Weird Tales in 1925

Happy New Year to Readers of Weird Tales!

I finished up last year by writing about the one-hundredth anniversary issue of Weird Tales, published in 2023. I will have more on that issue and some ideas connected to it, but I would like to write about other things for a while and get away from that dreary parade.

The first issue of Weird Tales was published in March 1923, thus the first calendar year of "The Unique Magazine" was not a full one. There were only eight issues published in 1923. Weird Tales almost came to an end in its second year. There was a three-month gap during which there weren't any issues published at all, and so only seven appeared in 1924.

Nineteen twenty-five was different, for that was the first full year of Weird Tales, with issues in every month. Twelve more full years would follow, making thirteen dozen issues in all during those years. Nineteen thirty-eight, during which Weird Tales was purchased by Short Stories, Inc., was the last full year of the magazine. I doubt there will ever be another. We just don't have it in us to write enough good stories or to publish and purchase enough issues for that to happen. That's a shame, I think, but not really necessary.

The January 1925 issue has a science-fiction or science-fantasy cover. Illustrating "Invaders from Outside" by J. Schossel (Joseph H. Schlossel [1902-1977]), it may have been the first magazine cover of any kind to show pointy-eared space aliens. Schlossel's aliens, drawn by cover artist Andrew Brosnatch (1896-1965) (below), look suspiciously like the gray aliens of flying saucer folklore--or vice versa. As I have said before, aliens and their spaceships must be imagined before they can be seen.

That January issue was the first to have letters in response to the return of Weird Tales in November 1924, this under its new editor, Farnsworth Wright. "The Eyrie," subtitled in the table of contents as "A Chat with the Readers," included letters from seven readers. At least four of those readers were also writers of fiction, three of them for Weird Tales. "The Eyrie" is no longer a place for readers to let their ideas ad opinions be heard. Instead it's one in which the editor gets to hear himself talk, I guess because he likes so much the sound of his own voice, even when he doesn't have anything very interesting to say.

There were other developments in the magazine world in 1925. On February 21 of that year, The New Yorker, a quintessential slick magazine, made its debut. The New Yorker has been published continuously since then. Weird Tales of course has not been. Weird Tales was originally a pulp magazine but is now also a slick. The New Yorker is a far cry better than the current Weird Tales, which is really just Weird Tales in name only, with a few of its former trappings still in place. I'm not sure which magazine has come down more in the world.

On March 4, 1925, Calvin Coolidge was inaugurated in his first full term as president. The 1920s would thereafter gallop to a close, which you could say came a little early, in late October 1929 when the stock market crashed. During those years, Weird Tales was reaching its peak. The style of the 1920s and '30s was Art Deco, one that got its name after an exposition that opened in Paris on April 29, 1925. The Art Deco style made its way into Weird Tales, too, for example in the art of Hugh Rankin ( 1878-1956). In between those two events, on April 10, 1925, the culture of the 1920s put forth an exemplar of its literature in F. Scott Fitzgerald's great novel, The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby has its detractors. I'm not one of them. I have read The Great Gatsby three or four times. I am astonished at how modern it is, even after a century, and how radically different it must have been from some of the stuffy literature of its time. I can't say that Fitzgerald or Hemingway, Faulkner or Dos Passos, had any influence at all on the men and women who wrote for Weird Tales, but I'm not sure they could have avoided the effects of living in the great and roaring milieux of the 1920s.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!
From The Parisienne Monthly Magazine, January 1916.

Terence E. Hanley December 31, 2024-January 1, 2025

Art in the Cosmic Horror Issue

Most of the art used in the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales is unsigned. I presume it to be the work of the design director, Jeff Wong. I believe this is the same Jeff Wong who has worked in television and feature film animation, as well as in product design. If this is he, then all of this fits the pattern in Weird Tales #367, which is that the contributors to this issue are mostly movie, television, and comic book people and not primarily writers or illustrators of prose fiction. Jeff Wong has his own website. He lives in Pasadena, California.

Most of the art here appears to be digital. One exception is the cover art by Mike Mignola. Mr. Mignola's original art is for sale on line. In looking at an image, I see that it is real art on paper, drawn in the dimensions of a comic book page. I see also that his design has been expanded to more nearly squarish dimensions for the audiobook version of this issue. If I had to guess, I would say this was done so that the audiobook version has the same dimensions as a record album cover.

