Robert Bloch in Peril!

The circle keeps turning . . .

In July 1951, Fantastic Adventures published Robert Bloch's story "The Dead Don't Die!" The cover illustration (below) by Robert Gibson Jones (1889-1969) shows a woman in peril. If you want to see a man in peril, you have to look inside. That's where you'll find Virgil Finlay's illustration and a likeness of the author:

Twenty years later, in its summer issue of 1971, Weird Mystery magazine reprinted Bloch's story and part of Jones' cover illustration. The whole issue, I think, is made up of reprints. After all, the dead don't die.

Artists sometimes insert themselves or people they know into their works. Authors do it, too. H.G. Wells did it, but I can't say that he was the first. Maybe he provided the inspiration for his countryman Alfred Hitchcock, who made cameo appearances in most of his own films. Robert Bloch inserted H.P. Lovecraft into "The Shambler from the Stars" (Weird Tales, Sept. 1935). Lovecraft did it back to him in "The Haunter of the Dark" (Weird Tales, Dec. 1936). Anyway, I have created a new label for entries like this one. It's called Authors Depicted in Art.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley