Harry Ferman (1906-1973)

August 25, 2016, 5:06 pm

Newspaper Artist, Art Editor, Illustrator, Cartoonist, Poet, Epistler
Born March 6, 1906, Kalamazoo, Michigan
Died April 28, 1973

So far, I have written about the following artists whose work was reprinted in the Bellerophon issues of Weird Tales in 1984-1985: Clare Angell (1874-1932?), Edd Cartier (1914-2008), Rodney M. Ruth (1912-1987), and Henry del Campo (1899-1961). The first three artists were not originally published in Weird Tales. Their drawings appearing in the Bellerophon issues are from other sources. The last, Henry del Campo, was published in Weird Tales in 1939-1954, but little was known of him before I wrote an entry on him for this blog. There is more known of Harry Ferman, although I didn't have his dates when I wrote the introduction to this series. Once I have written about Harry Ferman, I'll go on to Boris Dolgov, but don't get your hopes up: less is known of him than of the enigmatic Nictzin Dyalhis.

Harry Elvis Ferman was born on March 6, 1906, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Elvis A. Ferman and Agnes "Aggie" Hannah Ferman. Ferman's father worked on the railroad. That might explain the presence of the Ferman family in Chapell, Nebraska, in the 1910 census. In 1920, they were in Buffalo, Iowa. Throughout the 1930s, '40s, and beyond, Harry Ferman and his family lived in Wichita, Kansas.

On September 25, 1929, at age twenty-three, Harry E. Ferman married Myrtle Gertude Volz, equally twenty-three years of age, in her native Elkhart, Iowa. He was by then living in Wichita, Kansas, and working as an artist. Like her husband, Myrtle Volz Ferman was an artist and poet. She was also a photographer, a sculptress, and a maker of wedding cakes. Author, teacher, Marine veteran, and "junkyard dog" David Daniel Ferman has written fond remembrances of his parents on his self-titled blog. I urge you to read about them by clicking here.

From 1930 to 1961, Harry Ferman was an artist on the Wichita Beacon. He also contributed cartoons to sports magazines and later worked as a corporate artist for the Boeing Company. From the issues April 1939 to July 1942, Harry Ferman illustrated stories appearing in Weird Tales. His list of credits for that magazine is long, so instead of showing it here, I'll provide this link to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Ferman also had one of his illustrations reprinted in Weird Tales for Winter 1985.

According to the University Libraries at Wichita State University, "Ferman became well known for his letter writing, especially for the sketches he would add to each one written. The recipients of these letters were known as 'Fermanites' and lived throughout the nation." The university has a small collection of those letters, written to Ferman's friend Ralph Finnell.

Harry E. Ferman died on April 28, 1973, at age sixty-seven and was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Wichita, Kansas.

Harry Ferman's Illustrations in Weird Tales

See the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, here.

Further Reading

Look for links in the text above.

An illustration by Harry Ferman for "The Song of the Slaves" by Manly Wade Wellman, Weird Tales, March 1940.

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More Utopia, More Dystopia

August 26, 2016, 2:52 pm

≫ Next: Boris Dolgov (?-?)

≪ Previous: Harry Ferman (1906-1973)

I have heard and read more about Utopia and Dystopia lately. Before I begin on that, I would like to ask a question: What is Dystopia? The reason I ask is that the terms Dystopia (or dystopia) and dystopian are thrown around pretty readily these days. There isn't any precision in their use. It seems to me that too many people call any unpleasant future a dystopia. If Utopia is a perfectly good society, then it seems to me that Dystopia is a perfectly bad one, where there is complete order and control. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1921, 1924), Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932), Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949), and the movies THX 1138 (1971) and Logan's Run (1976) are dystopian. Mad Max (1979) and The Walking Dead depict unpleasant futures, but they are not dystopian. In the futures they postulate, there is only disorder. People's lives are not controlled by an overarching State. Mad Max, The Walking Dead, and stories like them are instead post-apocalyptic. That's not to say that a post-apocalyptic story cannot also be dystopian, but if there is no order and no control, there is no dystopia. Perfect order requires a totalitarian State. Where there is no State, there can be no dystopia, unless individual people themselves impose order upon themselves and upon each other, something they are unlikely to do given that we are by our very nature free and resistant to impositions of order or attempts to control us. The current trend towards political correctness is an attempt at control of people's thoughts, words, and actions. It is essentially a movement towards totalitarianism, i.e., dystopia. It has also shown signs of succeeding.

Utopia came first of course. Although the word itself means essentially no place, utopia has come to mean a place of perfection or where government and society match some lofty ideal of what is good. The term dystopia is used in reaction to that. It's a place where government and society are perfectly bad. (As a parallel, a functional family is a good one. A dysfunctional family is a bad one.) Alternative terms for dystopia are cacotopia, kakotopia, and anti-utopia. Kakos is from the Greek, meaning bad or wicked. In Italian and in English, we have the word caca, meaning to defecate or excrement. I don't know what etymological relationship those words--kakos and caca--might have, but it brings new meaning to Robert De Niro's character Harry Tuttle in the movie Brazil (1985). Harry is a sort of ninja heating engineer who works outside the law and wastes (rim shot) two functionaries of the State by drowning them in sewage. One, played by Bob Hoskins, is named Spoor, which is of course another word for scat or droppings.

So, let's call things what they are. An unpleasant future is not necessarily dystopian. It might just be unpleasant. And, as the meaning of the word implies, Utopia does not exist. There is no such thing and there can be no such thing. (I would add, as a message to anybody who carries around in his little brain any kind of utopian scheme: quit trying to bring it about.) Utopia cannot exist for the simple reason that a perfect government or society requires that the people composing it or instituting it be perfect. How do you expect to make a perfect thing out of imperfect parts? Alternatively, Utopia imposes perfection upon imperfect people, making them, in essence, no longer human. In short, every Utopia is a Dystopia, and every person in pursuit of Utopia is, whether he realizes it or not, an incipient tyrant.

So, in 2015, the French publishing house Flammarion issued Soumission, a novel of the near future by Michel Houellebecq. Soumission may not be exactly dystopian, but it describes the run-up to what must be a dystopian society, an Islamic State that requires, by its very name, submission (the meaning of the title and roughly the meaning of the word Islam, i.e., surrender). I have written about Soumission before. Now there is a novel by a Muslim Arabic writer to match it. The novel is 2084: La fin du monde and the writer is Algerian Boualem Sansal. Mr. Sansal's book is set in a more distant future, in an overtly dystopian religious society. I have not read this book, but I'd like to give it a try. The title refers to George Orwell's dystopian novel of the twentieth century. The plot, summarized in several reviews, makes me think of Planet of the Apes (1968), a story that is definitely post-apocalyptic and vaguely dystopian.

Finally, I just happened to hear part of Science Friday today. For those who haven't heard it, Science Friday is a weekly show on public radio in which the host, Ira Flatow, discusses science, technology, and, I have to point out, merely pseudoscientific or science-like topics. (If Ira Flatow is not an atheist, he at least tolerates atheistic malarkey from his guests. He's also an unquestioning adherent to the cult of global warming. Now I find out that he is, like "Bill Nye the Science Guy," not a scientist at all but an engineer.) Today (August 26, 2016), Mr. Flatow and his guests discussed Margaret Atwood's 2003 novel Oryx and Crake as part of their SciFri Book Club series. They used the words dystopia or dystopian several times in reference to Ms. Atwood's book. I haven't read it so I can't say for sure, but Oryx and Crake sounds to me more post-apocalyptic than dystopian. I should point out that her novel from 1985, The Handmaid's Tale, is in fact dystopian, and like Boualem Sansal's book, set in a totalitarian religious society, in this case a Christian rather than a disguised Islamic society. In its form, The Handmaid's Tale is something like The Iron Heel by Jack London (1908). I should also point out that one of Ira Flatow's guests today was Annalee Newitz, who is also about to have her own dystopian novel, Autonomous, published by Tor Books.

