Sometimes, a book cover doesn’t whisper “buy me.” It doesn’t even mutter “maybe.” No — sometimes it sighs heavily, slumps in its chair, and stares at the industrial dryer like it’s the portal to a better universe.
Reverse Tomboy is the visual equivalent of a student art project you find taped to a café bulletin board next to the flyer for “Bassoon Lessons – Serious Inquiries Only.” We are gifted — and I use that term in the same sense one might say “gifted a bag of dead batteries” — with a black-and-white doodle of a bunny-eared human in the throes of laundry-based ennui. The scene is so bleakly quiet that I half expect the next page to be scratch-and-sniff detergent.
The font choice appears to be “Permanent Marker” from a free graphics pack circa 2009, scrawled with the energy of someone who’s halfway through their fifth all-nighter and just realized they’re out of ramen. The subtitle “a novel” feels less like an identifier and more like an apology — as if Auto Anon is clarifying, “Yes, despite what you’re seeing, this is in fact a book, not an Etsy listing for zines about sad rabbits.”
And let’s not overlook the bold composition decision: the laundry basket in the corner with a single limp garment. Is it symbolic? Minimalist? Or did the artist just forget to draw the rest of the clothes and think, “Eh, good enough”? Either way, it tells you one thing — this is a book that will make you feel emotions, mostly confusion.
In summary: Reverse Tomboy is the kind of cover that might win an award… if the category is “Most Likely to Be Taped to the Fridge by a Proud Mom Who Thinks It’s a Rabbit.”