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Black People and Africa on the Cover of Weird Tales
Now comes a not very pleasant part of categorizing the covers of Weird Tales. Black people are on the cover of nine issues of the magazine. Few if any of these covers show a black person in a positive...
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Cavemen and Jungle Women on the Cover of Weird Tales
Cavemen and jungle women or jungle girls are and were everywhere in popular culture. That popularity isn't really reflected in the illustrations that appeared on the cover of Weird Tales, for only two...
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Dwarves on the Cover of Weird Tales
In his book Danger Is My Business: An Illustrated History of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines: 1896-1953 (1993), Lee Server recounted the story of the weird menace magazines of the 1930s, titles that...
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I'm Dreaming of a Weird Christmas . . .
OrScenes of Winter, Snow, and Ice on the Cover of Weird TalesTonight is Christmas Eve, and for the occasion I would like to show the covers of Weird Tales in which there are scenes of winter, snow, and...
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A Retreat of the Totalitarian Monster
Take a deep breath.Now begin reading.I like to listen to Mountain Stage, a radio show that originates in the Mountain State of West Virginia. On a Saturday night a few weeks ago, I thought about West...
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Pavane pour une infante défunte
Before I let go of 2016, I have to remember a princess. Carrie Fisher died on December 27, bringing to an end a dream of life. I first saw her in Star Wars in 1977. Like boys everywhere, I fell in love...
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Fiends and Murderers of the 1920s
I have started this year writing about the undead and the dead. The dark tone will continue for a while, beginning today with the first of a three-part series on fiends and murderers on the cover of...
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Fiends and Murderers of the 1930s
The fiendishness and murderous continued into the 1930s in Weird Tales. I count five covers with this theme from that decade. Fiends and murderers seem to prefer knives, but there is hypodermic needle...
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Fiends and Murderers of the 1940s and '50s
There was less murder and fiendishness on the cover of Weird Tales in the 1940s and '50s. That might be because the editor was a woman. Maybe she didn't want any more of that menacing and threatening...
View ArticleRogue One and "Escape"
I have been thinking about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and a few of more things that bother me about the movie. I have a friend who is a big fan of Star Wars movies. I asked her what she thought of...
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Human Sacrifice and Execution in the 1920s
There is more fiendishness and murderousness in this series on human sacrifice and execution in Weird Tales. In the previous series, the fiend or murderer attacked a woman who might somehow resist....
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Human Sacrifice and Execution in the 1930s and Beyond
There was more human sacrifice and execution in the 1930s in Weird Tales. The pattern was pretty well the same as before: a helpless woman, usually bound and recumbent, is about to be knifed, usually...
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Scientific Experimention on the Cover of Weird Tales
If science is the religion of the twentieth (and twenty-first) century, and if the god of science is an indifferent god, and if human beings are merely material objects without souls, then human...
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Whips, Chains, Bondage, and Torture-1924-1931
Very often, Weird Tales was a magazine of terror, violence, torment, and cruelty. Cover after cover--about twenty in all in the magazine's original run--show scenes of whipping, bondage, torture, and...
View ArticleA New Page and an Updated Page
I have added a new page for links to various websites related to weird fiction, fantasy, and weird fiction. See the list of pages on the right. If anyone has suggestions for additions to that page,...
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Whips, Chains, Bondage, and Torture-1932-1935
More bondage, more whipping, more cruelty. The only cover here that doesn't exactly fit in this category is the last, showing Conan in prison, about to be helped by a spunky young woman straight out of...
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Whips, Chains, Bondage, and Torture-1936-1943
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...
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Peacocks on the Cover of Weird Tales
I closed the last series with a cover showing a peacock. That made me think of a further entry on the peacock covers of Weird Tales. I wish I could say that this is a happier topic than the previous...
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The Secret Origin of Zombies-Part One
Zombies Are Here!Zombies as we know them today are revenants, a French word that translates more or less as those who come back. I have written about zombies before. Earlier this month I wrote about...
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The Secret Origin of Zombies-Part Two
Magical Thinking and The Magic IslandLike the title says, I'm looking into the origins of zombies in American popular culture, and I'm doing it for two reasons. First, so we know just when and how it...
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