I guess there is some irony in calling for precision (i.e., order) in the use of the term dystopian. Then again, imprecision in language, or to change the meanings of words, is one of the goals of the mind reaching for totalitarian control over people's lives. In any case, again, let's call things what they are, and let's have more dystopian fiction.

↧

Boris Dolgov (?-?)

August 27, 2016, 9:23 am

≫ Next: More on Boris Dolgoff . . . But Only a Little

≪ Previous: More Utopia, More Dystopia

Artist
Born ?
Died ?

Boris Dolgov did not exist. The man who bore that name may have existed, but there never was a man in the United States with that name until 1956, too late for Weird Tales. At least that's what public records say. Search for Boris Dolgov or Dolgoff or Dolgova or Dolkoff or any other permutation you can think of and you're likely to come up empty . . . except for a Russian-American farmer who now lies buried in a Jewish cemetery in Washington State.

It seems likely to me that Boris Dolgov was the assumed name of a man who, for whatever reason, wanted to remain or was satisfied to remain unknown. He was friends with the artist and writer Hannes Bok. They sometimes collaborated, signing their joint work "Dolbokov." Dolgov had his first interior illustration in the genres of fantasy and science fiction in Science Fiction Quarterly for Summer 1941. His first illustration for Weird Tales followed in September of that year. His last came thirteen years later, in July 1954, the penultimate issue of "The Unique Magazine." In between, Dolgov created dozens of interior illustrations and five covers for Weird Tales. His only known book cover was for Destination: Universe! by A.E. van Vogt, published in 1952. After 1954, he disappeared forever.

Like his artist friend, Hannes Bok also worked under an assumed name. Born Wayne Francis Woodard on July 2, 1914, in Kansas City, Missouri, he was known for his odd ways, including his evasiveness. Despite early promise, despite success as an illustrator and author of science fiction and fantasy, and despite strong connections to others in his field, Hannes Bok went into steep decline late in his career. On April 11, 1964, at age forty-nine, he died alone in his apartment in New York City. His body was not discovered right away. If not for the intervention of his friend and collector Clarence Peacock, his art may very well have been thrown out with the trash. The official cause of death is supposed to have been a heart attack. Forrest J Ackerman and Donald J. Wollheim claimed that he starved to death. Shades of H.P. Lovecraft. Shades also of Hugh Rankin.

Hannes Bok's first work for a major magazine (what science fiction fans I think would have called a prozine) was for Weird Tales. He had his first cover and his first interior art published in the same issue, December 1939. "In 1939," wrote Frederik Pohl,

Hans Bok was all of twenty-five years old and thus a senior citizen among us, but he looked younger. He looked--well, "elfin" is the word that others have used to describe him, and it does as well as any. It wasn't just his a matter of physical appearance. His manner was both reserved and, well, flighty, not to say downright evasive; there were obviously huge hunks of Hannes's internal life which he did not care to share even with friends. (1)

As I said, Wayne Francis Woodard, later known as Hannes Bok, was born in Kansas City, Missouri. In the censuses of 1920 and 1930, he was listed with his family in Minnesota, in 1920 in St. Paul, in 1930 in Duluth. Woodard graduated from Duluth High School in 1932. He left for Seattle that same year. In 1937 or 1938, he moved to Los Angeles, where he knew Emil Petaja, Ray Bradbury, Forrest J Ackerman, and others in the Los Angeles science fiction scene. In 1938, he returned to Seattle and worked for the WPA painting murals. His artist contacts in that city included Morris Graves (1910-2001) and Mark Tobey (1890-1976), both of whom, like Woodard, were interested in mysticism or non-traditional religion. In December 1939, assuming the name Hannes Bok, he moved again to New York City. There he knew Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Frank Belknap Long, and others. Knight, an artist himself, called Bok, "certainly the most talented artist ever to work in science fiction illustration." (2, 3)

Dolgov and Bok were both artists of imagination and whimsy. Both worked in black and white on coquille board. Unlike much of Bok's work, Dolgov's is devoid of sexual imagery, which, in Bok, clearly indicates to me that the artist had psychosexual problems. Boris Dolgov was, in comparison, an artist of innocence. Both knew and admired Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966). As evidence, there is a photograph of Dolgov and Parrish together, presumably at Parrish's house in Plainfield, New Hampshire, taken by Bok. You can see it at a blog called Null Entry, here. Hannes Bok was greatly influenced by Maxfield Parrish. Perhaps no artist has worked with such great effect in the manner of Parrish. Dolgov, on the other hand, seems to have taken a different path.

Boris Dolgov is supposed to have lived in New York. You won't find him there in the census. Nor will you find there Wayne Woodard or Hannes Bok. That's a terrible development for the researcher, as finding Bok in 1940 might very well lead to Dolgov. But what if they had a connection predating their years in New York City?

Now begins the part where I clutch at straws.

Boruch Dolgoff, also known as Baruch, Bora, and Boris Dolgoff, was born on November 27, 1897, in Alexandrovik, Russia. I suspect he fled his native land because of periodic pogroms. After living in Harbin, China, Dolgoff arrived in the United States on January 23, 1916, aboard the Yokohama Maru out of Yokohama, Japan. On October 14, 1933, Dolgoff married twenty-four-year-old Minnie Samuelson in Seattle, Washington. Dolgoff (1897-1989) and his wife (1909-1991) are buried together at Herzl Memorial Park in Shoreline, Washington. For decades he was a farmer and a poultry dealer in Seattle. Hannes Bok lived in Seattle in 1932-1937 or 1938 and in 1938-1939. Could he have known Boris Dolgoff? Could he have also known in Seattle the artist later known as Boris Dolgov? And could Boris Dolgov have gotten his name from Boris Dolgoff, the poultry dealer? If so, why? More to the point, who was Boris Dolgov?

The world may never know.

Boris Dolgov's Illustrations in Weird Tales

Once again, I will refer you to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database for a full listing of Boris Dolgov's genre illustrations. Note the error in the artist who created the cover for the May 1947 issue of Weird Tales. It was actually Matt Fox.

Further Reading

Boris Dolgov on the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, here.

Boris Dolgov's art in Weird Tales and a photograph of him with Maxfield Parrish on the blog Null Entry, here.

Notes

(1) From "Remembering Hannes" by Frederik Pohl in A Hannes Bok Showcase, edited by Stephen D. Korshak (Charles F. Miller, 1995), p. ix. Pohl went on in his remembrance to describe the last time he saw Hannes Bok, circa 1953. By then, Bok was living in poverty and "had become something fairly near a hermit." (p. xi) He had lost most of his teeth and had broken his dentures so that he was barely able to eat. Pohl again: "For a man who spent so much of his life producing pretty things for the rest of us to enjoy, the last stages of Hannes's life, and especially his death, were lacking in prettiness of any kind." (p. xi)

(2) From The Futurians by Damon Knight (John Day, 1977), p. 53.

(3) Woodard's family, Irving Ingalls Woodard, Carolyn Bantiz Woodard, and their son William Grant Woodard, were back in Missouri in 1940, living in Kirkwood. In the 1940s and '50s, Irving and Carolyn lived in Omaha, Nebraska. Irving I. Woodard died on November 26, 1975, in Galveston, Texas, as a result of being burned while smoking in bed. His younger son, William, preceded him in death on July 25, 1972, in Beaumont, Texas. I don't know the fate of his wife.

A gallery of covers by Boris Dolgov, first, from November 1946.

March 1947.

September 1947.

January 1948.

And last, from May 1950.

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More on Boris Dolgoff . . . But Only a Little

August 29, 2016, 11:55 am

≫ Next: The Golden Anniversary of Star Trek

≪ Previous: Boris Dolgov (?-?)

I attacked the problem of Boris Dolgov from a different angle and found one tantalizing piece of information. In a telephone directory of New York City from 1957, there is the following listing:

Boris Dolgoff, 630 East 14th Street, Manhattan

That address is in the East Village, a place for artists, musicians, students, and bohemians. Could that be the artist for Weird Tales? There were other Dolgov families in New York City in the early twentieth century. Maybe Boris was from one of them.

Dolgov appears to be a somewhat common name. The Dolgovs in America may have come from Belarus or surrounding areas of the old Russian empire. The name, if Google Translate is correct, means debts. Fitting for an artist.

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The Golden Anniversary of Star Trek

September 8, 2016, 6:00 am

≫ Next: Hannes Bok (1914-1964)

≪ Previous: More on Boris Dolgoff . . . But Only a Little

If this were fifty years ago, you could tune in tonight to a new television show called Star Trek. (And unless you were Al Gore, you would not be reading this on the Internet.) Yes, half a century has passed since that first episode was broadcast on September 8, 1966, and although Star Trek would last only three years in its original run--the last episode, a repeat, was broadcast on September 2, 1969--the show has become an enduring global phenomenon. Witness the thirteenth movie in the series, released this summer, and the impending debut of the seventh TV series.

That first episode from September 1966 was "Man Trap," an outer space monster story. I think more than a little of Star Trek was owed to the previous television series The Outer Limits (1963-1965). Both shows were known not only for science fiction but also for their monsters. Many of the actors and some of the props and other visual elements from The Outer Limits also appeared in Star Trek. I suppose that the people in charge decided to launch Star Trek with a story of a monster in order to grab viewers. The more cerebral episodes could wait. Of course, one of the beauties of television from the 1960s and '70s is that it worked on two levels: plenty of thrills for the kids and something to think about (including sexual situations) for the adults.

I have written before about the connection, however tenuous, between Weird Tales and Star Trek. You can read my article "Weird Tales and Star Trek" by clicking here. In that article I mentioned the writers who were in Weird Tales who also wrote for Star Trek. One was Robert Bloch, author of three episodes, one of which was called "Wolf in the Fold.""Wolf in the Fold" is from the second season and was broadcast on December 22, 1967. It concerns a serial killer who, as it turns out, has traveled through time and space to carry out his depredations. In one of his incarnations, he was Jack the Ripper. That plotline may have sounded familiar to readers of Weird Tales. Nearly a quarter century before, in the issue of July 1943, "The Unique Magazine" had published Bloch's story "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," which proved to be essentially the source for "Wolf in the Fold."

That's only one connection between Weird Tales and Star Trek. Another, or I guess I should say a similarity between the two, is that both have survived their own demise many times over (like Bloch's Jack the Ripper). Weird Tales is currently defunct. I imagine it will be back. As for Star Trek: the original run came to an end on September 2, 1969, as I mentioned. Fans must have been in despair, but less than a week later, on September 8, 1967, the show went into syndication, and so today is a double anniversary of beginnings. So Happy Anniversary, Star Trek! Now we can look forward to the Diamond Jubilee--or maybe we should call it the Dilithium Jubilee--twenty-five years hence.

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Hannes Bok (1914-1964)

September 9, 2016, 7:43 am

≫ Next: Fred Humiston (1902-1976)

≪ Previous: The Golden Anniversary of Star Trek

Né Wayne Francis Woodard
Aka Hans Bok
Artist, Author, Illustrator, Author, Poet, Astrologer/Occultist
Born July 2, 1914, Kansas City, Missouri
Died April 11, 1964, New York, New York

There has been much written about Hannes Bok. Just two weeks ago, I wrote about him myself in my posting on his friend and sometime collaborator Boris Dolgov. (You can read what I wrote by clicking here.) I won't go over too much of what has been written on Bok, but I would like to offer information specific to his contributions to Weird Tales.

Hannes Bok was born Wayne Francis Woodard on July 2, 1914, in Kansas City, Missouri. His father, Irving Ingalls Woodard (1888-1975), was an insurance salesman. That might explain the itinerant lifestyle of the Woodard family. In 1920, they were in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in 1930, in Duluth. Wayne Woodard graduated from Duluth High School in 1932 and departed for Seattle, according to Wikipedia to live with his mother, Carolyn Bantiz Woodard. According to that same source, Wayne Woodard was estranged from his father. His problems in life--sexual, personal, professional, spiritual, and otherwise--suggest an unhealthy or dysfunctional family life early on.

In 1937 or 1938, Woodard moved to Los Angeles and became associated with the science fiction scene there. He was friends with Emil Petaja, Ray Bradbury, Forrest J Ackerman, and others. In 1938, he returned to Seattle and worked for the WPA painting murals. His artist contacts in that city included Morris Graves (1910-2001) and Mark Tobey (1890-1976). Assuming the name Hans or Hannes Bok, Woodard moved to New York City in December 1939, the same month in which his first cover and interior illustrations appeared in Weird Tales. Bok would remain in that city for the rest of his too-brief life. Again, he was in contact with others engaged in writing and illustrating science fiction and fantasy. Towards the end of his life, he seems to have lost contact with many of them. If that was the case, it was probably owed in no small part to his peculiarities and his difficulties with personal relationships.

Hannes Bok created seven cover illustrations for Weird Tales. One, for the issue of July 1941, very likely includes a self-portrait. His interior illustrations for the magazine numbered in the dozens and include collaborations with Boris Dolgov, which were attributed to "Dolbokov." Bok's first interior illustrations were for "Nymph of Darkness" by C.L. Moore and Forrest J Ackerman and "Escape from Tomorrow" by Frank Belknap Long, Jr., in December 1939. The last was for "Brenda" by Margaret St. Clair in March 1954. Bok also created the headings for the interior main title and for the Weird Tales Club feature.

Bok was multitalented and wrote five stories for the original Weird Tales, plus one story published in the paperback editions of the 1980s and a poem published in July 1944 (in collaboration with an author named Nichol). Bok's contributions to Weird Tales tailed off in the mid to late 1940s, but he remained very active in fantasy and science fiction into the 1950s. Curiously, his last interior illustrations and among his last cover illustrations in those fields came in 1957, well before his death. By then, Bok was in decline, separated from former friends and acquaintances and living in poverty so extreme that his teeth had rotted, his dentures had fallen apart, and his diet consisted of the simplest of fare. Hannes Bok died alone in his apartment, either of a heart attack or starvation, on April 11, 1964, at age forty-nine. He has not been forgotten, however, for his art lives on, and he is recognized as one of the foremost illustrators of fantasy and science fiction of the twentieth century.

Hannes Bok's Stories and Poem in Weird Tales

"Poor Little Tampico" (July 1942)

"The Evil Doll" (Nov. 1942)

"Dimensional Doors" (Jan. 1944)

"Tragic Magic" (Mar. 1944)

"Weirditties" (poem, July 1944, with Nichol)

"The Ghost Punch" (Nov. 1944)

"Someone Named Guibourg" (Spring 1981)

Hannes Bok's Interior Illustrations in Weird Tales

See the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, here, for a complete list.

Hannes Bok's Cover Illustrations for Weird Tales

See below.

Further Reading

Any number of sources and collections, including A Hannes Bok Treasury (Underwood-Miller, 1993) and A Hannes Bok Showcase (Charles F. Miller, 1995).

Weird Tales, December 1939, Hannes Bok's first cover for the magazine.

