The Falling Man

The illustration on the cover of Weird Tales for April 1925 is for "When the Green Star Waned" by Nictzin Dyalhis. The artist was Andrew Brosnatch. It shows a man who appears to be falling into a mass of aliens that have invaded Earth. In actuality, the aliens have levitated him the way a Roman might hold a grape over his open mouth. The intent is the same: the aliens mean to eat him. In a moment, they will let go with their powers of levitation and he will plunge into their mass, where they await with their "triangular, gaping, hideous orifices." The man is spared his fate by the merciful actions of the Venus-Men.

Andrew Brosnatch's cover illustration makes me think of Christian art, especially depictions of Hell and the casting into Hell of sinners. His garb is also redolent of ancient or biblical dress. First is Brosnatch's cover, then an example of the falling man from Christian art:

"Casting the Damned into Hell," the right wing of a triptych entitled The Last Judgment, by German-Flemish artist Hans Memling (ca. 1430-1494). See in particular the figure on the middle right.

There are many more examples of the falling man, cast into Hell, in Christian art. If you go looking for such imagery, be ready for some nightmarish, yet fascinating, depictions of Hell, some of which remind me of William Hope Hodgson's description of our nightmarish future in The Night Land (1912).

Depictions of Icarus by European artists show a similar falling man from pre-Christian and pagan times. The image of the falling spaceman is common in science fiction art, the art of the future. (I guess apocalyptic art is art of the future, too.) Here's an example of that:

The Fallen Spaceman by Lee Harding (1973), with art by John and Ian Schoenherr. Be aware that I have adjusted this image from an online photograph of the cover. This is not a true representation of the original.

I don't know whether Andrew Brosnatch intended to evoke thoughts of the fall of man from the Book of Genesis, of the sinner and the damned cast into Hell, or of the general image of man falling from grace or from great heights into opposing depths. Those of us with religious upbringing and education can't avoid seeing such things, though.

I have just one more thing. My nephew and I noticed a long time ago that all of the major characters in Star Wars sooner or later fall into a pit. The same thing happens to Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood, also to characters in The Lord of the Rings saga. That fear, dread, and terror at falling or plunging, or being cast into pits and depths, must be deep in us, no pun intended, and always ready to come forth. 

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

"Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas

One hundred years ago this month, in November 1924, Weird Tales came back. It had been gone for three months by its cover date but closer to six or even seven in actuality. The last issue before the hiatus was the first and only quarterly issue of the magazine, dated May/June/July 1924. There was an overhaul of the magazine, the business behind the magazine, and some of its staff in that time. There was a new editor in November 1924, Farnsworth Wright, and a new cover artist, Andrew Brosnatch (1896-1965). Brosnatch's first cover illustration was for a story called "Teoquitla the Golden" by a pseudonymous author, Ramòn de las Cuevas.

Ramòn de las Cuevas was actually the archaeologist, anthropologist, and museum curator Mark R. Harrington (1882-1971). He is supposed to have taken his nom de plume from the name of a Spanish-American historian. I haven't found a historian by that name, but Harrington mentioned a historian called Las Casas in his story. He was Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566). I wonder if Harrington transmuted las Casas' name to arrive at his own pseudonym. In Spanish, las Casas means "the houses," and las Cuevas, "the caves." And so Ramòn de las Cuevas means "Ramòn of the Caves." Harrington's middle name, by the way, was Raymond.

Caves meant something to Harrington, I think. In his story, he wrote:

     Dr. Branson turned to his new friend, Lewis, who lolled in a deck-chair beside him. "I'll bet," he suggested, "the old Indians used to have great times up in those caves before Brother Columbus butted in!"

     "Yes," agreed his companion, "the Cronistas tell us that the Taino tribes held some of their most important ceremonies in caves."

"Teoquitla the Golden" was Harrington's only story in Weird Tales. I wonder if there was an original in the folk tales, mythologies, or histories--the European Cronistas--of Mesoamerican Indians. If so, he would have been the right person to have come across it.

Set in Mesoamerica, "Teoquitla the Golden" is about an American explorer named Robert Sanderson who discovers a place called Nahuatlan, located "in the Hidden Valley, the last stand of the Aztec nation." The discovery of a hidden or lost valley is a convention in genre fiction. You can call it a trope if you want. Otherwise, "Teoquitla the Golden" is a very unusual story. And I mean very unusual.

