For Remembrance Sunday, November 9, and Veterans Day, November 11, 2025
Yesterday I mentioned the artist Lou Feck in regard to his illustrations for The Shepherd by Frederick Forsyth (Bantam Books, 1977). I would like to write about Lou Feck today, for he had an indirect connection to Weird Tales magazine, and I find that there isn't any biography of him on line, or at least as far as I have searched. He was a very good artist, especially good with airplanes and other machines, as well as with architecture. Like all really good artists, though, he was good at handling the human figure. He needed those skills in his work as a cover artist for science fiction and fantasy paperbacks. He did other paperback cover art as well.
Lou Feck's name can be added to the list of Conan cover artists. He also created the cover art for Kull, the Fabulous Warrior King by Robert E. Howard (Bantam Books, 1978). Feck's depictions of airplanes in flight, as well as of airfields, hangars, and other things related to aviation, are excellent. Now I find that he was acquainted with the field of aviation, as he had served in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. Frederick Forsyth (1938-2025), by the way, also served in the air force, in his case the Royal Air Force, or RAF. He was commissioned three days after his eighteenth birthday and became a pilot a year later. At age nineteen, he was at the time the youngest pilot in the RAF. The late Mr. Forsyth flew the de Havilland Vampire, a graceful-looking, twin-tail, single-engine jet fighter. The pilot in The Shepherd flies the same type of aircraft. Frederick Forsyth died almost exactly one hundred years after Lou Feck's birth.
Louis Edward Feck was born on July 8, 1925, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Vela Bertyl (Edwards) Willett and Louis Fairfax Willett, Sr. The two were married on January 22, 1924, and divorced on or about March 15, 1930. Feck's name at birth was actually Louis Fairfax Willett, Jr. In the U.S. Census of 1930 (April 11), he was enumerated with his divorced mother in Norwood, Ohio. She worked then as an editor at a lithographing company. Three years later, a portrait of Vela Edwards Willett, painted by Glen Tracy (1883-1956), was included in an exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum. So, Lou Feck came from a family connected to the art world.
Vela Willett remarried in 1932. Her new husband was Edward A. Feck. The couple lived in Melrose, Massachusetts, in 1940 and 1950 when the census taker came around. By then they had had a daughter, Rosemary Vela Feck, later Caldwell. The former Louis Fairfax Willett, Jr., was by then going by the name Louis Edward Feck, nicknamed Lou.
Lou Feck studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1940-1941 and graduated from Melrose High School in 1943. From July 24, 1943, to February 17, 1946, he served in the U.S. Army Air Force. In 1947, he resumed his studies at Vesper George School of Art in Boston. In 1950, he graduated from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
On June 18, 1950, Feck married Ruth Evangeline Cutkomp in New York City. Born on February 24, 1925, in Columbus City, Iowa, she was an artist, too. She graduated from Rock Island High School, in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1943 and attended the Chicago Art Institute in 1944-1945. From 1945 to 1946, she served in the U.S. Navy. Like her new husband, she graduated from the Pratt Institute in 1950. The young couple lived in Brooklyn and worked in advertising and illustration in New York City. I wonder if they knew John and Elaine Duillo, another husband-and-wife pair of illustrators who had also attended the Pratt Institute.
Lou Feck enjoyed a long and successful career as an artist. You have no doubt seen his work. Rather than list and show his credits here, I'll refer you first to a blog called The Paperback Palette and a long article called "The Fantastic Paperback Cover Art of Lou Feck" by Jeffersen, dated April 10, 2018, here; and second, to a blog called Poplitiko and an entry called "The Secret Work of Lou Feck, Cover Artist Supreme" by Alex Ness, dated August 25, 2025, here. You can also look at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
Lou Feck died suddenly and unexpectedly on November 4, 1981. He was just fifty-six years old. Ruth E. (Cutkomp) Feck died on May 11, 1990, in Broward County, Florida. Feck was buried at Huntington Rural Cemetery in Suffolk County, New York. His signature appears on his headstone. Next to his is another headstone with the signature of Anita D. Feck. Her dates are given as 1930-2016. Someone named Anita Feck wrote a letter to the science fiction magazine Locus, published in its issue of July 1982 (#258). I don't know what to make of all of that exactly. My best guess is that Anita D. Feck was Lou Feck's wife and widow and that she wrote to inform science fiction fandom of the death of her husband. I don't know anything else about her.
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| Kull, The Fabulous Warrior King (Bantam Books, 1978), with cover art by Lou Feck. Created by Robert E. Howard, Kull was first in Weird Tales in August 1929 in the novelette "The Shadow Kingdom." As you can see in this and other works by the artist, Feck painted using a dark, neutral or cool palette. Maybe he borrowed the red cape from Frank Frazetta's justly famous cover for Conan (Lancer, 1967). |
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| Conan the Rebel by Poul Anderson (Bantam Books, 1981) with cover art by Lou Feck using his pseudonym Zorin. Someone is supposed to have figured out that Feck used this pseudonym, but the links in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database don't seem to go anywhere. Conan was of course also created by Howard. The character first appeared in Weird Tales in "The Phoenix on the Sword," December 1932. |
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