Weird Tales, March 1940. Artist Gary van der Steur refashioned this image for his cover of Weird Tales for Fall 1973. Mr. van der Steur replaced the profile on the bottom with that of Richard Nixon.

Weird Tales, May 1940.

Weird Tales, May 1941.

Weird Tales, July 1941, a rare science fiction cover for the magazine and one that includes what is almost certainly a self-portrait of the artist.

Weird Tales, July 1941, another effective war cover.

Weird Tales, March 1942, Bok's last cover for the magazine.

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Fred Humiston (1902-1976)

September 28, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Bruce David-A Speculation

≪ Previous: Hannes Bok (1914-1964)

Commercial Artist, Illustrator, Writer, Author, Local Historian
Born July 20, 1902, Jersey City, New Jersey
Died March 27, 1976, Portland, Maine

Frederick S. Humiston, Jr., was born on July 20, 1902, in Jersey City, New Jersey, and grew up in Hillsdale, New Jersey. He graduated from Hillsdale High School in 1920 and went to work as a commercial artist at the Vitaphone Company in New York City. The young artist's uncle, Walter J. Rich, was president of Vitaphone at the time, and the company was engaged in developing sound for movies during the 1920s. In 1922, Humiston's parents purchased the Hotel Riverside in Popham, Maine. For many years afterwards, the family alternated between Maine and New Jersey, then between residence at the hotel and a house in Popham. After the deaths of his parents in the early 1940s, Humiston sold the hotel but still alternated between homes in Maine and New Jersey. He finally settled in Portland, Maine, where he wrote stories and drew pictures for the Portland Herald Press. He also wrote and illustrated Blue Water Men and Women, published in 1965.

Fred Humiston created illustrations for Weird Tales beginning with "The Crowd" by Ray Bradbury in May 1943 and ending with the poem "Suspicion" by Harriet A. Bradfield in November 1953. One of those illustrations was reprinted in the magazine in the Winter 1985 issue. Humiston also contributed to Short Stories, including a cover for the November 10, 1947, issue (shown below).

Fred Humiston died on March 27, 1976, in Portland, Maine, at age seventy-three.

Fred Humiston's Illustrations in Weird Tales

See the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, here, for a full listing.

Further Reading

See David Saunders'Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists, here, for a more full biography of Fred Humiston. My article is merely a condensed version of his, and I am entirely indebted to Mr. Saunders.

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Bruce David-A Speculation

September 29, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Hyang Ro Kim (b. ?)

≪ Previous: Fred Humiston (1902-1976)

On July 4, 2016, I wrote the introduction to this series on the art and artists of the Bellerophon issues of Weird Tales from 1984-1985. I have moved through the categories of art reprinted from other sources (Clare Angell, Edd Cartier, and Rod Ruth) and art reprinted from previous issues of Weird Tales. I will leave a few names in the latter category--Joseph R. Eberle, Jr., Virgil Finlay, and Frank Utpatel--for another day. Instead, I would like to move on to the five names in the category of artists new to Weird Tales with the Bellerophon issues. First is Bruce David. And what I have written here is based on the speculation that the Bruce David about whom I write is the same Bruce David who contributed to the magazine. I can say at least that it is a speculation with a little force.

Bruce David

Journalist, Writer, Editor, Cartoonist, Screenwriter

Born 1941

Died June 17, 2016, presumably in Los Angeles, California

Bruce David was born in 1941 and served in the U.S. Army, in Germany and elsewhere. When he and his sister graduated from college, she asked him what he would like to do with his life. "[B]asically because I'm a shallow person," he remembered, "I said[,] '[U]ltimately I'd like to be the editor at Playboy magazine'." (1) David didn't quite make it to Playboy. Instead, he worked for Hustler for nearly forty years. Publisher Larry Flynt remembered how David arrived at Hustler:

Bruce was working for Screw and wrote a review of the very first issue of Hustler back in 1974. He said, "The new men's upstart, Hustler, has just nudged out Refrigerator Monthly as the most boring publication in America." So I called him up. I told him, "I love your review. And I agree with you, by the way. Why don't you come to Columbus and help us out." He worked for Larry Flynt Publications for nearly four decades. He was stubborn, arrogant . . . very creative. He was Bruce." (1)

Before going to work for Mr. Flynt, Bruce David wrote for Screw and Penthouse, was founding art director of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, and produced and sometimes co-hosted a television show called Midnight Blue in New York City. David returned to television in the mid 1980s with scripts for Family Ties, ALF, Mr. Sunshine, and MacGyver. He was a fan of science fiction and was interested in UFOs and mythology. "I came up through the underground press," David said, and that influence showed in his comic strips, including S.M.O.G., which appeared in Weird Tales in 1984-1985. (3) Although I have not seen every issue of Weird Tales (far from it), I think it pretty likely that S.M.O.G. was the only comic strip ever to appear in the magazine.

Bruce David retired from Larry Flynt Publications in about 2013 and died this year, on June 17, 2016, presumably in Los Angeles, at age seventy-five. He was well remembered at his death and is keenly missed by those who knew him.

Notes

(1) Quoted in "Interview with Bruce David" by Bruce David in Genetic Strands, November 3, 2008, originally in Hump magazine in the 1990s, here.

(2) Quoted in "Hustler Editorial Director Bruce David Passes Away" by Ariana Rodriguez in XBiz: The Industry Source, June 21, 2016, here.

(3) Quoted in "Interview with Bruce David."

Bruce David's Comic Strip S.M.O.G. in Weird Tales
Two installments each in the issues of Fall 1984 and Winter 1985

Further Reading

The sources shown above in the notes; "Former Hustler Editorial Director Bruce David Passes" by Mark Kernes in AVN, June 21, 2016, here; and other sources easily found on the Internet.

S.M.O.G., Bruce David's comic strip about a man who immerses himself in a sensory deprivation chamber in order to face his fears, from Weird Tales, Winter 1985, page 87.

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Hyang Ro Kim (b. ?)

September 30, 2016, 6:56 am

≫ Next: Overton Loyd (b. 1954)

≪ Previous: Bruce David-A Speculation

Ro H. Kim
Artist, Portraitist, Illustrator, Teacher
Born ?, Republic of Korea

There were only two issues of the Bellerophon Network's version of Weird Tales and only two covers. The Korean-American artist Ro H. Kim created both. The Winter 1985 issue called him Hyang Ro Kim, but Mr. Kim clearly signed his cover art as "Ro H. Kim." That same issue wrote of him:

Mr. Kim is revered as one of the top portrait and scenery painters in Hollywood, having been commissioned for his portrait work by names such as George C. Scott, Judy and Diana Canova, and the late William Holden. Mr. Kim's work is best known by millions of television viewers on the evening soap, "Dallas." [p. 21]

In becoming an artist to stars, celebrities, and presidents, Ro Kim has come a long way. Growing up in Poahung, South Korea, he drew pictures on toilet paper because that was his only available medium. His parents wanted him to be something other than an artist. Instead, Mr. Kim came to America in 1972 and set about his chosen career. Since then, he has become a very successful artist and especially a painter of portraits. His two covers for Weird Tales are in fact portraits. Brinke Stevens appeared on the front of the Fall 1984 issue. Texas-born dancer, model, and actress Jacqueline Pulliam was the subject of the Winter 1985 cover. Ro Kim also created the cover for Lon of 1000 Faces! by Forrest J Ackerman, et al. (1983). You can see images of Mr. Kim and created by Mr. Kim at his website, Ro Kim Art, at http://www.rokimart.com/home.