I'll cut to the chase: "Teoquitla the Golden" is about the transformation of a man into a woman. This isn't by any of the fake-scientific or pseudo-medical butchery employed today. The transformation is actually carried out with ancient ways and the use of potions--evidently plant-based--blown into the man's body through straws. (Is he a genetically modified organism?) The transformation is gradual. It is also complete. I should add that Sanderson did not like women before his transformation. His weird is that he would become something he once disliked. This idea makes me think of the movie Watermelon Man (1970) starring Godfrey Cambridge and directed by Mario Van Peebles.

I'm surprised that Weird Tales would have printed a story like this one in 1924, but then it was "The Unique Magazine." "Teoquitla the Golden"--the title refers to the man after he has been transformed into a woman--is an unusual and weird story, but it isn't told in a weird or sensationalistic way. The tone is actually pretty even, as you might expect from a man working in a science-based discipline. And the narrative is sympathetic to the man in his transformed state.

The online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has an entry on what it calls "Transgender SF," SF indicating science fiction. Science fiction is of course supposed to be based in science--real science and not fake. Science is right there in the name of the genre after all. Transgenderism, though, is not scientific. There is no science in it. In fact it's antiscientific, as well as pseudoscientific. Its true nature is political. In fact, transgenderism is a political belief system that is totalitarian in all of its intensity, scope, and ambitions. If you doubt that, just speak those words and wait for the blowback from people who want you not only to shut up, but who also want to force you to accept, embrace, and internalize their belief system. If you transgress, you must grovel in apology. You must be humiliated into speaking lies as the truth. And if you hold to the truth, you must be silenced, shouted down, banned, canceled, ostracized, and even fined or imprisoned. Dissent simply cannot be tolerated. Once you have spoken the truth, it won't take long for them to lash out. They are likely to be exceedingly vicious in doing it. Don't falter, though. Stand up for yourself, and tell it like it is. In this, it's helpful to have knowledge of the totalitarian principle, possibly first articulated in genre fiction: "Everything not forbidden is compulsory." This is how they think. You must agree with them. And if you won't on your own, you must be made to agree. This is what they have planned for you. So remember: to be forewarned is to be forearmed against their certain assaults.

As for the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, it has obviously been ideologically captured, the evidence of that being, if nothing else, its use of the phrase "gender reassignment surgery," which is an atrocious euphemism for the mutilation and removal of breasts and genitalia: healthy and normally functioning tissues and organs, removed from healthy and normally functioning human bodies, including--and seemingly as an especial target--the bodies of children. And here I thought the first command of medicine is to do no harm.

I hesitated to write about "Teoquitla the Golden." I don't like to fuel people's delusions and ideological insanity. I also don't want to point the way to a work of art that will no doubt be used for propagandistic--i.e., anti-art--purposes. But this blog is about Weird Tales, its authors, artists, stories, and poems, and so I feel an obligation to do it. This is also an anniversary, the 100-year anniversary of what very well could have been the first sex-switch in the history of pulp fiction. And "Teoquitla the Golden" is actually a good and interesting story. But if you read it, you should set aside your twenty-first-century self and attempt to read it in the mindset of a person from one hundred years ago. Forget politics. Forget insanity. Remember art and literature and their purposes.

Weird Tales, November 1924. Cover story: "Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. Considering the subject matter of the story, you could take Brosnatch's last name as an obscene pun. Try not to.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Tentacles on the Cover of Weird Tales

Tentacles may or may not be the appendage of choice for tellers of weird tales, but there have been a few tentacled covers in "The Unique Magazine." I have seven to show here, but most are not quite right. Richard R. Epperly's cover for the first issue of Weird Tales shows tentacles when it should show pseudopodia. The cover illustrating "When the Green Star Waned" by Nictzin Dyalhis shows tentacle-like appendages, but they're actually arms. But then in February 1929, real tentacles arrived in Hugh Rankin's cover illustrating "The Star-Stealers" by Edmond Hamilton. And not only is the creature on the cover tentacled, it also looks likes a starfish, another of those alien-on-Earth type creatures with its slightly disconcerting radial symmetry.

