Pyramids on the Cover of Weird Tales

I wrote recently of pyramids, and this month I'm writing about the January 1925 issue of Weird Tales. Today I can write about both, for on the cover of that issue is a pyramid, a step pyramid and the only one of its kind to appear on the cover of "The Unique Magazine." There had been pyramids before, on the first-anniversary issue of May/June/July 1924. There would be one more in the original run of the magazine, in February 1929, and one more after that, in Winter 1985.

Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924, the first and only quarterly issue of "The Unique Magazine." Cover story: "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" by Houdini (ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft). Cover art by R.M. Mally.

Weird Tales, January 1925. Cover story: "Invaders from the Outside" by J. Schlossel. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. 

"I heard sighs of horror from my two companions beneath me, and for a single moment we hung motionless along the chain's length, swinging along the huge pyramid's glowing side at a height of hundreds of feet above the shining streets below. Then the creature raised one of its tentacles, a metal tool in its grasp, which he brought down in a sharp blow on the chain at the window's edge. Again he repeated the blow, and again.

     "He was cutting the chain!"

Weird Tales, February 1929. Cover story: "The Star-Stealers" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by Hugh Rankin.

Weird Tales, Winter 1985. Cover art by Ro H. Kim (Hyang Ro Kim). This cover combines a pyramid with the pyramidal body and tentacles of Rankin's previous design.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley