The 2024 Lousies: FINAL BALLOT!

An impossible choice. Sophie had it easy by comparison.

These truly are terrible covers! Picking three covers apiece in those semifinals was difficult enough, but at least some of the covers there stood out from the others. Here, just about every one of these is an obvious blight on one’s eyes in one way or another. The main categories I’m seeing this year:

1. The “Who barfed?” cover, e.g. The Great Celestial War and Brewmaster of Arabia.
2. The “Augh! My eyes!” cover, e.g. Flash In A Flash and The Dutiful And The Banned. (Secrets of the alchemist star lord of wars in a rings of time matrix also fits into both categories 1 and 2)
3. The “That’s a real mouthful…” cover, e.g. Catherine Douglass and Hibshman Henry’s volumes with overly wordy titles as well as (of course) Maximilian St. John’s reliably wretched entry for this year.
4. The “You call this a cover?” cover, e.g. The Doom Statues and whatever those books with the guy sticking his key in a locker and the random photos of ballistic missiles and wolves on their covers were supposed to be (I can’t remember what their titles are), which brings us to…
5. The “Where the hell is the title!?” cover, which includes those two previously mentioned books and a few others that didn’t quite make it here from the semifinals (though they did get a significant number of votes).
6. The “Why yes, we did draw this with crayons!” cover, e.g. The Quest For The Elemental Gods and Siege of Lance.
7. The “Let’s throw another cover on it!” cover, e.g. Cecil and Pearle and the Merry-Go-Round and The Only Planet of Choice.

Then there are those rare pieces that don’t quite fit any of these categories but are just plain atrocious all the same, such as the creepy Best Day Ever: A Surprise For Emma and—especially—Petit Ruri (and the Maya), which looks like it may well be the work of a foul-mouthed schizophrenic inmate at a mental asylum. Worst of all, out of all the aforementioned atrocities, we only get to vote for three covers apiece, and only ten will win.

Talk about tough decisions!