There's a tentacled creature in the upper right of Hannes Bok's cover from March 1940. It's definitely not the star of the show in the way that Matt Fox's alien from November 1944 is. And then we have to skip four decades into the future for Hyang Ro Kim's take on the tentacled alien or monster. Finally, there is the current issue of Weird Tales and its cover by Bob Eggleton.

There are also covers on the themes of snakes, Medusas, and plants, some of which have reaching and entwining tendrils, but I think that tentacles, despite their similarity in appearance to these things, are distinctly different, for they are among the discoveries of science rather than subjects of myth, legends, and folklore. Authors of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries recognized that difference, and I think that's why we have tentacled aliens in fantasy fiction.

I haven't included issues of Weird Tales after the 1980s in my writing on this blog. There are almost certainly tentacle-covers in those issues, but that's a topic for another day.

"In the yard Peggy was half engulfed in a squamous, rubbery something which at first glance he could not analyze."

Weird Tales, March 1923, the inaugural issue, with cover art by Richard R. Epperly illustrating "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud. These are the two cover variants of which I wrote earlier this month.

"They, the Things, slowly raised each an arm, pointed at one Aerthon in the group. He, back to them as he was, quivered, shook, writhed, then, despite himself, he slowly rose in the air, moved out into space, hung above the blobs that waited, avid-mouthed. The Aerthon turned over in the air, head down, still upheld by the concentrated wills of the things that pointed . . ."

Weird Tales, April 1925. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. Cover story: "When the Green Star Waned" by Nictzin Dyalhis. I have included this cover here less because the arms of the aliens look tentacle-like than because Dyalhis seems to have been heavily influenced by H.G. Wells' tentacled Martians in The War of the Worlds.

"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 art by Hugh Rankin. Cover story: "The Star-Stealers" by Edmond Hamilton. Proof that tentacled creatures are tool-using.

Update (Feb. 26, 2023): Hugh Rankin is an overlooked artist, I think. I'm inclined to give him the award for Best Tentacled Cover for Weird Tales. His is art from another era and another kind of sensibility. Call it a cultural and historical artifact. It gives us a window onto the past. There are hints of Art Nouveau in this illustration, but Art Deco is the primary style. Note the flamingo-like birds in the background. Note also the triangular motifs that echo the shape of the creature's head, in the serifs of Rankin's hand lettering, in the dark gray side of the pyramid, and in the design containing the cover price.

Weird Tales, March 1940. Cover art by Hannes Bok. The tentacled creature in this cover is a bird-like thing in the upper right.

Weird Tales, November 1944, with cover art by Matt Fox, a master monster-maker. This cover makes me think of that golden-idol monstrosity recently erected in New York City. I included Fox's cover in an article called "Flying Saucers from Before the Great War," August 16, 2020.

Weird Tales, Winter 1985, with cover art by Hyang Ro Kim, aka Ro H. Kim. I have written about this cover before, too, on September 30, 2016.

Finally, the cover for the most recent issue of Weird Tales, what we can accept as the 100th anniversary issue, Number 366, with cover art by Bob Eggleton.

Update (Feb. 26, 2023): Regarding Hugh Rankin's starfish-with-tentacles cover of February 1929, here's another in the same vein, a far more famous cover of DC Comics' Brave and the Bold #28, featuring the Justice League of America in their battle against Starro the Conqueror, March 1960. Only thirty-one years separated those two covers. More than sixty stand between us and the first appearance of Starro.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

J. Schlossel (1902-1977)

Joseph H. Schlossel
Author, Tailor, Metal Plater, Dog Breeder
Born December 21, 1902, New York or Canada
Died December 1 or 4?, 1977, Schodack Landing?, New York

J. Schlossel was Joseph H. Schlossel, a Jewish writer who was born either in New York or Canada, lived in Canada for several years, and wrote just six published stories. Despite his small output, Schlossel has earned a place in the history of science fiction by being the first author known to have written about a trip to the moon monitored on Earth by way of television. His imagination and stories were expansive; he often assumed a cosmic viewpoint, treating whole star systems and vast swaths of time. He wrote an early science fiction story, "Invaders from Outside," for Weird Tales, a magazine otherwise known for fantasy and weird fiction. In fact, all but one of J. Schlossel's stories were published from 1925 to 1928, before the term science fiction even showed up in print. His last published work, "Extra-Galactic Invaders," the title of which echoed that of his first, appeared in print after he had ceased writing for pulp magazines. Sources on the Internet suggest that Schlossel stopped writing because of the coming of the Great Depression. I don't known the source of that claim.