There are other illustrations in the interior. Five are previous covers of Weird Tales, from the original run of the magazine, 1923 to 1954, including one by Joseph Clemens Gretter, aka Gretta (1904-1988). He was a fellow Hoosier. He also assisted on or ghosted Ripley's Believe It or Not!  I mentioned Robert Ripley the other day. The only other interior illustration that is not a Weird Tales cover or a new work is an uncredited illustration of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

That lack of giving credit to artists is and always has been a problem. An artist is a creator equal to (or even greater than, in commercial terms) an author or poet. Not crediting artists for their work should be a crime. Being an artist, I admit my bias.

I wouldn't rule out that some or all of the digital works in Weird Tales #367 were actually created by artificial intelligence or AI. As an artist of real works on paper, which are created by the human mind, heart, and hand, I have to object to AI-created artwork. But the world seems to be rushing towards AI. The dinosaurs, Luddites, and Jeremiahs among us are not going to stop that from happening.

At least two of these presumably digital illustrations incorporate images created by others. One is a television screenshot of actor John Mills in the British show Quatermass (1979). I neglected to mention that the plot of that show involves the harvesting of human beings by outer-space aliens. Like other stories in the Cosmic Horror Issue, this idea--that we are property--is Fortean.

The other sampled image is of the painting Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth (1948). That one accompanies another story in which an alien presence, originating in the Void, exploits humanity.

Finally, there is one illustration that refers to the work of another artist or designer. This is the final illustration in the magazine, a takeoff on the Nirvana album cover Nevermind (1991). I wrote about that the other day, too.

Here and Hereafter by Ruth Montgomery (Fawcett Crest, 1969). The cover artist is unknown. This is obviously an homage to Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth. You might also call it a swipe from Wyeth's work. And maybe it's a swipe of Frank Frazetta's cover illustration of Kavin's World by David Mason, also published in 1969. But then Frazetta's cover may also have been a swipe of a comic book cover by Malcolm Kildale, from 1941. You can see those images by clicking here.

I'll close by once again pointing out that there are pyramids on the cover of the first-anniversary issue of Weird Tales, from May-June-July 1924, and there are pyramids here in (almost) the last entry I have on the 100th-anniversary issue of May (supposedly) 2023.

Text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

An Eyrie for the Cosmic Horror Issue

"The Eyrie" began as a way for the editor of Weird Tales to communicate with his readers, for the readers to communicate with him, and for them to communicate with each other. The first installment was in the first issue of March 1923. It continued for decades after that, but at some point, "The Eyrie" became just a place for the editor to speak his mind, with no longer any input, responses, or opinions from the readers. I wish it were different. I have always liked reading letters from readers, whether they be in comic books or magazines. Letters of comment seem to have become things of the past.

Fortunately, there are places on line where readers can and have left their comments on Weird Tales #367. In the interest of making an "Eyrie" for the Cosmic Horror Issue, I would like to quote from comments left on the Internet. I know I'm taking some liberties here. If anyone I have quoted below objects, please just leave me a comment. I am happy to remove your content at your request.

On a Lovecraft Reddit, VelociraptorAHH wrote:

I'd love to order from them [Weird Tales] again but absolutely horrible in terms of communication. I ordered the first 2 issues back when that's all they had. Took them a full month to ship them, no communication, not "expect to ship on this day", nothing. Just took my money then a month later emailed me they're shipping it. I emailed them, even asked on their Facebook page. Customer service is nonexistent. Which is a shame, it's a real nice magazine and good stories, just warning what you're getting into. Seems like whomever bought it almost has no interest in running it.

Believe me, VelociraptorAHH, I can sympathize. I would continue to advise anyone who might want to buy from Weird Tales to look elsewhere for your merchandise. The business behind the magazine is absolutely terrible. It seems to exist as a scam. The people behind the business will very likely take your money and deliver you nothing, or at least not everything you ordered. It's not worth the effort or the headache. Heed what Reesha wrote below.

On Amazon, a Kindle Customer gave this issue five stars and wrote:

It's Weird Tales and a superb collection of top-notch stories as usual. I'm glad to see the magazine continues to be published when so many have fallen by the wayside.

On a GoodReads page, Tony Ciak gave this issue five stars and wrote, very briefly: "nice stories." On the same page, Ben Jahn gave it three stars and wrote: "Read the hellboy story, it was pretty good though I think the ending was kind of lacking."

On another GoodReads page, there are the following comments:

Joshua Begley (four stars): This was a very solid collection of cosmic horror stories. The Hellboy tale was fun, but the real standouts were Caitlin Kiernan's "Night Fishing" and Ramsey Campbell's "Concerto in Five Movements." They were both creepy, disturbing, and I think best captured the feel of things in the unmaking, and the terrible, cruel forces that occupy the universe.

Reesha (three stars): As with every collection of short stories, it's difficult to rate this as a whole, because some of these stories deserve 5 stars while others are just okay. There are also a couple of articles (both worth a read) and some poetry. I don't think anything in here is truly terrible, so I'd put it at maybe 3.5 stars, given the option.

Some of my favourites are the single Hellboy story (he's on the cover, but there's just the one), The City in the Sea; a psychology-based horror called Night Fishing that ended very differently than I'd expected; a story of an isolated and hyperfocused artist, Mozaika - this was my absolute favourite and I'll reread it for sure; and a story of a grieving and directionless photographer, Call of the Void - L'appel du Vide.

I also liked The Traveler a lot at first, as it read like the introduction to a really fascinating novel, but then it turned out to be only three pages long! It was way too short to be a stand-alone, in my opinion, and the lack of anything more to it soured it for me.

This issue is worth a read if you're into cosmic horror, but I wouldn't suggest going out of your way to find it.

Michael Thomas (five stars): The entire edition was excellent, and the cover art is fantastic. I was a particular fan of "The Forest Gate," which surprised me since I don’t usually like poetry. Such an excellent blend of enchanting imagery with cosmic mystery. The language gave me wonder and fear with themes of lust, curiosity, and the unknown. Really left a lasting impression, pondering the mysteries and consequences of too(?) easily following someone into the unknown.

Nick Watts (four stars): Some great Lovecraftian fiction. Loved the bear story ["The Traveler" by Francisco Tignini].

Each of these readers liked the Cosmic Horror Issue a lot more than I did, but you probably knew that already. Again I'll say: writing about this issue hasn't been much fun. That's for a number of reasons, one of which is that cosmic horror comes from a dark, depressing, negative, and even nihilistic worldview. There is almost nothing in these pages that is positive or uplifting. Human triumph is a possibility in the face of horror, but there isn't any triumph in this issue, and no hope or happiness. The main characters are mostly unchanged by their experiences--if they survive their experiences. They remain unchallenged in their beliefs, relationships, and life choices. Like Gloomy Gus in Happy Hooligan, they go on, never steering themselves towards better things.

If I had to give the Cosmic Horror Issue a number between 1 and 5 stars, I would probably just give it 2-1/2, or plumb in the middle. Or maybe just two. I think that, over all, this is a pretty thin issue. Most of the stories are not really fully developed in my opinion. There could have been more in most, and more content over all. I have the impression that this was a rushed effort. I think the editor could have done better than to go around to his friends in search of stories, poems, and essays. The cliquish nature of this issue is off-putting.

The cover art by Mike Mignola is very good. I have a feeling he was invited to contribute so that there would be some good art on the cover. Now I find that his original art is available for sale on line at more than $12,000. I have a feeling that no one will earn more for his or her work on this issue than Mr. Mignola. As an artist I think: that's only right.

"The Forest Gate" by Samantha Underhill is the best of the three poems, I think, while "Cosmic vs. Abrahamic Horror" by F. Paul Wilson is the best of the three essays. The other two aren't really necessary in my opinion. As I wrote the other day, I think that "Concerto in Five Movements" by Ramsey Campbell, "The Last Bonneville" by F. Paul Wilson, and "Night Fishing" by Caitlín R. Kiernan are the best, most interesting, most complex, and most entertaining stories in the Cosmic Horror Issue. Two of these three authors were born in 1946. I think there's something to that, something that points to a larger issue in writing, reading, fiction, books, and the culture of books. But that's a topic for another day.

I invite further comments from you, the readers of this blog. Please leave your comments below for this version of "The Eyrie."

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley. All other content is the intellectual property of its respective authors, and they must retain all rights to their work. I have reproduced it here under the doctrine of fair use. I do not gain monetarily from my work on this blog.

The Last Picture Shown

Many years ago, author Jeff VanderMeer wrote an essay called "Moving Past Lovecraft" in which he objected to what he called the adulation, imitation, fetishizing, and commodification of H. P. Lovecraft. He wrote that soon after his wife, Ann VanderMeer, resigned as editor of Weird Tales magazine. There was a controversy and some conflict in all of that. One of the principals, Marvin Kaye, has since died. Mr. Kaye was without a doubt an admirer of Lovecraft and the old Weird Tales. He was born less than a year after Lovecraft died. You could say that he had come to contemporary weird fiction from out of its past.

The 100th-anniversary issue of Weird Tales, published in 2023, is a themed issue. The theme is cosmic horror. Wikipedia, that fount of all knowledge, lets us know that cosmic horror is a synonym of Lovecraftian horror. All three essays in the Cosmic Horror Issue mention Lovecraft. One of the essays and one of the stories begin with epigraphs from his pen. Several of the stories have Lovecraftian themes, content, props, motifs, and so on. Although Jeff VanderMeer urged us to move past Lovecraft, we never have. It looks like he failed in his effort . . .

Except that there is an illustration in Weird Tales #367 that seems to acknowledge one of his complaints against contemporary authors who continue to admire, imitate, fetishize, and most especially commodify Lovecraft, his works, his concepts, and his approach to weird fiction. The unsigned illustration is the last to appear in the Cosmic Horror Issue and occupies the last page. It has the look of a trompe-l'œil painting and shows an album cover resting on a woodgrain tabletop. The album cover is a takeoff of Nevermind by Nirvana. It shows a larval Cthulhu swimming after a hundred dollar bill on the end of a hook. The illustration is ironic, even cynical. It's curious that the editor and publisher of Weird Tales would print it. They seem to recognize that they and many of their authors are chasing after Cthulhu cash and Lovecraft lucre. Evidently they don't feel any shame or embarrassment in that. They would be laughing to the bank except that I don't think Weird Tales is much of a moneymaking operation. Maybe I'm wrong.

I'm not exactly on Jeff VanderMeer's side in this, but you have to admit that an awful lot of writers, artists, and other creators, not just now but for the past many decades, probably going back to the 1940s, are milking a cash cow and will no doubt continue to do so for as long as they can. It would be better, I think, if writers would put the cow away and create something new and original. But again, I don't think they're up to it. It's a lot easier to copy and imitate things created by others and to go on doing that for all of your life. And that's what our popular culture has become, a mix of imitation, adaptation, remakes, sequels, prequels, pastiches, and, worst of all, shameless copying and outright theft of other people's ideas. It's no wonder there is so much product placement in the Cosmic Horror Issue, for the fiction itself and all of its themes and content have become commercial products. Cosmic Horror, like so many other genre names, has become a brand, and the authors writing in these genres have seemingly become hucksters and exploiters.

Copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from

Tellers of Weird Tales!

From The Century Magazine, December 1916, back cover art by Canadian-American artist Norman Mills Price (1877-1951). There may be product placement in this illustration--look for a container of Baker's Cocoa in the young woman's basket--but at least we have a break from the mostly dreary and unhappy contents of the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales.

Terence E. Hanley, December 24-26, 2024.

"Call of the Void -- L'appel du Vide" by Carol Gyzander

Carol Gyzander is a poet, author, and editor. Her story "Call of the Void -- L'appel du Vide" is the last in the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales. I think she's an American, even if her story has a Canadian-style bilingual title. The English half of her title echoes that of "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft. That's probably not a coincidence. The Nietzschean void is right there in the title, too, also probably not a coincidence. Word must have gone out to prospective authors for this issue that they would get extra points if they used void (or abyss) in their stories and titles.

"Call" is five and a half pages long, with a full-page illustration on the main title page and a one-third page snippet of it reused in the interior. The font in this story is pretty large, needlessly so, I think, unless you're an editor running short on material but still trying to fill out 96 pages of your magazine. If you're an editor relying on your friends to write stories for you, and you find that you're running short, you might need more friends. Either that or the ones you have should write more sustained works. I wouldn't count on that very much, though. I'm not sure they're capable of it. More than one of the stories in this issue falls short of full development. They start out with a good germ but fail to reach their full potential. Anyway, the large font used in "Call" is just another indicator of the thinness of content in this issue of Weird Tales. I don't plan on reading any future issues, though, and so I will probably never find out if this thinness is a trend.

"Call" kicks off with product placement in its first paragraph. The lone character Ellen doesn't just have a camera. She has a Nikon D850. Some product. If I look at this magical Internet, I find that a Nikon D850 is a $2,000 piece of equipment. That's not just product placement. It's very conspicuous consumption on the part of the author. And already I have a bad taste in my mouth. Then there is another high-end product, Keurig, placed in the story. There are still other proper nouns in "Call." Some are place names, but even they seem like product placement. The author seems to be saying, "Look at me. These are the places where I have been and with which I am well familiar," translated (by me) into, "I have insider information. My use of these names will substitute for any and all description of the places they represent, what they might signify in my story, or what they might mean to my character. If you don't know what or where they are, well too bad for you."