Ro H. Kim's Covers for Weird Tales

Fall 1984

Winter 1985

Further Reading

Ro Kim Art at http://www.rokimart.com/home

Weird Tales, Fall 1984, with cover art by Ro H. Kim showing model and actress Brinke Stevens.

Weird Tales, Winter 1985, with cover art by Mr. Kim. This time his model was Jacqueline Pulliam

According to James van Hise in Locus #308 (Sept. 1986), Mr. Kim's cover for the Winter 1985 issue was a swipe from a Victoria's Secret catalogue. After seeing photocopies of the two Bellerophon issues, very generously provided to me by publisher Brian L. Forbes, I have to admit to a little confusion. Jacqueline Pulliam, the model for this cover, was associated with Bellerophon and Weird Tales: a photograph of her appears inside on the editor's page (Winter 1985, p. 21), and she modeled Weird Tales nightshirts in a couple of advertisements (Fall 1984, p. 37, and Winter 1985, p. 49, both with Brinke Stevens). I can't say whether the woman in the photograph on the right above is Ms. Pulliam. It doesn't look like Ms. Pulliam to me, but I can't say for sure. But if that is she, then maybe the same person was a model for both images shown here. More likely, it seems to me that Mr. Kim, who freely works from photographs, used an image from a Victoria's Secret catalogue and perhaps a photograph of Jacqueline Pulliam to create his cover. In any case, you can read Mr. van Hise's full article, "Weird Lingerie Tales," at this URL:

http://www.icshi.net/sevagram/biblio/brain.php

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Overton Loyd (b. 1954)

October 3, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Dave Stevens (1955-2008)

≪ Previous: Hyang Ro Kim (b. ?)

Fine Artist, Cartoonist, Illustrator, Animator, Costume Designer, Television Personality

Born April 20, 1954, Detroit, Michigan

Overton Loyd is most well known for covers and other art for record albums by Parliament (Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome, 1977; Gloryhallastoopid (Or Pin the Tail on the Funky), 1979; Motor Booty Affair, 1979) and Bootsy's Rubber Band (This Boot Is Made for Fonk-N, 1979). He has also done fine art, cartooning, animation art, and costume design. His lone illustration for Weird Tales appeared in the Fall 1984 issue of the magazine. Rather than repeat here information available elsewhere on the Internet, I'll just refer you to Mr. Loyd's websites (below).

Overton Loyd's Illustration in Weird Tales

"Laugh Track" by Harlan Ellison (Fall 1984)

Further Reading

Overton Loyd Studios: http://www.overtonloydstudios.com
Overton Loyd: http://overtonloyd.com/
Overvision: http://overvision.com/
Overton Loyd on Wikipedia, here.
"Overton Loyd Makes The P-Funk Universe Just A Little Bit Funkier With His Cool Artwork," on Funkatropolis, April 26, 2012, here.

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Dave Stevens (1955-2008)

October 4, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: George D. Sukara (b. ?)

≪ Previous: Overton Loyd (b. 1954)

Comic Book Artist, Comic Strip Artist, Illustrator, Storyboard Artist
Born July 29, 1955, Lynwood, California
Died March 11, 2008, Turlock, California

Dave Stevens is too big a subject for a mere blog article. I have to admit that I admire his art so much that it's still hard for me to think about his passing or to write about his life and work. I will say only that Dave Stevens was married to the former Charlene Brinkman in 1980, that their marriage lasted only six months, that she continued modeling for him after that, and that she was the model for his only illustration for Weird Tales, for her own story "The Pandora Principle" (with A.E. van Vogt), from Fall 1984.

Dave Stevens' Illustration in Weird Tales

"The Pandora Principle" by Brinke Stevens and A.E. van Vogt (serial, Fall 1984)

Further Reading

Any number of sources on line and in print.

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George D. Sukara (b. ?)

October 5, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Wrap-Up of Art and Artists of the Bellerophon Weird Tales

≪ Previous: Dave Stevens (1955-2008)

Illustrator, Animator, Storyboard Artist, Art Teacher
Born ?

The Bellerophon Network seems to have employed a lot of people associated with movies, radio, and television, including Harlan Ellison, Michael P. Hodel, Brinke Stevens, Dave Stevens, Overton Loyd, and Ro H. Kim. George D. Sukara is included in that list. According to the Internet Movie Database, he began working in animation as an assistant animator on The Black Cauldron (1985). That movie was released shortly after the first Bellerophon issue of Weird Tales came out, in Fall 1984. Mr. Sukara had two illustrations in that issue, for stories by Stephen King and Larry Tritten. You can see his movie credits at the aforementioned database.

Update (Oct. 5, 2016): Mike Tuz informs me that George D. Sukara is, in addition to being an animator, an art teacher. In fact, Mr. Sukara is teaching an introduction to cartooning beginning tomorrow at the Peninsula Art Academy in Peninsula, Ohio. Follow this link for more information. Thanks to Mike Tuz.

George D. Sukara's Illustrations in Weird Tales

"Beachworld" by Stephen King (Fall 1984)

"Flecks of Gold" by Larry Tritten (Fall 1984)

Further Reading

See the Internet Movie Database, here, for a list of George Sukara's credits.

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Wrap-Up of Art and Artists of the Bellerophon Weird Tales

October 6, 2016, 6:44 am

≫ Next: Clowns on the Cover of Weird Tales

≪ Previous: George D. Sukara (b. ?)

I'd like to start today by thanking publisher and editor Brian L. Forbes for photocopies provided by him of the two issues of the Bellerophon Weird Tales. Before hearing from Mr. Forbes, I had little hope of ever seeing these two issues, let alone studying them or owning them. So, thank you, Brian.

The Bellerophon issues of Weird Tales are interesting for a number of reasons. They were preceded by Lin Carter's paperback series of Weird Tales from 1980-1983, Sam Moskowitz's revival of 1973-1984, and of course the original run of 1923-1954. Although Weird Tales had appeared in a format larger than a regular magazine size (approximately 8-1/2 x 11 inches) before, the Bellerophon issues were the first non-pulp-sized or non-digest-sized Weird Tales in decades. Brian Forbes' two issues also brought Harlan Ellison, Stephen King, J.N. Williamson, and other well-known authors into the magazine's pages for the first time.

There were new artists, too. I have to admit to a bias in singling out Dave Stevens, even if his contribution amounted to just one illustration. In addition, Ro H. Kim's covers are good, although one appears to be a swipe. The Bellerophon issues also introduced photographs and comic strips to Weird Tales. It's nice to imagine that the magazine could have continued under the Bellerophon Network.

There are two Bellerophon issues, but they don't look an awful lot alike, at least on the inside. The typefaces used in the respective interiors are different. The second issue is longer (96 pages vs. 72 pages) and has a greater cover price ($2.95 vs. $2.50) than the first. The first issue has more original art in it than the second. In fact, if I have counted right, the only original art in the second issue (other than collages) are comic strips by Bruce David. (The collages were, I believe, assembled by Brian Forbes and came from Forrest J Ackerman's vast collection of science fiction and fantasy books and magazines.)

Speaking of art, much of the art in the Bellerophon issues is reprinted from previous sources, some without any indication as to the artist's identity. Most of these pieces of unsigned art (unsigned because they are apparently snippets) are nondescript. The following piece shows a very distinct style, however, and might be identifiable as to the artist. (This sounds like a job for you, Mike Tuz.)

An illustration by an unidentified artist, reprinted in Weird Tales, Winter 1985, for the story "Vengeance by Proxy" by John Wyndham. The style is distinctive enough, I think, to identify the artist who created it. That artist could easily have drawn for comic books.

So this ends my series on the art and artists of the Bellerophon Weird Tales (even though I did not cover all of them). And what comes next? Your guess is as good as mine.

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Clowns on the Cover of Weird Tales

October 7, 2016, 6:04 am

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Our country is being overrun by clowns. You will see them skulking along the edges of town or down the street from your house, in the shadows and away from the streetlight. They stalk your children at school and look in your windows at night. There is no telling what they might do next.

It has been awhile since we had some nice mass hysteria. You could call the growing clown invasion a hoax, but maybe these clowns aren't real at all. Maybe our seeing of clowns is merely an expression of our fear and anxiety at what's going on in the world. Or maybe by seeing and fearing clowns, we can somehow comfort ourselves in the face of a far greater fear and threat. Perhaps we can distract ourselves from what we are about to do as a nation.

I am reading The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov right now. The story is of a visit by the devil to Moscow in the 1930s. The devil, who goes by various titles, including consultant, professor, and expert on black magic, is accompanied by a retinue. One in his retinue, Korovyov the choirmaster, is a man who wears checked pants, broken glasses, and a funny hat. He is obviously a clown figure and is even called a buffoon. He is not so innocent, however. In fact, he represents in one of his aspects the arbitrary and relative nature of the all-powerful State, which, as the twentieth and now the twenty-first century have shown, is a potent force on the side of evil. Whether we elect next month the Buffoon or the Mother of Lies, we are without a doubt about to choose a president from among the devil's retinue. A creepy clown in your neighborhood is pretty harmless by comparison.

So I found a clown on one cover of Weird Tales--or maybe he just kind of looks like a clown. That doesn't make "clowns" a category or a recurring theme. I admit this is a stretch. On the other hand, I don't have all the covers of the magazine catalogued yet, so there might be a clown or another clown hiding in there somewhere, which is, after all, what clowns do these days.

Weird Tales, May 1950, with cover art by Boris Dolgov. Jaffery and Cook's index of Weird Tales does not give a cover story, but the title "Tell Your Fortune" by Robert Bloch is shown on the cover. That ties in nicely with The Master and Margarita, in which the devil, upon his arrival in Moscow, gets the ball--or I should say the head--rolling by foretelling a man's (very brief) future.

A final note: I should mention that Mikhail Bulgakov also wrote science fiction and is in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database: I am now keeping my eyes peeled for his books.

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A New Page-Weird Tales Covers

October 9, 2016, 6:38 am

≫ Next: War on the Cover of Weird Tales

≪ Previous: Clowns on the Cover of Weird Tales

Since January 2014, I have been working on a catalogue of themes and subjects that appeared on the cover of Weird Tales. That series has been a little disjointed, so I figured I had better add an index so that you and I can keep it all straight. Here is the link to the newest page on my blog, Weird Tales Covers:

http://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/p/weird-tales-covers.html

You can always click on the page on the right as well.

Thanks for reading.

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War on the Cover of Weird Tales

October 9, 2016, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Egypt on the Cover of Weird Tales

≪ Previous: A New Page-Weird Tales Covers

The beasts of this world show that they are about to be unpent, and though the traditional seasons for the commencement of war have passed, those beasts must see opportunities now that may slip from them soon.

One hundred and two years ago at this time, British, French, and German forces had already begun digging the first trenches on the Western Front and were only weeks away from battles that would effectively freeze the action there for the remainder of the Great War. Next year, 2017, will mark the centennial of the American entry into the war. Among the millions of men under arms were future writers and artists for Weird Tales. Among them, too, were the magazine's future publisher, Jacob Clark Henneberger, and future editor, Farnsworth Wright.

Seventy-seven years ago at this time, the last Polish military forces surrendered to the Nazis, and the beginning of the Sitzkrieg was on the horizon. Two years and two months later, the United States was attacked, Nazi Germany declared war upon our country, and World War II began living up to its name as a truly global conflict. Weird Tales survived the war by only nine years (nine years on the dot, in fact), but there were writers and artists for the magazine who served in that war as well. Moreover, the war was the subject of a good deal of art and fiction of that time. "The Dreams of Albert Moreland" by Fritz Leiber, Jr. (The Acolyte #10, Spring 1945) is one very good example.

I count six covers of Weird Tales on the subject of war beginning with the December 1939 issue and ending with the July 1943 issue. The first and last showed dead soldiers in the form of a skeleton or ghost. In between were three covers in which machines have come to life or seem to be guided by a spirit of some kind. In the exact middle is the best of the bunch, I think, Hannes Bok's cover from November 1941, published a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Weird Tales, December 1939. Cover story: "Lords of the Ice" by David H. Keller. Cover art by Hannes Bok, his first for the magazine. The artists and writers for Weird Tales may have wanted to put the Great War behind them, but the sequel to that war would have invaded their consciousness. There was no avoiding it, and so, as soon as Weird Tales was able, I think, it had a war cover in this illustration by newcomer Hannes Bok, from December 1939.

Weird Tales, September 1940. Cover story: "Seven Seconds of Eternity" by Robert H. Leitfred. Cover art by Ray Quigley. This is surely one of the most bizarre images to appear on the cover of the magazine.

Weird Tales, November 1941. Cover story: "The Book of the Dead" by Frank Gruber. Cover art by Hannes Bok, one of his finest and one of the most iconic covers for Weird Tales and perhaps for any pulp magazine.

Weird Tales, May 1942. Cover story: "The Rogue Ship" by Malcolm Jameson. Cover art by Ray Quigley, another of his bizarre machine-monsters.

Weird Tales, January 1943. Cover story: "Quest of a Noble Tiger" by Frank Owen. Cover art by A.R. Tilburne. The artist Tilburne specialized in depictions of animals and in general drew organic forms. It's no surprise that his treatment of an amalgam of a machine and an organism or spirit would include a soft and flowing woman. Ray Quigley on the other hand is most well known as an artist for Popular Science and handled machines, especially cars, very well. His covers for Weird Tales emphasized machines and, strangely enough, monstrous machines.

Weird Tales, July 1943. Cover art: "His Last Appearance" by H. Bedford-Jones. Cover art by Edgar Franklin Wittmack. The story was called "His Last Appearance," and by my estimate this was the last war cover in Weird Tales. I have not read this story, but the ghost looks like a soldier from the Great War (although British and American troops wore the same type of helmet at the outset of World War II). If that's the case, then the war covers had come full circle.

As to why there were no more war covers after July 1943, I can't say. I would hazard a guess that an Allied victory--though not the particulars--was pretty well assured by then. Maybe people had already tired of war and had begun to think about a postwar world.

I would like to take this opportunity to observe the suffering and sacrifices of Poland, its military, and its people during World War II. Invaded on both sides by two totalitarian regimes, the Poles stood little chance in the war. However, Poland which had previously saved Europe at least three times, lent its forces-in-exile to the victorious Allied cause and now stands on the bulwarks of the continent, resisting aggression from the East and extraordinary decadence and demographic collapse from the West. By no coincidence, I think, Poland is one of the last Christian nations in Europe and a predominantly Catholic one. Again, if Christendom stands against invasion and decrepitude, it will be perhaps because of Poland and its people.

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Egypt on the Cover of Weird Tales

October 11, 2016, 3:00 am

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Egypt and subjects related to Egypt have been on the cover of Weird Tales seven times by my count. The first was the triple-issue first anniversary number of May/June/July 1924 and shows a generic Egyptian scene of Sphinx and pyramids. The next three show women being menaced by one thing or another. The last three are a little more complicated and not easily categorized.

There were Orientalists among the first generation of writers for Weird Tales, Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffman Price chief among them. Farnsworth Wright must have been one of them, too, as he eventually saw a pet project, Oriental Stories/The Magic Carpet Magazine, into print. In any case, the mysterious East held the imagination of writers, artists, and readers alike for decades before Weird Tales came along, but an event of the 1920s brought Egypt to the fore, namely, the opening, on February 16, 1923, of King Tut's tomb. The first issue of Weird Tales, dated March 1923, was probably on the newsstand by then. A year later, as investigations at the tomb continued, Weird Tales capitalized on the interest in Egypt, pyramids, tombs, and mummies with its cover, by R.M. Mally, for Harry Houdini's story "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs." Universal Pictures got in on the action eight years later with what I think was the first mummy movie, called, appropriately enough, The Mummy. Like the covers of Weird Tales from the 1920s, that movie also featured a woman menaced by a villain, in this case, the mummy himself, come to life. And like the last two Weird Tales covers on the subject of Egypt, it had that woman in ancient Egyptian dress.

Finally, as a friend calls it, some hypostulatin': I wrote last time about World War II and noted that the last Weird Tales cover on that subject came only midway through the war. It seems to me that after the war, American popular culture had some new things to deal with and responded accordingly with some new or rapidly evolving genres: film noire, science fiction, the Cold War thriller. But it also retrenched (to use a military metaphor) into horror, fantasy, and monster movies, stories, and comic books. As we have seen, stories of monsters, being stories of the supernatural, have had a hard time surviving in a world in which all things are scientified (my neologism, not my friend's). Almost every monster movie made these days is actually a science fiction movie, as all the monsters have a science fiction explanation. Even the recent Mummy series, overloaded as it is with computerized effects, has the look of a science fiction extravaganza. Anyway, it's strange to see an Egypt cover on the Weird Tales issue of March 1945, the month in which the Allies broke into Germany on the Western Front and the war in the Pacific was finally nearing the Japanese homeland. What was in people's minds at the time? Did they think that we would just go back to the way things were before the war? Was there a kind of nostalgia for the prewar world? Even if there was such a thing, the people of the time must have known that the world had changed beyond measure and that there would be no going back.

(Now we have gone beyond a man's allotted three-score and ten since the end of the war and you would think that the world has revolved a time or two--that we're ready for something new again--except that we have a pair of superannuated Baby Boomers running for president. Will these people ever leave?)

Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924. Cover story: "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" by Harry Houdini. Cover art by R. M. Mally.

Weird Tales, August 1927. Cover story: "The Bride of Osiris" by Otis Adelbert Kline. Cover art by the underrated Hugh Rankin.

Weird Tales, April 1928. Cover story: "The Jewel of Seven Stones" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by C.C. Senf.

Weird Tales, June 1929. Cover story: "The House of Golden Masks" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Hugh Rankin.

Weird Tales, April 1930. Cover story: "The Dust of Egypt" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Hugh Rankin.

Weird Tales, November 1938. Cover story: "I Found Cleopatra" by Thomas P. Kelley. Cover art A.R. Tilburne.

Weird Tales, March 1945. Cover story: "Lords of the Ghostlands" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by A.R. Tilburne.

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Authors on the Cover of Weird Tales

October 12, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Robert Weinberg (1946-2016)

≪ Previous: Egypt on the Cover of Weird Tales

"Child, child--come with me--come with me to your brother's grave tonight. Come with me to the places where the young men lie whose bodies have long since been buried in the earth. Come with me where they walk and move again tonight, and you shall see your brother's face again, and hear his voice, and see again, as they march toward you from their graves, the company of young men who died, as he did, in October, speaking to you their messages of flight, of triumph, and the all-exultant darkness, telling you that all will be again as it once was."
--From "October Has Come Again" in
The Face of a Nation, Poetical Passages from the
Writings of Thomas Wolfe by Thomas Wolfe (1939)

Thomas Wolfe had a special claim on October: he was born in this most nostalgic and evocative of months in 1900, and he returned to the subject of October again and again in his writings. Wolfe's brother Ben--his closest brother--died in that same month in 1918 of the Spanish Flu, a disease that killed more people worldwide than the Great War that had waged before it. Nearly one hundred Octobers have passed since then. Now summer is gone and October has come again, as Wolfe chanted in the passage from which the quote above is taken. This is the season of cut corn and apple cider, of woodsmoke and leaves aflame, of pumpkins, apples, squash, and remembrance. The world and life will come 'round again, but for now, plants retreat into seed, root, and rosette, insects into egg, pupa, and diapause, small animals into their burrows and dens, and we into sweaters, home, memory, and hope.

Edgar Allan Poe died in October. The anniversary of his death--October 7--just passed. Harry Houdini died in October, too, fittingly on Halloween 1926, ninety years ago this month. Those two men were the only authors of whom I am aware who appeared in both name and figure on the cover of Weird Tales. The faces of two artist/authors were on Weird Tales: Virgil Finlay and Hannes Bok created self-portraits in two covers respectively. The last cover shown here from the original run of Weird Tales is less certain to fall into the category of authors on the cover of the magazine. I have included it here only as a possibility. Finally, there is the cover of the Fall 1984 issue of Weird Tales, created by Ro H. Kim with Brinke Stevens as his model. So, two named authors, two self-portraits, a modeled portrait, and an uncertainty. Those make the authors on the cover of Weird Tales from 1923 to 1985.

Weird Tales, March 1924. Cover story: "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" by Harry Houdini. Cover art by R.M. Mally.

Weird Tales, February 1937. Cover story: "The Globe of Memories" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Virgil Finlay. The figure of the swordsman in the center is almost certainly a self-portrait of the artist.

Weird Tales, September 1939. Cover poem: "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. Cover art by Virgil Finlay.

Weird Tales, July 1941. Cover story: "The Robot God" by Ray Cummings. Cover art by Hannes Bok. Again, the male figure is probably a self-portrait of the artist.

Weird Tales, September 1950. Cover story: "Legal Rites" by Isaac Asimov and James MacCreagh (sic) (Frederik Pohl). Cover art by Bill Wayne. Asimov co-authored the cover story--that looks an awful lot like him on the right.

Weird Tales, Fall 1984. Cover story: "The Pandora Principal" by Brinke Stevens and A. E. van Vogt. Cover art by Ro H. Kim with Brinke as his model.

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Robert Weinberg (1946-2016)

October 23, 2016, 7:49 am

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Robert Weinberg has died. As a writer, editor, publisher, fan, and collector, Mr. Weinberg did more than anyone, I think, to carry Weird Tales from the defunct era of the pulps into the 1970s and beyond. He acquired the Weird Tales property from Leo Margulies in the mid 1970s and immediately set about reviving the title and the franchise with WT 50: A Tribute to Weird Tales (1974), a self-published paperback that included material both old and new. Mr. Weinberg followed up that effort with the hardbound volume The Weird Tales Story in 1977 and a six-part serial, The Weird Tales Collector, published from 1977 to 1980. If I understand my history of the property correctly, Robert Weinberg was owner when various revivals of the magazine came about, in 1980-1983 under Lin Carter; 1984-1985 under Gordon M.D. Garb; and 1988-2010 under George H. Scithers, Darrell Schweitzer, John Gregory Betancourt, Ann VanderMeer, and Stephen H. Segal. As his health declined, Mr. Weinberg sold the Weird Tales property to Viacom, while the license to publish a magazine passed to Marvin Kaye in 2012. That is how I understand the situation anyway. Unfortunately, Weird Tales is, at this point, moribund and in need once again of revival. It is unfortunate as well that no one of Robert Weinberg's caliber as an editor, publisher, and--perhaps most importantly--fan and devotee seems to be standing ready to do what he did with Weird Tales. No one can speak for the departed, but I feel certain that Robert Weinberg would not have wanted this to happen.

As for biographical facts on Robert Weinberg: He was born on August 29, 1946, in Newark, New Jersey, in the first year of the Baby Boom and in the last decade of Weird Tales in its original run. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, his first published work in a genre magazine was a letter in Robert A.W. Lowndes'Magazine of Horror in November 1965. Mr. Weinberg's first credits as magazine editor (Deeper Than You Think . . . , Jan. 1968); reviewer ("Skull-Face and Others" in Deeper Than You Think . . . , Jan. 1968); fictioneer ("Destroyer," in If, May 1969); essayist ("Some Notes on Robert E. Howard," in Return to Wonder #7, Nov./Dec. 1969); author of non-fiction (The Robert E. Howard Fantasy Biblio, 1969); and poet ("Heaven, Hell," in Return to Wonder #8, Jan./Feb./Mar. 1970) followed in rapid order. Those works began a career that lasted half a century and ended only with Robert Weinberg's death on September 25, 2016, in Oak Forest, Illinois.

I would like to thank Randal A. Everts for bringing Robert Weinberg's passing to my attention. I would also like to offer to the Weinberg family my sympathies and, on their behalf, the sympathies of everyone who dreams, writes, reads, and enjoys works of fantasy, horror, and science fiction, a field to which Robert Weinberg gave so much.

Weird Tales, July 1946, published in the month before Robert Weinberg's birth, a happy event of August 29, 1946. The cover art, perfect for this Halloween season, was by the inimitable Matt Fox.

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Devils and Demons on the Cover of Weird Tales

October 24, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Medusa on the Cover of Weird Tales

≪ Previous: Robert Weinberg (1946-2016)

This is the last week before Halloween and it's time for some subjects suited to the season. I'll start with devils and demons, the spirits that we are supposed to ward off with our wearing of costumes. I count nearly two dozen Weird Tales covers showing devils and demons, including a few from Canada (covers, not devils and demons). I have a feeling I have missed some. If I have, they will turn up eventually and I will place them here. Three--possibly four or five--of these covers show a man dressed as a devil. The others appear to be depictions of supernatural beings. The first, showing a demon lunging at two men, is genuinely frightening. Two more show Oriental-style demons. Five show a pretty conventional figure in a devil costume. One of the least conventional and one of my favorites is Virgil Finlay's devil on the cover of the April 1937 issue. That's not to take away anything from Matt Fox, a one-man demon factory, who was responsible for six of the twenty-two covers here. And I see by the cover of May 1945 that I have an addition to make to my list of Weird Tales covers featuring circles and spirals. In any case, here are the devils and demons on the cover of Weird Tales.

Weird Tales, February 1925. Cover story: "Whispering Tunnels" by Stephen Bagby. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. This is a somewhat poor image. It looks like whoever scanned it did not descreen the image. Below is a larger but less clear version.

Weird Tales, April 1929. Cover story: "The Devil's Rosary" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Hugh Rankin. Hugh Rankin was no spring chicken when he created this cover. Born in 1878, he was already half a century old when it was published. C.C. Senf, another Weird Tales cover artist of the 1920s, was only five years his senior, but what a difference those five years (and Senf's European birth and education) made. While Senf was an old-fashioned artist suited in many ways to the backward-looking tendency in weird fiction, Rankin was up-to-date, capturing in his art the look of the 1920s. There is without a doubt an art nouveau influence: the flowing grace of that art movement shows through here. But there is also a distinct art deco look to Rankin's work. Witness the geometric forms and, more to the point, the art deco/1920s female figure, small in the bust, somewhat long in the waist, with rouged cheeks and bobbed hair. There ought to be a collection of Hugh Rankin's work in book form, for he was an artist too-neglected in his time and ours.

Weird Tales, February 1931. Cover story: "Siva the Destroyer" by J.-J. des Ormeaux. Cover art by C. Barker Petrie, Jr., the second of two Oriental-style demons on the cover of the magazine.

Weird Tales, June 1935. Cover story: "The Horror in the Studio" by Dorothy Quick. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Not an especially scary devil.

Weird Tales, August 1935. Cover story: "Doctor Satan" by Paul Ernst. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. This was the first appearance of Paul Ernst's series character Doctor Satan, who is, as I understand it, not a supernatural being but a normal person, albeit in the weird hero category.

Weird Tales, May 1936. Cover story: "The Devil's Double" by Paul Ernst. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. This was the seventh Dr. Satan story.

Weird Tales, April 1937. Cover story: "Symphony of the Damned" by John R. Speer. Cover art by Virgil Finlay. One of Virgil Finlay's weaknesses as an artist was his repetitiveness: he tended to draw the same monster or demon again and again. (See the cover for May 1952, below, for an example of that.) In this cover, however, he created an original and arresting image of a devil, despite the conventions of pointed beard, mustache, ears, and horns (at least I think they're horns).

Weird Tales, September 1937. Cover story: "Satan's Palimpsest" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Margaret Brundage created works of great delicacy, grace, and beauty. She was especially good at depicting women. But she may not have had what it takes to create truly frightening and horrifying demons, monsters, or creatures. Here again, she drew a conventional and not very scary devil.

Weird Tales, Canada, July 1942. Cover story: "Hell on Earth" by Robert Bloch. Cover art by an unknown artist. The Canadian edition of Weird Tales has been neglected by people who study the magazine. I aim to correct that as best I can in a later series. For now, we'll have to settle for what we know about the series' cover artists, which isn't much and does not include the name of the creator of this devil cover of July 1942.

Weird Tales, July 1942. Cover story: "Coven" by Manly Wade Wellman. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. The American edition of Weird Tales for July 1942 came first but I have put it after the Canadian edition here because of the cover story it shared with the Canadian edition of November 1945, shown below. The cover artist was Margaret Brundage. Her approach with this cover was very much different than with her pre-war covers for Weird Tales: less Busby Berkeley, more Val Lewton.

Weird Tales, Canada, November 1942. Cover story: "Coven" by Manly Wade Wellman. Cover art by an unknown artist.

Weird Tales, Canada, January 1945. Cover story: "The Shadow Folk" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by an unknown artist.

Weird Tales, May 1945. Cover story: "The Shining Land" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by Peter Kuhlhoff. I wrote awhile back about the return to the conventions of horror and fantasy as World War II came to an end, and in the years after. This seldom-seen cover by Peter Kuhlhoff, as well executed as it is, is another example of that. It came out in the month in which the war in Europe ended. If I had to show a bunch of people flying through Hell in May 1945, more than few Nazis would come to mind.

Weird Tales, July 1946. Cover story: None. Cover art by Matt Fox.

Weird Tales, May 1947. Cover story: None. Cover art by Matt Fox.

Weird Tales, November 1947. Cover story: "The Cheaters" by Robert Bloch. Cover art by Matt Fox.

Weird Tales, March 1949. Cover story: None. Cover art by Matt Fox. In regards to the postwar artists for Weird Tales, many depicted the conventions of horror and fantasy again and again, even as the world had changed and the magazine published a lot more science fiction under editor Dorothy McIlwraith. I don't know what to make of that exactly except that weird fiction is more interested in the past than in the present or future.

Matt Fox's cover reminds me of this cover, by Wesso, for Strange Tales, March 1932.

Weird Tales, January 1950. Cover story: "The Ormolu Clock" by August Derleth. Cover art by Matt Fox.

Weird Tales, July 1950. Cover story: None. Cover art by Matt Fox.

Weird Tales, May 1952. Cover story: "The Lamia in the Penthouse" by Thorp McClusky. Cover art by Virgil Finlay.

Weird Tales, September 1953. Cover story: None. Cover art by Jon Arfstrom. I guess I could add this cover to the lists of skull covers and covers with circles and spirals.

Weird Tales, Winter 1973. Cover story: None. Cover art by Bill Edwards.

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