Joseph H. Schlossel was born on December 21, 1902, in New York or Canada to Mr. and Mrs. Hyman Schlossel. Hyman Schlossel was a tailor. His son followed him in that trade. The first and one of the only records I have found on him shows that he crossed from Canada into the United States by way of Niagara Falls in early November 1921. He gave his previous address as Hamilton, Ontario, and his father's address as Buffalo, New York.

As a young man in his twenties, J. Schlossel wrote science fiction and fantasy stories, a half dozen of which were published in Weird Tales and Amazing Stories. The first appeared in January 1925, the last in the spring of 1931. Schlossel's six published stories: 

• "Invaders from Outside" in Weird Tales, January 1925; reprinted August 1938
• "Hurled into the Infinite" (two-part serial) in Weird Tales, June-July 1925
• "A Message From Space" in Weird Tales, March 1926
• "The Second Swarm" in Amazing Stories Quarterly, Spring 1928; reprinted in Science Fiction Classics, Summer 1968
• "To The Moon by Proxy" in Amazing Stories, October 1928
• "Extra-Galactic Invaders" in Amazing Stories Quarterly, Spring 1931

After the last, he fell silent as a published author. I would like to think that there are unpublished manuscripts by J. Schlossel still out there in the world.

Joseph Schlossel is supposed to have worked in the metal-plating business. He was also a dog breeder. Disaster and tragedy struck in March 1969 when thirty-seven of his French poodles were killed in a house fire in Schodack Landing, New York. At the time, Schlossel lived across the street from the 100-year-old house in which he had kept his dogs.

Schlossel married Ora Alpha Jarvis (1913-1990) of Charleston, West Virginia. She had earned a B.S. degree from the University of Buffalo in 1937 and an M.S. degree from Columbia University in about 1939-1940. She worked for the Farmers Home Administration (FHA) in Ocala, Florida, in the 1950s and as a civil servant, eventually as a senior accountant, for the State of New York. The couple had a daughter whom I believe is still working as a teacher and psychologist.

Joseph Schlossel died on December 1 or 4, 1977, presumably in Schodack Landing, New York, where he had lived for many years. He was seventy-four years old.

J. Schlossel's Stories in Weird Tales
See the list above.

Further Reading
See the entries on Schlossel in:

• The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Wikipedia

J. Schlossel hit the jackpot when his first published story, "Invaders from Outside," landed on the cover of Weird Tales in January 1925. It was an early science fiction story for the magazine, preceding Nictzin Dyalhis' "When the Green Star Waned" by three months. The image of the space alien with large, slanted eyes and pointed ears was prescient. I wonder whether this was the first such image to appear on the cover of a pulp magazine in America. Whether so or not, credit the artist, Andrew Brosnatch. 

Text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Vikings and Medieval Subjects on the Cover of Weird Tales

When I was in college the first time around, I took a class in medieval history. Then as now, I liked cartoons and comic strips, so I pointed out to my professor, Dr. James Divita, that there were at the time at least three popular newspaper comics about the Middle Ages, Hägar the Horrible by Dik Browne, The Wizard of Id by Brant Parker and Johnny Hart, and Prince Valiant by John Cullen Murphy (originally by Hal Foster). There have been others. I would hazard a guess, though, that there may not be anymore new ones in the future, at least as we know newspaper comics. Anyway, I have found four covers of Weird Tales in which there are Vikings or other medieval subjects. Note that almost everybody has red hair. Red garments, too.

Weird Tales, January 1925. Cover story: "Invaders from Outside: A Tale of the Twelve Worlds" by J. Schlossel. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. I don't think this story is set in the Middle Ages, but it sure looks that way, judging from the costumes. However, there are three dead, pointy-eared, three-legged aliens on the ground between the two main characters, so probably not. Anyway, I don't know about you, but pictures of people pointing at things are generally not very interesting to me.

Weird Tales, December 1928, ninety years ago this month. Cover story: "The Chapel of Mystic Horror" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Hugh Rankin. I'll have to check, but this might be the only cover of "The Unique Magazine" to include any kind of Christian imagery, in this case, the crosses on the shields and surcoats of the knights on the left. However, the crosses seem to be inverted, signifying what exactly?

