Ann VanderMeer became editor of Weird Tales with its issue of November/December 2007. She remained at that post until the Winter issue of 2012, collecting awards along the way. She announced her resignation on August 20, 2012, which would have been H.P. Lovecraft's 122nd birthday had he been treated for many years with large volumes of cool air. This was all part of a controversy that took place so long ago that its has probably been forgotten by everyone except for perhaps its most aggrieved parties.
Marvin Kaye took over after that. The first issue under his editorship came along in Fall 2012. This was the "Cthulhu Returns" issue. The theme would have gone against Jeff VanderMeer's desire to move past Lovecraft. For those who don't know, Jeff VanderMeer is the husband of Ann VanderMeer. On September 1, 2012, as the Weird Tales controversy proceeded, he posted on the Internet an essay entitled "Moving Past Lovecraft." You can read it on the website Weird Fiction Review, here. I have written before on Mr. VanderMeer's essay. You can read what I wrote by clicking here.
The workings of Weird Tales during and after the controversy remained a mystery for most of us. For a long time there wasn't any content on the Weird Tales website. There were also long delays between issues. In 2012, there were only two issues published. In 2013 and 2014, there was only one issue per year. Each was a themed issue. The theme in Summer 2013 was fairy tales. In Spring 2014, it was the undead. At some point, Marvin Kaye had announced a sword-and-sorcery issue. Alas, that issue was not to appear until late 2022, by which time Jonathan Maberry had taken over as editor. Marvin Kaye died more than a year before that, on May 13, 2021. I think we can say that we still feel the loss.
Once again there was a break in the year-to-year record of publication of Weird Tales. The lone issue of 2014 was the last of a run that had begun in 1998. I'm not sure what the difficulty was. Again, we were not allowed to know what was going on behind the scenes. If the publisher and editor had asked me to do it, I would have put out an issue every year during those missing years of 2015 to 2018, even if it was basically just an ashcan edition. In my opinion, Weird Tales has gone on for so long and is so significant in our popular culture--at least in a subset of our popular culture--that it has become a kind of common property. I think the legal holders of that property have a responsibility to readers and fans. If they're not up to it, they should pass it on to someone who will take care. And while it's in their care, they should not abuse Weird Tales. I would say there has been some abuse in recent years.
Anyway, Weird Tales was not in print in 2018 when it could have observed its own ninety-fifth anniversary. However, it was in print five years before, in 2013, for its ninetieth.
The Summer 2013 issue of Weird Tales was Volume 67, Number 1, whole issue number 361. Again, the theme was fairy tales. The cover art is by Jeff Wong. Marvin Kaye was the editor. The front cover doesn't mention the anniversary but the back cover does. "Celebrating 90 Years of Weird!" it reads. And there are tentacles. There is dreck on the title page, which calls Margaret Brundage the "artistic godmother of goth fetishism." Whatever. You can read the same kind of dreck on the current Weird Tales website. All of it has been written by supposed professional writers and editors. I think some of them should go back to school.
In "The Eyrie," which used to be a letters column, Marvin Kaye mentioned the ninetieth anniversary, but he resolved to publish new stories rather than reprint old ones. I think we have to give the late Mr. Kaye credit for an abundance of content in the fairy tales issue. There is even a gag cartoon by Marc Bilgrey. Was that the first in the pages of Weird Tales? I can't say. And then comes an essay, "Ninety Years of Weird Tales," written by Darrell Schweitzer. Mr. Schweitzer's essay is only two pages long but it covers a lot of ground. I'll quote just one sentence, which is in regards to the classic Weird Tales main title logo, designed, incidentally, by J. Allen St. John: "To ever discard it would be unthinkable folly." And yet that's what happened under the previous editors, Stephen H. Segal and Ann VanderMeer, who replaced it with a logo that should be buried deep in the ground and never resurrected.
Immediately following Darrell Schweitzer's essay is an interview with J. David Spurlock, conducted by Lynne Jamneck on his co-authorship of The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage--Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (2013). I think recognition of Margaret Brundage is fitting. The ninetieth-anniversary issue was a good place for it. I think the subtitle of Mr. Spurlock's book is inaccurate, but nobody asked my opinion. Margaret Brundage created most of her covers in the 1930s. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the term pin-up in reference to pictures of women pinned on walls is from about 1940 at its earliest. Has anyone ever seen a contemporaneous photograph of a Brundage cover pinned to a wall? Probably not. Anyway, I think people put into their stuff whatever they think is likely to make it sell, thus the Cthulhu Returns issue (No. 360), the Undead Issue (No. 362), the Margaret Brundage bat-woman ripoff cover of No. 363, the Sword and Sorcery issue (No. 366), the Cosmic Horror issue (No. 367), and, as Yul Brynner would say, et cetera, et cetera.
And now we're finally to the 100th-anniversary of Weird Tales, finally observed in 2023.
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| Weird Tales, October 1933, cover art by Margaret Brundage. The real thing, accept no substitutes, although to be fair to the cover artist on Issue #363, she was probably instructed by the editor or art director to draw what people call "an homage." I know we're looking at some of Bat-Woman's other features here, but have you noticed how long her fingers are? |
Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley
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