckle to me.
October 19th, 2018 at 7:11 pm
Not to be a wet blanket, but the series is actually about Jesters who rule the kingdom (they inherited the title a few generations back), and supposedly whoever’s most entertaining gets to be King next, etc. The cover’s capturing the (admittedly odd) milieu.
October 20th, 2018 at 1:07 am
Mr. xn says “The jester is… the king?” And then looked bemused.
Tiny-Headed Queen is thinking about something else entirely. Wondering what’s for dinner? Trying to remember something? Gazing at a hunky knight elsewhere in the throne room? Making eye contact with portraitist or readers as if to say “I don’t believe it either.”
The blurb down left made me say “It’s a floor wax AND a dessert topping!”
Equivocal review is from “Dragon” Magazine.
Hope someone can find “The Curse of…” That cover’s also GSS-worthy.
October 20th, 2018 at 3:09 am
“We want a cover that says “broad comic fantasy”, Ted. You know – something dopey-looking.”
October 20th, 2018 at 4:20 am
Whilst pottering about on the net, jumping from link to link, I ran into this:
“I don’t know if it is “fraud” exactly, but some good friends told me of a case where relatives of Orson Scott CarD invested in a theater company he started in Utah decades ago. The theater failed and none of the investors ever received their money back.
Seeing as how Orson wound up doing so well as an author it is interesting that he never felt the need to try and recompense these people who helped him get a start, some of whom became quite poor as the years wore on.”
From here: https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/mormonism-and-financial-fraud-mark-pugsley/
The comments are actually good, gasp.
October 21st, 2018 at 1:28 am
Ya know, you could buy a premade cover here:
https://pattyjansen.com/store/product-category/premade-covers/
(titles and authors not real, just for example)
for a mere $60, some for $150. Most of them are better than what we see here every week, which were presumably commissioned at much more than that, from “professionals”.
UAI has quite the scam going with various publishers.
October 21st, 2018 at 12:18 pm
GSSxN @#28: I assume that Ms Jansen’s prices are for a single cover for your own use only. If she were selling the reproduction rights as well, I assume she would want a lot more.
But they are gorgeous, aren’t they?
October 21st, 2018 at 7:11 pm
@GSSxn,@L_L—I particularly like this cover, but the novel would need to be titled Rendezvous on Planet Clown Nose for it to really work.
October 22nd, 2018 at 12:32 am
@BC: Minor confusion at first on my part, as I thought you were proposing that as an alternative title for this post! (jesters, clowns… same diff.)
I think in this one, wizaaaard is wearing a Deluxe Patterned Snuggie. Probably has a proper dark blue wizard robe at home, but for going to Sagamore, picked something up at Ye Outtelette Malle or maybe Ye Olden Goodewille.
@L_L: She makes all these nice covers, as well as her own and doing her own writing and presumably having a life. Which makes it even more ridiculous that supposed professionals come up with such crap, for such money.
Even that cut and paste “how to make a generic fantasy cover” we all got the big laugh over would have been better than so many of what turns up if about half the elements were left off.
And yet we still get bad art like this book, or blobby self-drawn crap, or Poser, or traced horrors like Hon. Men. #19, or BAEN!headdesk.