Ralph Snider (1917-1986)

Updated on July 12, 2026.

Franz Nabl was a mystery. So now is Ralph Snider, the artist who illustrated his story. But I have a speculation to make. After reading the comment below, dated July 11, 2026, I think there is good reason to believe that my speculation is on the mark. I have revised and updated my previous entry on Ralph Snider.

Clarence Ralph Snider was born on July 5, 1917, in Dallas County, Texas. His father was Clarence Bon Snider (1874-1922), a U.S. Navy veteran, painter of automobiles, decorator of houses, paper hanger, and published poet. Ralph's mother was Mabelle Laura (Kuechmann) Snider (1873-1964), a housewife, mother, and musician.

Both of Clarence Ralph Snider's parents were born in Indiana, as were their oldest children, Bon Mabelle (or Mabelle Bon) Snider (1904-1978), Lynn Snider (a boy) (1905-1972), and Elmira Elsie Snider (1908-1910). Born in 1917, Clarence Ralph Snider was considerably younger than his siblings. The parents of those four children were married in Muncie, Indiana, on October 10, 1903. Bon was the maiden name of Clarence Bon Snider's mother. It may have been a shortened version of Bond and served as a fine given name for the Sniders' elder daughter.

Clarence Bon Snider's work carried the family to Texas and Oklahoma. Sadly, he died on January 5, 1922, in Barnsdall, Oklahoma. Mabelle Snider returned to Indiana and in 1923 lived in Muncie with Bon Snider, an artist with the Delaware Engraving Company. So now we know that there were artists in the Snider family.

By 1930, Mabelle L. Snider and her family were in Los Angeles, California, living with Bon and her husband, Joseph Dana Staigers. Lynn, aged twenty-four, was working as a designer. Clarence, then going by the name of Ralph, was just twelve years old. By the way, Joseph Dana Staigers was the older brother of the cornet and trumpet virtuoso Charles Delaware "Del" Staigers (1899-1950). I assume that Bon and Joseph Staigers had met in Muncie, the Staigers' hometown. Muncie is in Delaware County, Indiana, and so maybe we have the origin of Del Staigers' middle name and nickname.

I have a black-and-white illustration by a Ralph Snider of Commerce High School in San Francisco, dated November 4, 1934 (below). I assume that he was our man. That Ralph Snider graduated from Commerce High School on January 17, 1936. A very young-looking Ralph Snider attended Heald College in San Francisco. The prediction in his yearbook of 1935 reads:

RALPH SNIDER will draw all

Those beautiful queens

That are seen on the front

Of the best magazines.

If those were the same Ralph Snider, then he must have attended both schools simultaneously, or earned college credit while still in high school. Anyway, I take that caption as pretty good evidence that he was an artist. The anonymous commenter below, who is the great grand-nephew of Ralph Snider, confirms through his mother that Snider was an artist. But was he the artist for Weird Tales? It seems to me that Farnsworth Wright scouted California colleges and universities during the 1930s. Maybe Ralph Snider was one of his finds.

The anonymous commenter below also confirms:

He was an inspiration for my grandmother and her two sisters [i.e., the three daughters of Lynn Snider], who adored Weird Tales, Robert Howard's "Conan," H.P. Lovecraft's "Cthulhu" mythos, all the sort of fodder for "Weird Tales." [Boldface added and slightly reformatted to fit the format of this blog.]

I like to include the names of readers of Weird Tales in my blog, and so I will add to that list the three daughters of Lynn Snider, based on the comment below. I hope the commenter doesn't mind. They are:

• Sharon Concepcion Snider Viola (1931-2019)
• Abbie Gail Snider Akau (1934-2022), a mother, artist, and world traveler
• Sheila Bon Snider (b. 1934)

Though born in the same year, Abbie, born in January, and Sheila, born in December, were not twins. Their mother was Emelina Bondanza Snider (1905-1997). What a remarkable family.

In successive San Francisco city directories from the 1930s to the 1950s, Ralph Snider was a clerk, a lampshade maker, and an artist. At about the same time, Bon Snider was also listed as a student and an artist in Oakland. The commenter below has let us know that his relative Ralph Snider was a commercial artist who worked for The Emporium in San Francisco.

Clarence Ralph Snider died on October 28, 1986, in San Francisco. He was sixty-nine years old.

Ralph Snider's Illustration in Weird Tales

"The Long Arm" by Franz Nabl, misidentified as Franz Habl (Oct. 1937)

Ralph Snider's illustration for "The Long Arm" by Franz Nabl, October 1937. If this was the work of the artist I have written about here, then he would have been twenty years old when he drew this very Virgil Finlay-like illustration. It is of the "Reaching Hand" type.

A photograph of Ralph Snider from his college yearbook, Heald College, 1935.

A cartoon by Ralph Snider of Commerce High School, published in the San Francisco Chronicle, November 4, 1934, page 4. The signature is different from that in the illustration in Weird Tales published three years later, but it's also very small and inconspicuous and in the same position on the page.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023, 2026 Terence E. Hanley