5 Worst Vampire Covers

This is my round up of my least favorite covers of vampire novels. You can click on the pictures to see them at a larger size.

#5) Bloodcircle

This cover isn't terrible but it stands in for the common sort of lazy cliched and poorly executed covers put on vampire novels. In fact PN Elrod book seems to be particularly prone to them. However the art on this cover isn;t very good either, and the composition looks like a bad photo mash-up, made more perplexing by the fact that it is fully painted.

I get that they want an identifiable vampire on the cover. But of the protagonist does not have pointed ears, gray skin or fangs like a starving viper, painting him this way is just silly. Also when the book is a cross over vampire/detective novel surely at least one element indicating detective fiction should appear?


#4) A Clash of Fangs

"Do you think they can tell I just drew the fang on?"
"No, dude. It's like totally seamless"

I am also wondering on what planet Mr. Mullet is mean to be a sexy gay romance hero? And of course the plain white circle standing in, presumably, for the moon just ties it all together (not).

But speaking of other planets....


#3) Tomorrow Sucks

The title sucks. The tag line ("SF in a Jugular Vein") sucks. The cover is a collection of vampire and sci fi cliched assembled into a whole that is worse than the sum of its parts.

Which is sad because this is a pretty good anthology of some classic stories.

#2) The Last Vampire
Like my first one this kind of stands in for a type of cover. One that takes a piece of crappy art and tries to make it not so bad by making it small and/or applying a cheap trick like reversing colours, zapping it with nuclear level of saturation--or as in this case mirroring it to make it kind of look like a face. Only not really. If the font is big enough, raised and metallic and celebrity authors are being quoted, nobody will notice how rubbish the art is, right?

#1) They Thirst
But for full bore, unmitigated, 24-carat ugly I don't think anything can beat this.

The idea of undead monsters shambling around town isn't half as scary as this combination of silver, yellow and purple.

I can only imagine this is meant to depict just how bad jaundice and facial acne can get if you are immortal.

Just to be fair, watch out for my post on 'Five Best Vampire Book Covers'. If you have a most or least favorite vampire cover, please let me know!