Weird Tales, January 1941. Cover story: "Dragon Moon" by Henry Kuttner. Cover art by Harold S. De Lay. This is a "novelette of drowned Atlantis," not of the Middle Ages, but the artist has depicted the setting and characters in a conventional medieval sort of way. So here it goes.

Weird Tales, March 1943. Cover story: "Flight into Destiny" by Verne Chute. Cover art by Edgar Franklin Wittmack. There weren't any airplanes or aviators in the Middle Ages, but there were big, strong, spear-toting guys and beautiful women wearing breastplates, at least in our imaginations. We'll probably see this cover again.

I guess in summary that there is something wrong and not quite medieval in every one of these images. For whatever reason, though, more than one teller of weird tales drew on the Middle Ages for inspiration and imagery.

Text and captions copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Voodoo on the Cover of Weird Tales

I have covered zombies on the cover of Weird Tales. Now I'll cover Voodoo and the magic and sorcery of the Caribbean, Central America, and the American South. I have five covers here, but only three are obviously about Voodoo. The first may be related to Voodoo, while the last may not be related at all.

There are still more zombie topics on the way.

Weird Tales, December 1924. Cover story: "Death-Waters" by Frank Belknap Long. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. "Death-Waters" is not explicitly a tale of Voodoo, and there are no zombies, but the black man in the story is, evidently, a kind of sorcerer with power to call forth masses of snakes. The man's power may be related to the concept of Li Grand Zombi, the serpent spirit of Voodoo folklore in Louisiana. By the way, "Death-Waters" takes place in Central America, possibly in Honduras, and not in Africa.

A few weeks ago, a reader commented on this story. I read it so that I might understand better what's going on in the illustration. I can tell you that the story and its characters are complicated. The reader was right: the man in the middle is the least sympathetic character. (He may also be a more subtle racial stereotype than appears: named Byrne, he is stubborn and quick to anger, matching what many people thought--or think--of Irishmen.) The man in the rear is more or less inarticulate. Though loyal, he's kind of a numbskull. The man in front is not what I would call sympathetic exactly (the narrator--the man in the rear--sees or believes that he sees in the black man horrible things). However, he gets into a battle of wills with Byrne and is made to heel. The snakes come to avenge his humiliation. As you can tell, this is not a simple story and definitely not a simple case of racism or racialism against black people.

Weird Tales, August 1925. Cover story: "Black Medicine" by Arthur J. Burks. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. I haven't read this story yet, but I assume that it's about Haiti and that the figure in front is a Haitian magician or sorcerer. That would suggest that the figure in the rear is a zombie. I hope to read this story soon, so I'll let you know.

Weird Tales, March 1930. Cover story: "Drums of Damballah" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by C.C. Senf. Damballah is a god of Voodoo and may be synonymous with Li Grande Zombi. (I can't say as I don't know much about Voodoo.) The connection to snakes is evident in the illustration. Speaking of connections, I wonder if there is any etymological connection between Damballah and Allah.

Weird Tales, May 1941. Cover story: "There Are Such Things" by Seabury Quinn [?]. Cover art by Hannes Bok. According to Jaffery and Cook's index of Weird Tales, there is no cover story for this issue, but the illustration and the story named on the cover seem to go together.

Weird Tales, July 1951. Cover story: "Flame Birds of Angala" by E. Everett Evans. Cover art by Charles A. Kennedy. I don't know that this is a story of Voodoo. Published in 1951, it actually seems kind of late for the Voodoo/zombie craze of the 1930s and early '40s. But I'm putting it here until I know something different.

Text and captions copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Zombies, Liches, Corpses, and the Undead

So far, February has been Zombie Month at Tellers of Weird Tales. I guess I'll keep it up for a while, beginning with all of the covers of Weird Tales showing zombies, liches, corpses, and the undead, plus a couple of creatures that look like they could be from among the undead. I count more than a dozen of these covers. One thing I noticed in pulling them together is that many of the undead seem to have lost their pupils, like Little Orphan Annie. If the eyes are a window upon the soul, I guess that makes sense. Anyway, the first cover is for a story by Arthur J. Burks, who may be the forgotten father of the zombie in America. I don't know for a fact that the taller of the two figures is a zombie, but once I learned a little something about Burks, the cover made sense: in front appears to be a bokor, houngan, or mambo, and in the rear, a zombie? I plan to read this story soon. When I do, I'll let you know for sure.

Weird Tales, August 1925. Cover story: "Black Medicine" by Arthur J. Burks. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch.

Weird Tales, April 1930. Cover story: "The Dust of Egypt" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Hugh Rankin. The creature in the middle looks like one of the undead, plus he doesn't have any pupils. You have seen this cover before in the categories of Egypt and of the reaching hand, but I think it has a place here, too.

Weird Tales, January 1931. Cover story "The Lost Lady" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by C.C. Senf. Another reaching hand, and in the rear, a zomboid creature. Or maybe he's a ghoul.

Weird Tales, August 1932. Cover story: "Bride of the Peacock" by E. Hoffman Price. Cover art by T. Wyatt Nelson. More than a skeleton, less than alive. In my book, that makes for one of the undead.

Weird Tales, October 1936. Cover story: "Isle of the Undead" by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach. Cover art by J. Allen St. John. There's no doubt about this cover.

Weird Tales, February 1937. Cover story: "The Globe of Memories" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Virgil Finlay.

Weird Tales, October 1937. Cover story: "Tiger Cat" by David H. Keller. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. I don't know that the men in the picture are of the undead, but their eyes are blunked out, as MAD magazine put it in its parody of Pogo, so here they are. Update (Feb. 18, 2017): I have just read this story. You can read it, too, by going to this issue of Weird Tales at the website pulpmags.org, here. As it turns out, the men in the story are not undead, and though the woman is defending herself from them, the whole situation is not what you might think. Just read for yourself. I think you'll like the story.

Weird Tales, July 1938. Cover story: "Spawn of Dagon" by Henry Kuttner. Cover art by Virgil Finlay. More missing pupils, plus the short guy in front is pretty green and seems to be past his expiration date.

How did Virgil Finlay see the future so well?

Weird Tales, November 1939. Cover story: "Towers of Death" by Henry Kuttner. Cover art by Virgil Finlay. This is a rare cover and one we haven't seen before (if I remember right).

Weird Tales, July 1940. Cover story: "An Adventure of a Professional Corpse" by H. Bedford-Jones. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. This guy wins the prize for the spiffiest corpse so far.

Weird Tales, Canadian edition, November 1943. Cover story: Uncertain. Cover art by an unknown artist. The Canadian edition of Weird Tales had its own look. You would barely know that it was the same magazine as the American edition. And some of the Canadian covers were superior to their American counterparts.

Weird Tales, Canadian edition, March 1944. Cover story: "The Valley of the Assassins" by Edmond Hamilton [?]. Cover art by an unknown artist. More blunked-out eyes. Are these men undead?

Weird Tales, July 1947. Cover story: "Weirdisms: The Vampire" by E. Crosby Michel. Cover art by Lee Brown Coye. This is actually a vampire cover, but Coye's vampire looks more like what we think of as a zombie. Coye tended to draw and paint decrepit people, but I think that with his artist's keen vision, he saw and depicted the true nature of the vampire as an evil and depraved being. People who think of vampires as cute and sexy have forgotten or overlooked that. Why do they have to be reminded that vampires are here to kill us all?

Weird Tales, November 1949. Cover story: "The Underbody" by Allison V. Harding. Cover art by Matt Fox.

Text and captions copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Scientific Experimention on the Cover of Weird Tales

If science is the religion of the twentieth (and twenty-first) century, and if the god of science is an indifferent god, and if human beings are merely material objects without souls, then human sacrifice in the cause of science can be considered acceptable, even desirable. Witness Nazi experimentation on their victims. That's just some theorizing on my part. But on the cover of Weird Tales and other pulp magazines, the imagery of scientific experimentation isn't very much different from that of the fiend and murderer, or of human sacrifice and execution. Note the first three images shown below, especially the second, in which the woman is bound to what looks like a stainless steel table, her tormentor wields a scalpel instead of a knife, and he also wears a white lab coat instead of a red robe. He is evidently a scientist, but he acts like a cultist or a fiend. In my mind, that's a strange and significant association.

Weird Tales, January 1926. Cover story: "Stealer of Souls" by Charles H. Craig. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch.

Weird Tales, November 1929. Cover story: "The Gray Killer" by Everil Worrell. Cover art by C.C. Senf.

Weird Tales, May 1930. Cover story: "The Brain-Thief" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by C. C. Senf.

Weird Tales, April 1935. Cover story: "The Man Who Was Two Men" by Arthur William Bernal. Cover by Margaret Brundage.

Weird Tales, February 1938. Cover story: "Frozen Beauty" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Virgil Finlay.

Weird Tales, November 1944, Canadian edition. Cover story [?]: "Death's Bookkeeper" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by an unknown artist. The cover artist or artists for the Canadian edition of Weird Tales seem to have worked pretty readily from a picture file: that's obviously a depiction of Boris Karloff and an even more realistic image of a snake.

Next: Whips, Chains, Bondage and Torture.

Text and captions copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Human Sacrifice and Execution in the 1920s

There is more fiendishness and murderousness in this series on human sacrifice and execution in Weird Tales. In the previous series, the fiend or murderer attacked a woman who might somehow resist. Here, she is helpless. You can interpret this situation sexually, just as in the previous series. There is even a name for the desire to have sex with a sleeping or helpless person. It's called somnophilia. Bill Cosby, whom we loved so much when we were kids, has been accused of raping women after having drugged them. Some people think that he is a somnophiliac. Not long ago, I watched Mother, Jugs & Speed from 1976. There are scenes of drug use and of somnophilia in that movie, and you just can't watch it in the same way now as you might have then. I suppose this desire to put women into situations where they are helpless has to do with the viewer's (or participant's) feelings of inferiority or a lack of confidence, sexual ability, or sexual experience, or his attempts to avoid rejection or humiliation. Anyway, here they are, the covers of the 1920s showing human sacrifice and execution. In this first installment, all of the victims are women.

Weird Tales, September 1925. Cover story: "The Gargoyle" by Greye La Spina. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch.

Weird Tales, November 1926. Cover story: "The Peacock's Shadow" by E. Hoffman Price. Cover art by E. M. Stevenson.

Weird Tales, February 1927. Cover story: "The Man Who Cast No Shadow" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by C. Barker Petrie, Jr. I assume this is an image of sacrifice: the woman is helpless and is tied down, while the man holds a knife. That makes three knives in a row.

Weird Tales, Ocober 1929. Cover story: The Woman with the Velvet Collar" by Gaston Leroux. Cover art by Hugh Rankin. Here the weapon of choice is not a knife but a guillotine blade. I remember in the movie The Da Vinci Code that the blade is supposed to be a masculine symbol and the cup a feminine symbol. So far in this series (and in the previous one), that seems to be true, at least for the male symbol.

To be concluded . . . 

Text and captions copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

I'm Dreaming of a Weird Christmas . . .

Or

Scenes of Winter, Snow, and Ice on the Cover of Weird Tales

Tonight is Christmas Eve, and for the occasion I would like to show the covers of Weird Tales in which there are scenes of winter, snow, and ice. There are five of them, and they're a mixed bag to be sure. The first, by R.M. Mally, isn't bad. I'm actually intrigued and would like to read about Joe Scranton and his amazing adventure. The second, by Andrew Brosnatch is also intriguing. C. Barker Petrie's cover from January 1927 is my favorite. In fact it's one of my favorite of all Weird Tales covers. And from there it's downhill again to the last cover, from May 1939. So here they are, and . . .

Merry Christmas to

Readers of Weird Tales!

Weird Tales, October 1923. Cover story: "The Amazing Adventure of Joe Scranton" by Effie W. Fifield. Cover art by R.M. Mally. An icebound ship makes me think of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge . . .

Here illustrated by Gustave Doré. This episode from the poem is set in the South Atlantic, so there shouldn't be any polar bears. Oh, well.

Weird Tales, July 1925. Cover story: "The Werewolf of Ponkert" by H. Warner Munn. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch.

Weird Tales, January 1927. Cover story: "Drome" by John Martin Leahy. Cover art by C. Barker Petrie, Jr.

Weird Tales, March 1933. Cover story: "The Thing in the Fog" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

Weird Tales, May 1939. "The Hollow Moon" by Everil Worrell. Cover art by Harold S. De Lay.

Text and captions copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley