Weird Tales: The Unique Magazine

Weird Tales began in March 1923 as "The Unique Magazine," and for ten years it kept that subtitle. The last issue labeled as "The Unique Magazine" came out in March 1933.

The second issue of Weird Tales, from April 1923, had a red border around the cover illustration. The border turned white, then black, in subsequent issues. By January 1924, the border was gone.

The red border came back in August 1925. There was one blue border and four black borders after that. Otherwise, borders remained red until the February/March or April/May issue of 1931, depending on how you look at it. After that, the main title logo was enclosed in a red box at the top of the cover design, this until May 1933.

So at the ten-year mark, the subtitle "The Unique Magazine" and the red border or box on the cover disappeared. Also in May 1933, a new main title logo, designed by J. Allen St. John, made its debut. It is that logo that we now associate with Weird Tales in all of its forms. After May 1933, the cover designs for the magazine were simpler and cleaner. They had a more modern look instead of an older, Victorian or prewar appearance.

There were two exceptions to all of this. As we have seen, the May issues were the place where Weird Tales usually celebrated its anniversaries. I have found two throwback covers. Both came out during the anniversary month of May. The first was in May 1936. That one had the old subtitle, "The Unique Magazine," and a red border. The second was in May 1937. That one was subtitled "The Unique Magazine," but there wasn't any border at all.

Irving Glassman's letter in the March 1953 issue of Weird Tales appears to have been the last time there was mention of an anniversary during the first run of the magazine, 1923-1954. In September 1953, Weird Tales switched from the old pulp format to being digest-sized. It must have seemed to readers that their favorite magazine was on its last leg. Again and again, it had been reduced, first in the number of pages in each issue, then in the number of issues per year, finally in its dimensions. In September 1954, it disappeared altogether. The last two covers were by Virgil Finlay. Both were reprints. (The last original cover was W.H. Silvey's cover of May 1954.) However, the word "unique" returned for one last showing. On the cover of the last issue of the magazine, September 1954, is a blurb: "Unique Fiction."

Weird Tales, the last issue, September 1954, with cover art by Virgil Finlay. This image had originally appeared on the cover of the August issue of 1939. It has the same basic color scheme--orange and black--as the first issue of the magazine, published exactly thirty-one and a half years before, in March 1923.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

J. Allen St. John's Covers for Fate Magazine

I wrote the other day about Weird Tales and Fate magazine. Reader Carrington B. Dixon has reminded us that J. Allen St. John, who created nine cover illustrations for Weird Tales, also created two for Fate:

Fate, July 1950, with cover art by J. Allen St. John illustrating "Darius--Conqueror of Destiny" by Harland Wilson. Note the top title: "Lemuria Did Exist."

Fate, September 1950, again with cover art by St. John illustrating "The Ancient Rites of Pan" by Frank Patton. This could easily have been a cover for Weird Tales, but it was not meant to be a cover illustration at all . . .

According to Darrell C. Richardson (1918-2006) in his book J. Allen St. John: An Illustrated Bibliography (1991), the second piece of art shown above, then or later called "Áve Pan," was painted not for Fate but for the artist's own amusement. St. John told the late Mr. Richardson as much in 1949 when the latter visited the former in his studio. "The editor of Fate Magazine," Mr. Richardson wrote, "visited the studio some weeks later and was intrigued by the scene and bought reproduction rights." (p. 101) St. John's tableau was later reproduced as a poster by Russ Cochran.

So, one more connection between Weird Tales and Fate magazine.

Thank you, Carrington B. Dixon.

Thanks also to S.P., who was willing to part with Darrell C. Richardson's book, which may have come from the library of his late friend, Larry Ivie (1936-2014).

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Buccaneers of Venus on the Cover of Weird Tales

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb) lists three books in the Venus series written by Otis Adelbert Kline. These are under the name of the main character, Grandon:

First is The Planet of Peril, which was published in hardback in 1929 and in a six-part serial in Argosy All-Story Weekly from July 20 to August 24, 1929.

Next is The Prince of Peril, which was published in hardback in 1930 and in a six-part serial in Argosy, from August 2 to September 6, 1930.

The last part of the trilogy was entitled "Buccaneers of Venus" for publication in Weird Tales. It appeared as a six-part serial in that magazine from November 1932 to April 1933. "Buccaneers of Venus" was published in book form as The Port of Peril in 1949.

We should note that the coming of the Great Depression intervened between the publication of the first and second books. That might explain the change in the title of Argosy All-Story Weekly to just Argosy. (And what a great title for a story magazine it is.) The early thirties were the worst years of the Depression. That might explain why Kline's Venus books moved from Argosy to the low-rent pages of Weird Tales between 1930 and 1932.

Anyway, like "Tam, Son of the Tiger" before it, "Buccaneers of Venus" was featured on the cover of four issues of Weird Tales. These were done by J. Allen St. John (1872-1957). Curtis C. Senf (1873-1949) had done the four covers for Kline's "Tam, Son of the Tiger." That was another change during those transition years of the early Depression, for Senf slowly gave way to two new cover artists for Weird Tales, J. Allen St. John and Margaret Brundage (1900-1976). Senf's last cover for the magazine was for the issue of September 1932.

"Buccaneers of Venus" was not only a serial but also the final adventure of a series character. As you can see from the information above, Grandon's previous adventures were in a different magazine.

Here are J. Allen St. John's four covers illustrating the story:

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Art of "The Moon Maid"

"The Moon Maid," the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Moon trilogy, was in Argosy All-Story Weekly as a five-part serial, from May 5 through June 2, 1923. As such, it would have been on the newsstand at about the same time as the first four issues of Weird Tales, March through June 1923. Burroughs' new novel was the cover story for the issue of May 5, 1923. The cover artist was P.J. Monahan (1882-1931):

The Moon Maid of the late-century fan's imagination is astride a centaur-like creature. (See the images below.) What the fan forgets is that the Moon Maid, called Nah-ee-lah, has come from a lunar city on mechanical wings. She is free and takes flight. She takes joy and pleasure in flight.

In 1926, A.C. McClurg & Co. published "The Moon Maid" along with the other two books of the trilogy in an omnibus hardbound edition. J. Allen St. John (1872-1957) was the cover artist:

This appears to be a cleaned-up and possibly slightly altered version of the original. If you look closely, you can see that Nah-ee-lah is a captive of the centaur-creature, one of the Va-gas. She is bound to him by a leather strap and is actually pulling away from him. He is not her servant or protector. Remember that part.

Roy G. Krenkel (1918-1983) executed the cover illustration for the Ace paperback edition of 1963. His drawing follows pretty closely St. John's painting from nearly forty years before, but that's mostly because he was instructed to make it so:

As you can see, the strap is gone--or maybe the blue cord now binds her. Although the Moon Maid is still leaning away from the centaur, she looks like he is serving her rather than holding her captive. She also wears a knife on her hip. That's a nice cover, I think. Krenkel liked it, too.

Krenkel was friends with and often worked with Frank Frazetta (1928-2010). Frazetta followed Krenkel and other artists in creating covers for Ace Books and other paperback publishers. Here is his version of The Moon Maid:

What a difference Frazetta made! Under the Frazetta treatment, Burroughs' worlds of the imagination became more powerful, more violent, more mysterious, more erotic. More than half a century younger than Burroughs, Frank Frazetta was influenced by the art and culture of twentieth-century America from which everything Victorian had been completely wrung out. With Burroughs, nineteenth-century sentimentality, moreover that century's all-too-common stilted prose, prevailed. Truth be told, J. Allen St. John, being a near contemporary of the author, was a better fit than later artists. Frazetta was probably too virile and masculine for Burroughs. You could make a case that the stories he told of John Carter, Tarzan, the Moon Maid, and other Burroughs characters were better than Burroughs' own versions. You might say that Frazetta's fantasy was superior, if only for that instant--that height of action and mystery--captured in his arresting images.

Frazetta may actually have read "The Moon Maid," for he brought back the wingèd figures and the sharp peaks from the story and from the Argosy cover of 1923. There are Moon craters, too, but these are in the wrong place: Burroughs' Moon is actually a hollow world, pierced like a whiffle ball with crater-holes, and its people live inside. They are unaware of the outside. (The setting reminds me of the Star Trek episode "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.") Before I ever read "The Moon Maid," long ago when I was a kid and looking at Frank Frazetta's artwork, I thought that the centaur is protecting the Moon Maid. That impression is apparently a holdover from Krenkel's cover and a demonstration of the evolution of an image of culture. This version of Frazetta's Moon Maid is soft, lush, and romantic, like something from a dream.

Frazetta was famous (or infamous) for altering his original paintings. His Moon Maid got the same treatment:

Here the centaur is fiercer still, and there is still the impression that he is the servant and protector of the Moon Maid. Frank Frazetta's famous fanny fetish is on full display here. Nah-ee-lah is fleshy and voluptuous. But then the centaur is also at an extreme--of power, muscularity, and menace. I always wondered about the seeming flight of her mount in this version. The book explains it, that on the Moon, everybody can leap farther, like John Carter on Mars or the first iteration of Superman on Earth. (Hold onto that comparison. It will come again soon.)

I always like to show British and foreign-language versions of American works. Here are two of The Moon Maid:

This is a British edition, published by Tandem in 1975. Unfortunately, the cover artist is unknown. I like the woman's pale-gray hair and insouciant pose. The background is also interesting.

Here is the cover of a Dutch edition, published in 1973 by Ridderhof. I don't think this is really a scene from "The Moon Maid," although there is a catlike creature and a snakelike creature in the story. The cover artist was Jad (1934-2014).

Finally, the Del Rey/Ballantine edition from 1992:

Here in a cover design by Laurence Schwinger (b. 1941) the Moon Maid returns to her origins on the wings of a bird. (There is a wing in his name and several in his picture.) This is perhaps the most romantic of the illustrations shown here. It may also get to something, a change in emphasis from the Moon Maid as a captive--an object of rescue and one to be looked at by men--to a free woman, a figure larger than and superior to all male figures in this picture. In the previous versions, "The Moon Maid" is pretty clearly a fantasy for men, but here the story might be meant to appeal more to women. Women who read it may be disappointed, but then again, maybe not.

Next: The Art of "The Moon Men" & "The Red Hawk"

Text copyright 2021, 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

Who Was Hasan Vokine?

One of the unsolved mysteries of Weird Tales is the identity of a contributor named Hasan Vokine. Hasan Vokine is supposed to have written three stories for the magazine, two under his own name and one with an author supposedly named Henri Decrouet (or perhaps more properly de Crouet). In all likelihood there were no such people. The names--especially Hasan Vokine--appear to be fake. I have made the supposition that they were pseudonyms for one or more of the staff of Weird Tales or a close friend or associate. Hasan Vokine has an Eastern ring to it. So who among the Weird Tales circle had a special interest in the Orient? If you read Book of the Dead by E. Hoffmann Price (2001), the answer becomes obvious.

In 1927 or so, eighteen-year-old Robert Spencer Carr arrived in Chicago and soon fell in with a group of writers who styled themselves The Varnished Vultures. "There were no dues, no by-laws, no constitution," wrote E. Hoffmann Price. Carr's addition was "No God, no Law, no Order." Price continued: "We were gourmets, and mighty drinkers before the Lord, except for [Farnsworth] Wright, who was on a diet, and, abstemious by nature." (p. 175) Each member of the group had his own gastronomic specialty. Price's was "a capon stuffed with wild rice, pistachios, and Greek currants." A basting of sherry gave the bird a "high lustre--hence varnished"--and hence the name The Varnished Vultures. (p. 176) Each man also had a nickname. Farnsworth Wright was called Pious Plato. Hugh Rankin, the illustrator, was Sidi. Robert Spencer Carr earned the moniker Spiderbite for his third story in Weird Tales. Price himself was Malik Tawus. Also in the group were Otis Adelbert Kline and Bill Sprenger, the business manager of "The Unique Magazine." Meetings were in E. Hoffmann Price's apartment, done up in Eastern decor.

E. Hoffmann Price first met Otis Adelbert Kline in mid-summer 1926 in the Chicago offices of Weird Tales. Price, along with Farnsworth Wright and Bill Sprenger, had dinner that evening at Kline's home.

We followed Otis to the second floor [wrote Price] where, overlooking Castello Avenue, was the first writer's workshop I'd ever seen.

Book shelves lined two walls, floor to ceiling. Titles caught and held my eye: Burton's Pilgrimmage to Mekka and Madina [sic], Burton's translation of Thousand Nights and One Night. . . . Then something familiar: Thatcher's Arabic Grammar . . . . (p. 28)

A lifelong discussion--in person and by mail--began that evening between Price and Kline. The subjects: "Moslem customs--Islamic culture--the Arabic language--the art and science of the sword." (p. 29) In their shared fascination with the Orient (in the old sense of the word, meaning everything from Morocco to Japan), the two men collaborated on three stories for Weird Tales, first of which was "Thirsty Blades" (Feb. 1930), and one for Oriental Stories, "The Dragoman's Jest" (Winter 1932). They also frequented a Chicago restaurant that Price described as:

the social center of the city's colony of Syrians, Egyptians, Indians, and Arabs from el Yemen. There were Turks, Persians, and some from el Moghreb el Aksa, "the uttermost West". . . . Otis greeted each acquaintance in Arabic, and exchanged amenities in that language. (p. 34)

Price noted, however, that Kline did not know Arabic well enough to converse with the other patrons in their native tongue.

I don't know Arabic either. I'll rely on the Internet for my information, faulty or not. Hasan is an Arabic name. It means handsome. According to Google Translate, vokine is the Arabic word for be or exist. Simply translated, Hasan Vokine might mean be handsome. I can't say. Like I said, I don't know Arabic. If you add an s, Hasan becomes Hassan, meaning beautifier or improver. Hassan's was also the name of the restaurant where Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffmann Price drank coffee and "smoked a narghileh loaded with 'Ajami tobacco'" (p. 34) with their friends and acquaintances from the then-mysterious East.

So is that proof that Kline or Price or both were Hasan Vokine? Obviously not. But I think the case is strong and the explanation satisfactory.

Oriental Stories, Winter 1932, with a cover story, "The Dragoman's Jest," by Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffman Price. The cover artist was J. Allen St. John. The authors liked swords so St. John painted swords.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Red Robes and Cultists

In writing about a monster for our times, I left out the cultist. Cultists were everywhere in the pulps of the 1920s and '30s. I count a baker's dozen covers of Weird Tales showing cultists, satanists, or men in red robes or cloaks, plus one from the Canadian edition of the magazine. I'm not sure why red robes and cultists were so popular in those days. There were plenty of cults and cult-like religions floating around to be sure. "I AM" Activity, Thelema, and Theosophy are three small examples. There were larger cults as well, the dangerous and deadly cults of Fascism, Nazism, and Communism. A guy in a red robe is pretty safe by comparison. The point is that a cult is a totalitarian system. The head of the cult falls into the category of the real-life monster. Science fiction birthed one of the worst of them. His scary followers are still with us, decades after the end of the pulp-fiction era.

Weird Tales, July 1928. Cover story: "The Witches' Sabbath" by Stephen Brody. Cover art by C.C. Senf. The artist Senf was always good with women, costume, and the trappings of Gothic horror and fantasy. He was after all European by birth and training. His was the first of the red-robed cultist covers for Weird Tales.

Weird Tales, May 1929. Cover story: "The Scourge of B'Moth" by Bertram Russell. Cover art by C.C. Senf. Here the cultist is Oriental but the woman is still a redhead. Those aren't wrinkles on the cover: it's the crocodile's breath.

Weird Tales, Feb. 1932. Cover story: "The Devil's Bride" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by C.C. Senf. More red robes, more menace, but the woman now has dark hair. She looks a little like Joan Crawford.

Weird Tales, Dec. 1933. Cover story: None. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. 

Weird Tales, Jan. 1934. Cover story: "The Red Knife of Hassan" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. With Brundage you get blondes.

Weird Tales, Feb. 1935. Cover story: "The Web of Living Death" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Here the hair colors come in Neapolitan flavors: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. I'm not sure if these guys are cultists, but they're definitely up to no good. The one on the left has a cat-o'-nine-tails, the torture weapon of choice in the pulps.

Weird Tales, Aug. 1935. Cover story: "Doctor Satan" by Paul Ernst. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. This was the first Doctor Satan story in Weird Tales. I believe the character caused some controversy. Some readers liked him, some thought he made the magazine too much like other pulps with their weird heroes. Dr. Satan must have sold books because he kept coming back.