I won't single out Carol Gyzander here. Several of the authors in the Cosmic Horror Issue have done the same kind of thing, and I wonder why. Why put your knowing in front of us? Why not put yourself away and tell your story? Why are you drawing attention to yourself when the attention of the reader should be on your story, its characters, and its events? Anyway, I remember going to a lecture at a university not many years ago. Before the lecture began, I heard a woman in the audience (I didn't know her) talking about going to Syria, as if going to Syria were a bullet point on her resume. Are we supposed to impressed by these things? I'm not sure. Anyway, there is even a name--Alzheimer's disease--for what killed the main character's mother in Ms. Gyzander's story. I take this as a kind of product placement, too. I guess if you give a thing a name that everyone can simply look up on the Internet, you don't have to do any explaining, meaning, you don't have to do any writing. The reader can just open another window or tab on her screen as she's reading. She could even have a tab for every commercial product you have mentioned in your story and make her purchases along the way. Put another way, in using the names of products (Alzheimer's disease and Arches National Park being, essentially, the names of products) you have relieved yourself of the responsibility of writing. I guess that's what brandnames are for. They're a kind of shorthand that gets right to the knowing, impulsive, status-seeking, and commercially or materially acquisitive part of the brain, wherever that might be. No thinking is really required. I could go on complaining, but I guess we have to realize that this is just how people talk these days, and the way people talk creeps into the author's prose. And here I thought prose was supposed to rise above the level of everyday talk.

I'll finish up. The main character Ellen, a photographer, goes alone into the desert. She has a kind of vision-quest. People have done this for a long time. Jesus did it. He refused the vision or temptation placed before him, though, by Satan. Ellen on the other hand goes for it. I say "main character," but really Ellen is the only character in "Call," for once again, as in "Mozaika," we have a woman alone, an artist, absorbed in the things that, I guess, fill and overfill the thoughts of countless numbers of women in this western world. Ellen's mother is on her mind, just as Myrna's is in "Mozaika." Both characters are lone artists, caught up in their careers and activities. Are these things the main themes in women's literature? In the lives of western women? If so, "Call of the Void -- L'appel du Vide" is made for readers of a certain type. I would say that it has narrow appeal, but then much of what appears in the Cosmic Horror Issue is written from a narrow viewpoint and may have narrow appeal. If you're an atheist or materialist, if you have a dark view of life and the world, if you're wrapped up in yourself and your own thoughts, if you're a fanboy or an ardent consumer of American popular culture, you'll probably find much here to like. What is there for the rest of us, though? Anyway, too many of these stories are too much like a TV show or a movie, and one of them is actually a comic book story. The best, most complex, and most interesting or entertaining stories in this issue--"Concerto in Five Movements" by Ramsey Campbell, "The Last Bonneville" by F. Paul Wilson, and "Night Fishing" by Caitlín R. Kiernan--are not TV-like or comic book-like. They are real fiction, despite any product placement or other flaws or shortcomings they might contain.

Fiction is supposed to be more and to offer more than a script, a screenplay, or a treatment for some medium or form other than real prose printed on the pages of a book or magazine. But authors of today seem to have watched too much TV and too many movies over the course of their lives. They have probably also read too many comic books and played too many countless hours of video games. Reading and the craft of writing seem to be in decline, probably as a result of these things. (Nancy Kilpatrick may be onto something in her story "Mozaika.") Reading takes effort, as does writing. Maybe readers and writers aren't up to the task anymore, even though the results of both reading and writing can be so very richly rewarding. Only a couple of the stories in the Cosmic Horror Issue seem to have been written by authors whose imaginations were formed primarily by reading. Few of them seem to be dedicated writers of fiction in prose. I can't imagine any of their stories--or possibly only a couple--ever being anthologized or reprinted except in the authors' own collections. But then many such collections are essentially vanity publications. In fact, Weird Tales itself, in its latest incarnation, seems to be a vanity publication, a resume builder, or a little sandbox in which a little clique of authors--seemingly all friends of the editor, some talented, some far less so--have gathered to play.

The world has changed since the first Weird Tales of one hundred years ago.

Copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley