The Magic Carpet Magazine Covers

Weird Tales had its many problems with circulation over the years. It's no wonder that an offshoot like Oriental Stories suffered from poor sales as well. It didn't help matters at all that the magazine arrived on the newsstand a year into the Great Depression. In any case, with the new year, 1933, Oriental Stories became The Magic Carpet Magazine.

Oriental Stories had started out as a bimonthly magazine, then switched to a quarterly schedule after just three issues. The Magic Carpet Magazine stuck with that schedule for its five issues and came to an end in January 1934.

The Magic Carpet Magazine (Vol. 3, No. 1), January 1933. The cover is by Margaret Brundage, but the scene echoes Donald von Gelb's cover for Oriental Stories for Summer 1931, while the pose is similar to that of Botticelli's Aphrodite.

The Magic Carpet Magazine (Vol. 3, No. 2), April 1933. Once again, the cover is by Margaret Brundage.

The Magic Carpet Magazine (Vol. 3, No. 3), July 1933. J. Allen St. John was the cover artist. Note the change in the logo.

The Magic Carpet Magazine (Vol. 3, No. 4), October 1933. Margaret Brundage is back as cover artist.

The Magic Carpet Magazine (Vol. 4, No. 1), January 1934. Margaret Brundage did the cover art. Except for the logo, the magazine could be mistaken for an aviation pulp. This would be the last issue of The Magic Carpet Magazine. A noble experiment had come to an end.

The complete covers of The Magic Carpet Magazine.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley