#weird tales
Happy birthday to my absolute favorite of all of the Weird Tales writers, Clark Ashton Smith. Lovecraft was about cosmic horror; Cave was about revitalizing old horror tropes; Robert E. Howard was about manly adventurers, but Clark Ashton Smith’s greatest gift was in worldbuilding, of a creation of surreal, exotic and strange settings, from Hyperborea, which was Greenland before the ice sheet, which was partially inhabited by reptile men who enslaved mankind, Poseidonis, a part of Atlantis that survived after the destruction of Atlantis in the prehistoric world, and Zothique, a Pangea-like supercontinent that exists a billion years in the future, home to bizarre Arabian Nights horror, necromancers, and ape-creatures.
CAS was mostly ignored for years; his best work was out of print for decades. But in the past year, there’s been a desire to rediscover him. There’s a great documentary about him, Emperor of Dreams, made in 2018, that is really worth seeing and I hope this revival of interest in him continues.
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Nictzin Dyalhis is the most fascinating and mysterious of all the Weird Tales writers. He wrote 16 works and nothing else, and very little of his biography is known even to dedicated researchers. Though they were able to confirm one detail: Nictzin Dyalhis is his real name. He is of Welsh origin, and his first name comes from the fact his father was obsessed with Aztec culture.
The Sea Witch is his best known story, and despite the name and the horror trappings and atmosphere, it actually is a romance novel with a happy ending. It’s basically his attempt to rewrite H. Rider Haggard’s She so that Horace Holly and She get together.
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Weird Tales - September 1937
Cover by Margaret Brundage
Weird Tales - November 1933
Cover by Margaret Brundage
Weird Tales - September 1933
Margaret Brundage cover
Weird Tales, February, 1928
The one that had The Call of Cthulhu by Lovecraft, among other stories.
An explanation of what are “weird tales”.
I wonder what the final count and amount on the various stories were in the quiz.
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Robert E. Howard: The Conan Chronicles, Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon (1932-1936)
Margaret Brundage
During the prohibition years, and at the same time as undertaking illustration work Brundage had also found employment at the infamous bohemian speakeasy The Dill Pickle Club, and it was there she met her husband Myron ‘Slim’ Brundage; a hobo/house painter who was heavily involved in radical politics.
Brundage sold sixty-six original pulp cover illustrations to Weird Tales from 1933 to 1945. Her work often featured fantasy scenes of women trapped in sexually vulnerable situations. Brundage covers were very popular with the readers of Weird Tales, but most of the public was not aware of the artist’s gender, because her work was usually signed “M. Brundage.” When puritanical social forces complained about the overt sexuality of Weird Tales cover art, the editor finally revealed that the artist was a woman, hoping to mollify the perceived offensiveness of her work.
Brundage helped found the South Side Community Arts Center and served on its board in the 1940s and 1950s, thus playing a critical role in establishing an important center of African American culture that exists to this day. The SSCAC is one of two WPA funded Art Centers that has never closed its doors, and is also the earliest African American Art Center to be created in the United States.
https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/tales-of-margaret-brundage.html
https://eclecticladylandblog.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/pulp-pictures/
https://www.amazon.com/Alluring-Art-Margaret-Brundage-Pin-Up/dp/1934331503
https://williamhorberg.typepad.com/william_horberg/2009/12/the-janitor.html
https://www.pulpartists.com/Brundage.html
https://livingnewdeal.org/projects/south-side-community-art-center-chicago-il/
https://livingnewdeal.org/projects/south-side-community-art-center-chicago-il/
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Lovecraft paperbacks from 1971, covers by Gervasio Gallardo
Hellboy: Weird Tales
Note: a beige version of the vol. 1 cover was also used for the Weird Tales hardcover collection.
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