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, 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. 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