Weird Tales, Mar. 1936. Cover story: "The Albino Deaths" by Ronal Kayser. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. This was the era of weird menace. Note the blurb on the cover: "weird tortures in a ghastly abode of horrors." That's a pretty tall pile of clichés. The cover has all the required elements, too: a beautiful, shapely, and scantily clad woman, a weird menace villain in a red robe, and a cat-o'-nine-tails.

Weird Tales, May 1936. Cover story: "The Devil's Double" by Paul Ernst. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Doctor Satan returns.

Weird Tales, Oct. 1936. Cover story: "Isle of the Undead" by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach. Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

Weird Tales, January 1937. Cover story: "Children of the Bat" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

Weird Tales, Apr. 1938. Cover story: "The Garden of Adompha" by Clark Ashton Smith. Cover art by Virgil Finlay. There's always a tendril of hair or vine or smoke covering up parts of a woman's body. Virgil Finlay relied pretty heavily on that device, as in this cover illustration. I'm not sure that the man is a cultist, but he's dressed for the part.

Weird Tales Canadian edition, March 1944. Cover story: "The Valley of the Assassins" by Edmond Hamilton. The cover artist is unknown.

Weird Tales, Jan. 1952 Cover story: "The Black Island" by August Derleth. Cover art by Jon Arfstrom. Fourteen years passed before the next and last red robe (if I have done my research correctly). The artist, Jon Arfstrom, may be the only living cover artist from the original run of Weird Tales.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales Cover Artists

(Plus: Who Created the Most Covers for Weird Tales?)

I have been writing about Weird Tales covers and cover artists. It might help to look at the big picture:

Weird Tales ran for 279 issues, from March 1923 to September 1954. If I count correctly, there were thirty-seven cover artists in all. Their rank by the number of covers each created (some covers were reprints):

1. Margaret Brundage--67 covers

2. Curtis C. Senf--45 covers

3. Virgil Finlay--20 covers

4. Andrew Brosnatch--15 covers (tie)

4. Hugh Rankin--15 covers (tie)

5. Matt Fox--11 covers

6. A.R. Tilburne--10 covers (tie)

6. Lee Brown Coye--10 covers (tie)

6. R.M. Mally--10 covers (tie) (includes one cover misattributed to Washburn)

7. J. Allen St. John--9 covers

8. Hannes Bok--7 covers

9. C. Barker Petrie, Jr.--6 covers

10. Harold S. De Lay--5 covers (tie)

10. Boris Dolgov--5 covers (tie)

10. E.M. Stevenson--5 covers (tie)

11. Six tied with three covers each: Jon Arfstrom, Frank Kelly Freas, John Giunta, Peter Kuhlhoff, Ray Quigley, and W.H. Silvey

12. Six tied with two covers each: Joseph Doolin, Joseph R. Eberle, William F. Heitman, Charles A. Kennedy, Bill Wayne, Edgar Franklin Wittmack

13. Ten tied with one cover each: Richard Bennett, Andrew Bensen, Ronald Clyne, Anthony Di Giannurio, Richard R. Epperly, Gretta (Joseph C. Gretter), Michael Labonski, T. Wyatt Nelson, Evan Singer, Washburn

(If you hover over the names with your cursor, you will find links to the artists about whom I have written elsewhere on this blog.)

I have divided Weird Tales into several periods based on changes in the staff or ownership of the magazine and on trends in the artists who created the covers. These divisions are not written in stone.

Mar. 1923-May/June/July 1924

13 Issues

Richard R. Epperly (1 cover)

William F. Heitman (2 covers)

R.M. Mally (10 covers)

Washburn (1 cover)

Weird Tales began in March 1923 with Richard R. Epperly's one and only cover for the magazine. Only four three artists created covers during the magazine's first year under editor Edwin M. Baird. R.M. Mally did the majority of those. None of these artists returned after Farnsworth Wright took over as editor in November 1924.

Nov. 1924-Feb. 1927

28 Issues

Andrew Benson (1 cover)

Andrew Brosnatch (15 covers)

Joseph Doolin (2 covers)

C. Barker Petrie, Jr. (5 covers)

E.M. Stevenson (5 covers)

After a gap of four months, Weird Tales returned in November 1924. Five new artists combined to create the next twenty-eight covers. Andrew Brosnatch was responsible for more than half of those, including thirteen in a row between November 1924 and November 1925. After February 1927, only C. Barker Petrie, Jr., returned, and then only for one cover.

Mar. 1927-Aug. 1932

63 Issues

T. Wyatt Nelson (1 cover)

C. Barker Petrie, Jr. (1 cover)

Hugh Rankin (15 covers)

J. Allen St. John (1 cover)

Curtis C. Senf (45 covers)

From March 1927 to August 1932, two artists--Curtis C. Senf and Hugh Rankin--created sixty out of sixty-three covers for Weird Tales. Senf's forty-five designs land him in second place (after Margaret Brundage) for the most covers for Weird Tales. J. Allen St. John made his debut in June 1932. Out of the five artists for this period, only he returned after August 1932.

Sept. 1932-Oct. 1938

73 Issues

Margaret Brundage (58 covers)

Virgil Finlay (7 covers)

J. Allen St. John (8 covers)

The 1930s were dominated by three artists, Margaret Brundage, J. Allen St. John, and Virgil Finlay. Margaret Brundage's first cover was in September 1932. For the next six years, she was responsible for fifty-eight covers or almost four-fifths of the total for this period. That includes an astonishing run of thirty-nine issues in a row, from June 1933 to August/September 1936. J. Allen St. John dropped out of the picture after this. Margaret Brundage and Virgil Finlay returned.

Nov. 1938-Jan. 1945

44 Issues

Richard Bennett (1 cover)

Hannes Bok (7 covers)

Margaret Brundage (8 covers)

Harold S. De Lay (4 covers)

Virgil Finlay (9 covers)

Matt Fox (1 cover)

John Giunta (1 cover)

Gretta (Joseph C. Gretter) (1 cover)

Ray Quigley (3 covers)

A.R. Tilburne (7 covers)

Edgar Franklin Wittmack (2 covers)

Weird Tales changed hands in November 1938, and although Farnsworth Wright continued as editor, the magazine was published out of New York City instead of Chicago. A.R. Tilburne, a cover illustrator for Short Stories (the new owner of the magazine), created the first cover of Weird Tales under new ownership. Margaret Brundage and Virgil Finlay returned during this period. The other nine artists were new to Weird Tales. Hannes Bok, a fan turned pro, was a major discovery. Richard Bennett, Matt Fox, and John Giunta were fairly new to illustration. Harold S. De Lay, Gretta, Ray Quigley, and Edgar Franklin Wittmack were by then veterans. Only Finlay, Fox, Giunta, and Tilburne returned after January 1945.

Mar. 1945-July 1950

33 Issues

Lee Brown Coye (8 covers)

Ronald Clyne (1 cover)

Boris Dolgov (5 covers)

Matt Fox (10 covers)

John Giunta (2 covers)

Peter Kuhlhoff (3 covers)

Michael Labonski (1 cover)

A.R. Tilburne (3 covers)

The next five years were dominated by three new artists, Lee Brown Coye, Boris Dolgov, and Matt Fox. Each had a style that helped Weird Tales maintain its reputation as "The Unique Magazine." Of the artists listed here, only Coye would return after July 1950.

Sept. 1950-Sept 1954

25 Issues

Jon Arfstrom (3 covers)

Margaret Brundage (1 cover--reprint)

Lee Brown Coye (2 covers)

Harold S. De Lay (1 cover--reprint)

Anthony Di Giannurio (1 cover)

Joseph R. Eberle (2 covers)

Virgil Finlay (4 covers, one of which was a reprint)

Frank Kelly Freas (3 covers)

Charles A. Kennedy (2 covers)

W.H. Silvey (3 covers)

Evan Singer (1 cover)

Bill Wayne (2 covers)

The covers after July 1950 were spread pretty evenly among a dozen artists. For the first time, Weird Tales used reprints on its covers. One of those reprints--the last cover of the magazine--was by Virgil Finlay. Finlay also created three original covers, making him the only artist with an original cover in each of three different decades. Frank Kelly Freas was a major discovery during this period. Sadly, after thirty-one years, Weird Tales gave up the ghost in September 1954.

Corrected on July 28, 2024.

Copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley