The following covers are not very much different from those before them. There are two more showing people wielding a cat-o'-nine-tails. In the first, the red-robed cultist is showing his victim the whip or caressing her with it in what seems to me a sexual way. A knife or sword can be used to represent a phallus. Maybe a whip can be, too. Anyway, there are two covers here showing women wielding whips in self-defense, a change in theme over previous covers. Then, finally, there is a man bound to a wheel, like in Margaret Brundage's cover in June 1938.
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| Weird Tales, March 1936. Cover story: "The Albino Deaths" by Ronal Kayser. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Three years into the weird menace fad, Weird Tales gave its readers this cover promising "weird tortures in a ghastly abode of horrors." I assume those tortures were carried out by the albinos of the title, who might have been thrown with dwarves and hunchbacks into the pot of weird menace villains. |
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| Weird Tales, January 1937. Cover story: "Children of the Bat" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. |
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| Weird Tales, May 1937. Cover story: "The Mark of the Monster" by Jack Williamson. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. The weird menace fad continues in this cover illustrating "a powerful tale of weird horror." |
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| Weird Tales, October 1937. Cover story: "Tiger Cat" by David H. Keller. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. |
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| Weird Tales, November 1937. Cover story: "Living Buddhess" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. |
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| Weird Tales, May 1938. Cover story: "Goetterdaemmerung" by Seabury Quinn, called "A Strange Tale of the Future" on the cover. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Finally, the cat-o'-nine-tails have worn out and we're back to bondage. |
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| Weird Tales, June 1938. Cover story: "Suicide Chapel" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. The last weird menace type cover in Weird Tales. |
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| Weird Tales, September 1942, Canadian edition. Cover story [?]: "Masquerade" by Henry Kuttner. Cover art by an unknown artist. |
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| Weird Tales, November 1943. Cover story: "The Valley of the Assassins" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by A.R. Tilburne. In this last cover in the category of whips, chains, bondage, and torture, the bondage is not the focus of the illustration but only a detail. In other words, the kind of cruelty and depravity so common in the covers of the 1920s and '30s effectively came to an end in June 1938. Weird Tales was sold to Short Stories, Inc., later that year. I wonder if those two events were just coincidental. More likely, the weird menace fad was coming to an end. Evidence of that: probably around the time Weird Tales had its last weird menace cover, Dime Mystery Magazine announced that it would change its format beginning with its September 1938 issue. The emphasis would be less on weird menace and more on mystery and detective stories. Not long after that, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York City launched a crusade against obscenity in magazines. Weird menace was in the spotlight in a way you don't want to be. The fad finally came to an end in the 1940s, although it likely jut migrated to paperback books and larger format magazines, especially confessional magazines of the kind that were still on the newsstand in the 1970s and '80s. |
Text and captions copyright 2016 Terence E. Hanley
