Julian Kilman (1878-1954)-The First Canadian Author

Pseudonym of Leroy Noble Kilman
Attorney, Government Worker, Author, Lecturer/Public Speaker, Lepidopterist, Angler
Born March 26, 1878, Drummondville, Ontario, Canada
Died April 3, 1954, at home, Gulfport, Florida

Julian Kilman was the pen name of Leroy Noble Kilman and the author of dozens of stories published in magazines from 1913 to 1934, plus nonfiction articles that appeared in newspapers and magazines even after he retired. Born in Drummondville, Ontario, Canada, on March 26, 1878, he was descended from United Empire Loyalists who fled the United States when it was still a young country. His parents were Alva Hamilton Kilman, a schoolteacher, and Ida M. (Noble) Kilman. As a boy, Kilman collected insects with his father. He would return to that hobby after retiring to Florida in the 1940s.

Kilman came to the United States in 1898 and was naturalized in 1904. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1905 with a law degree and went to work for the U.S. Department of Justice as an assistant district attorney. In 1914, he transferred to the Department of Labor, eventually to become district director of naturalization for western New York State and part of Pennsylvania. He was based in Buffalo, New York. Kilman retired either in 1933 or 1935. In 1910, he married Cecile Gauntlett, a teacher of Latin, in her native state of Michigan. They enjoyed many long years together. Their son was named Julian N. Kilman.

Kilman's earliest story in The FictionMags Index is "Dan Alders' Revenge," published in Short Stories in September 1913. His writing career picked up again in April 1920, when his story "The Peculiar Affair at the Axminster" appeared in The Black Mask. He had half a dozen stories in that title, all under his pen name Julian Kilman. Still more stories by Kilman appeared in The American Boy, The Atlantic Monthly, Brief Stories, Complete Story Magazine, The Double Dealer (published in New Orleans), Echo, People's Story Magazine, The Smart Set, 10 Story Book, and other titles. His last listed in The FictionMags Index is "The Trap" in Top-Notch, March 1934.

Julian Kilman had five stories in all in Weird Tales, all in its first year in print. In fact, Kilman was one of only two authors with stories in each of the first four issues of the magazine. The other was New Englander Hamilton Craigie. He also had a story in Detective Tales, "For Empire," in October 1923. Kilman admired O. Henry, Rudyard Kipling, Anton Chekhov, and Joseph Conrad. In the 1920s, at around the time Weird Tales made its debut, he was a member of a writer's group in Buffalo called "Scriptories."

Kilman seems to have retired from writing short stories at around the same time that he retired from his regular job. As he explained to a Florida newspaper in 1953:

"The average short story writer has about 10 years of production and then finds he's written himself out. With times changing, new writers come up fast. They have new experiences and have plenty to write about. The older writer must then turn to longer stories or novels or quit. I chose the last."

Even after retiring to Florida, he continued writing nonfiction articles for sports magazines, all or mostly about fishing. He also amassed a collection of butterflies and traded specimens with collectors from all over the world.

Leroy N. Kilman died on April 3, 1954, at home, in Gulfport, Florida. He was survived by his wife and children. He was seventy-six years old.

Julian Kilman's Stories in Weird Tales and Detective Tales

Weird Tales

• "The Mystery of Black Jean" (Mar. 1923)
• "The Affair of the Man in Scarlet" (Apr. 1923)
• "The Golden Caverns" (May 1923)
• "The Well" (June 1923)
• "The Black Patch" (Sept. 1923)

Detective Tales

• "For Empire" (Oct. 1923)

Further Reading

• "Demand for Mystery Plots Never Lags, Asserts Kilman" in the Buffalo News, April 5, 1923, page 38, coincident with the publication of the second issue of Weird Tales, in which he had a story.
• "Boyhood Hobby Provides Pleasure for Ex-Lawyer" by George Bartlett in the St. Petersburg Times, June 21, 1953, page 4F.
• Julian Kilman is also in a blog called Lesser-Known Writers, conducted by Douglas A. Anderson. The date was March 30, 2012. For those who aren't familiar with it, Mr. Anderson began writing his blog in June 2011, about seven weeks after I began mine. His is similar in format to mine, but whereas I have focused on writers and artists who have contributed to Weird Tales, Douglas Anderson has looked at a wider range of authors.

Julian Kilman's Story:

"The Mystery of Black Jean" is a funny and ironic mystery story that reads like a folklore account. It is told in the first person by a witness to the events of the story. The witness was a boy when it all happened. He's now a man, and he addresses his story to unnamed listeners--and to us, the readers. "The Mystery of Black Jean" is set in Canada. The man Jean of the title is a big French Canadian with two pet bears that he sometimes wrestles, sometimes makes work for him, and sometimes treats with great cruelty. Black Jean also has two women in his life, and thereby hangs a tale. I won't go into the specifics of Kilman's story. You should read it yourself. It won't take long. I have to say, though, that his is the most natural of the four I have covered so far and perhaps the most enjoyable, mostly for its very human angle and its human interest.

Leroy Kilman, aka Julian Kilman, with his wife Cecile and part of his butterfly collection, from "Boyhood Hobby Provides Pleasure for Ex-Lawyer" by George Bartlett in the St. Petersburg Times, June 21, 1953, page 4F. Photo by Johnnie Evans.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Shadow Over Aquaman

I'm back again after the holidays and eighteen sleep-deprived days at home. Two days into the new year we saw Aquaman at a mostly deserted movie theater. That's what happens in the middle of a holiday week in small-town Indiana. We stayed for the last of the credits and when we walked out of the theater into the darkened hallways of the multiplex we saw only the manager, who was sweeping up.

Like I said, I was sleep-deprived. I have to admit that I almost dozed off three times during Aquaman. But even if I hadn't already been sleepy, I might have felt the same way, for Aquaman is too long and, for at least an hour, too slow-moving to hold a person's interest very well. The players are Jason Momoa as Aquabro, Willem Dafoe as Mr. Miyagi, and Nicole Kidman as the Aquamom. They are supported by Dolph Lundgren as a guy whose pink hair flows and swirls like he's in a VO5 commercial and Randall Park as Conspiracy Brother, among others. Every one of them also takes a turn playing the role of Basil Exposition, and every five or ten minutes during the movie someone stops the proceedings to tell you a little story about something you don't really care about or understand. I actually groaned at one point because of it. This is no way to tell a story. In fact, one of the first things you learn in storytelling is to show it, not tell it. Even my thirteen-year-old nephew said that the movie is "cringy" in places. It's not a good sign when a kid calls your superhero movie "cringy," but that's a good word to describe the dialogue in Aquaman, which includes a little gem in which someone or other says that he plans to become "the Ocean Master." If he were in Machu Picchu or San Francisco or some similar place, I suppose he would want to become the Stair Master.

Near the beginning of Aquaman there is a little still life shown in the interior of the lighthouse keeper's home. One of the elements in this tableau is a paperback version of The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft. I'm not the first to comment on the Lovecraftian elements in Aquaman. Others have already gone there, including more than a few who just have to tell you again that Lovecraft was a horrible racist. And did we mention that Lovecraft was a horrible racist? There can be no doubt that H.P. Lovecraft wrote again and again about race and the mixing of races, as well as about the degeneration, decay, and dissolution of individual human beings and their familial or tribal lines. There is just that in "The Dunwich Horror," a tale of a kind of demigod named Wilbur Whateley, first published in Weird Tales in April 1929. The same theme appears again in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," published posthumously in the same magazine in April 1942. It seems to me, though, that Lovecraft could have been writing about himself when he told tales about mixing and degeneration or decay, for his father was a common traveling salesman and eventual syphilitic while his mother was the daughter of a prominent and well-established New England family. (Even she ended up in the bughouse.) I sense that the author himself felt the creeping of tainted blood in his semi-blue veins as he lived out his life in a decaying home among decaying fortunes. In any case, Aquaman is also a tale of the mixing of races. The results here are positive, though, in that the title character is not degenerate but emergent. However, there is a degenerate race of men in Aquaman, and I couldn't help but see them as the Deep Ones from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." Finally there is a deep-sea leviathan like Cthulhu, befriended by Aquabro and voiced by Julie Andrews of all people. Mary Poppins returns indeed.

I haven't yet seen a DC movie as good as the least good of the Marvel Studios movies, but then I haven't seen them all yet, from either studio. I can say, though, that the DC movies lack a kind of warmth and humanity that prevails more or less in the Marvel movies. They're also slow, talky, and lacking in humor. (1) I'm not sure why that is. Marvel doesn't have a lock on good screenwriters and directors. DC ought to be able to come up with something comparable. But they don't. As I have said before, DC ought to hire Marvel Studios to make their movies for them. Anyway, we saw previews for M. Night Shyamalan's new movie Glass on Wednesday night last week. If you have to see a new superhero movie this month, see that one instead of Aquaman. You can also look forward to Captain Marvel in March and Avengers: Endgame in April. Both are from Marvel Studios. Sorry, DC.

Note
(1) The DC movies also miss out on the essence of the original comic book characters. For example, in Superman Returns, from 2006, Superman becomes Superstalker, a brooding creep who spies on Lois Lane as only a super-powered guy from Krypton can. In that and other Superman movies, the original and essential love triangle of Clark Kent-Lois Lane-Superman is banished to the Phantom Zone and Superman is made to be in love with Lois Lane. That's not how it works, people, and if you knew better, maybe moviegoers would like your product. Beyond that--and speaking of racism and racial stereotypes--the makers of DC movies are guilty of what I think is a pretty egregious perpetuation of a stereotype of Jewish men as cowards, weaklings, and nebbishes in the character of the Flash, from Justice League (2017). If they had had a black Flash like Stepin Fetchit or an Asian Flash like Long Duk Dong, viewers and critics would have howled, and rightly so. But this is the twenty-first century and one of the few permissible stereotypes left is one or more of the Jewish people. I guess that's to be expected when one of our major political parties is so outwardly and unabashedly antisemitic. And it ain't the Republicans.

H.P. Lovecraft had only one cover story in Weird Tales but in order to get it he had to go to Canada and then only after he had died. The story was "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and it appeared in the May 1942 issue of the Canadian edition of the magazine. The artist was cartoonist and illustrator Edmond Good.

Text and caption copyright 2019, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weasels on the Cover of Weird Tales

Okay, so this a weird category, but I wanted to get at something and so here we are. There are two weasel covers for Weird Tales. They're actually ermine covers, but with weasel and weird, you get some alliteration and a snappier title. Anyway, here they are, both for the same story, "John Cawder's Wife" by P. Schuyler Miller.

Weird Tales, May 1943. Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

Weird Tales Canadian edition, September 1943. Cover art by an unknown artist.

This is what I wanted to get at: When I looked at this cover today, an image leapt into my mind, that of Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda in that famous, minutes-long, unbroken scene in the shipboard stateroom in The Lady Eve (1941). The woman in this picture looks like Barbara Stanwyck and the man looks like Henry Fonda, and they seem to be in the same arrangement, more or less, as in that scene . . . except that they aren't. I misremembered the scene, and so what I had thought was a discovery--that the unknown artist here worked from a movie still from The Lady Eve--actually isn't. Anyway, Margaret Brundage's cover design has its merits, chiefly its fine psychological portrait of a woman. The Canadian version, on the other hand, has a distinctly 1940s glamour and gloss. (It's what made me think of a Hollywood movie.) To me it's gorgeous, a portrait of hair as much as anything. (I have always wondered what the top of those 1940s women's hairdos looked like . . . )

As a bonus, here is Leonardo da Vinci's version of the lady with an ermine, from 1490, executed for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milano, and now pretty well acknowledged as a portrait of his mistress, Cecilia Gallerani. I have never seen this painting, the real thing that is, but I have visited il castello Sforzesco in Milano more than once. It is one of my favorite places in that city of excitement and wonder.

Text and captions copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Winged Creatures on the Cover of Weird Tales

I have written before about monsters, aliens, bats, devils, and demons. We have already seen most of these covers. The exceptions are the second and third shown here. The second is of two winged people, the third of what looks like a god or idol and one that I should add to my listing in that category. All others shown here are of monsters or aliens, a couple of which appear to be benevolent or helpful.

Weird Tales, January 1927. Cover story: "Drome" by John Martin Leahy. Cover art by C. Barker Petrie, Jr. This is one of my favorite Weird Tales covers, for its poster-like simplicity, the great flying-monkey kind of monster, and the pose and costume of the female figure. This story can be added to a polar fiction database of "The Unique Magazine."

Weird Tales, November 1927. Cover story: "The Invading Horde" by Arthur J. Banks. Cover art by C.C. Senf. This is an odd image, I think. With their helmets, goggles, and dress, the two figures here look like aviators except that they seem to have flown in by their own power. Notice the wings on their backs. The setting is almost surrealistic, and if there is any threat, it is offstage. Putting aviators on the cover of your magazine makes sense if you remember that Charles Lindbergh made his famous transatlantic flight in May 1927, half a year before this issue of Weird Tales was published. I don't know the story, but it seems likely to me that it and this illustration were designed to capitalize on the popularity of Charles Lindbergh or the general popularity of aviation in the 1920s. 

Edward Hopper's "Rooms by the Sea," from 1951. In a moment, Senf's two winged figures will fly through the doorway and alight in this sunny room.

Weird Tales, September 1932. Cover story: "The Altar of Melek Taos" by G.G. Pendarves. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. The winged creature here looks like a god or idol of an eastern persuasion, fitting for the Orientalist 1930s.

Weird Tales, May 1934. Cover story: "Queen of the Black Coast" by Robert E. Howard. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. This is a simple and somewhat awkward composition. One of the things that stands out for me is that the man--Conan--is in an inferior position and the woman intervenes between him and the winged creature that threatens him. That seems to be a recurring theme in Margaret Brundage's art. You might imagine that she was one of her dainty little women. In fact she was tall, strong, and tough.

Weird Tales, March 1940. Cover story: None. Cover art by Hannes Bok. Here the winged creature is in the background and not obviously the focus of the picture. 

Weird Tales, May 1940. Cover story: "The City from the Sea" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by Hannes Bok.

The figure on the far left of Bok's painting makes me think of a figure in the same position in this work by Frank Frazetta. That doesn't look like a swipe to me. Instead it looks like two artists separated by time and space but solving the same kind of problem in the same way.

Weird Tales, September 1940. Cover story: "Seven Seconds of Eternity" by Robert H. Leitfred. Cover art by Ray Quigley.

Weird Tales, July 1942. Cover story: "Coven" by Manly Wade Wellman. Cover art by Margaret Brundage, a different kind of work by the artist, characteristic of her covers from the 1940s.

Weird Tales Canada, November 1942. Cover story: "Coven" by Manly Wade Wellman. Cover art by an unknown artist. This is one of at least three Canadian issues with the same cover story and subject as their American counterparts.

Weird Tales, March 1944. Cover story: "The Trail of Cthulhu" by August Derleth. Cover art by John Giunta.

Weird Tales Canada, July 1944. Cover story: "The Trail of Cthulhu" by August Derleth. Cover art by an unknown artist. Each of these two images has its merits. Although the Canadian artist here had a greater talent for verisimilitude, Giunta's painting is filled with the spirit of adventure and has a childlike sense of the fantastic.

I have written before that both images remind me of this painting by Frank Frazetta. Again, this isn't a swipe. However, it seems likely to me that Frazetta knew of Giunta's original work, for Giunta was his mentor when Frazetta broke into comic books in the mid 1940s. 

Weird Tales, May 1945. Cover story: "The Shining Land" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by Peter Kuhlhoff.

Weird Tales, July 1948. Cover story: None. Cover art by Matt Fox.

Weird Tales, November 1948. Cover story: None. Cover art by John Giunta.

Weird Tales, March 1949. Cover story: None. Cover art by Matt Fox.

Weird Tales, Winter 1985. Cover story: None. Cover art by Ro H. Kim. This must be the most bizarre of all the winged creatures shown here.

Text and captions copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Medusa on the Cover of Weird Tales

Before there was weird fiction, there were myths. You might call them the weird fiction of the ancient world, and in that, you might say that all of literature began with what we now call fantasy or genre fiction. So before the Christian era, its monstrous undead, and its various forces of evil, there were mythological monsters, including Medusa, a creature so frightening and horrifying that to look upon her face was to be turned to stone. Weird Tales treated Medusa on three covers from three different places and two different eras. Fifty years separated the first from the last.

Weird Tales, May 1923. Cover story: "The Moon Terror" by A.G. Birch. Cover art by William F. Heitman. This was the third issue of Weird Tales and had the first of Heitman's two cover drawings. This is by far the better of the two. 

Weird Tales Canada, March 1943. Cover story and cover artist unknown. Pretty and deadly.

Weird Tales, Summer 1973. Cover story: None. Cover art by Virgil Finlay. Somewhere I read--I can't find the source now--that this image was not created for Weird Tales. It arrived on the cover of the magazine by way of a visit by Sam Moskowitz to the artist's home. Moskowitz took a picture of it (note the reflection on the painted surface) and reformatted it (note the purple band across the top) for the first of his four fiftieth-anniversary issues of 1973-1974.

Text and captions copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Snakes on the Cover of Weird Tales

If we were innocent in Eden, then the serpent was the first evil thing we ever saw. A fear and loathing of snakes is natural, especially in the cradles of civilization where very deadly snakes yet live. There are still people who fear--and will kill--every snake they see. Weird Tales and its writers and artists would only have exploited those feelings. I count nine covers of "The Unique Magazine" showing snakes very prominently. There are others in which snakes are bit players. I have shown all but one of these nine images before. The newcomer is for the August 1930 issue, which would also fit into a category of covers with Mesoamerican themes.

Weird Tales, December 1925. Cover story: "The Tenants of Broussac" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Joseph Doolin. Also in the category man, woman, and animal.

Weird Tales, March 1930. Cover story: "Drums of Damballah" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Curtis C. Senf. Also in the category man, woman, and animal.

Weird Tales, August 1930. Cover story: "The Curse of Ximu-tal" by Harry Noyes Pratt. Cover art by Hugh Rankin. The only new image in this category and one of few Weird Tales covers without a human being.

Weird Tales, December 1932. Cover story: "Buccaneers of Venus" by Otis Adelbert Kline. Cover art by J. Allen St. John. Also in the category man, woman, and monster.

Weird Tales, August 1934. Cover story: "The Devil in Iron" by Robert E. Howard. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Also in the category man, woman, and animal.

Weird Tales, November 1935. Cover story: "Shadows in Zamboula" by Robert E. Howard. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Also in the category woman and animal.

Weird Tales, February 1936. Cover story: "Coils of the Silver Serpent" by Forbes Parkhill. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Also in the category man, woman, and animal.

Weird Tales, May 1940. Cover story: None, according to Jaffery and Cook. Cover art by Hannes Bok. Also in the category man, woman, and monster.

Weird Tales, January 1945, Canadian edition. Cover story: "The Shadow Folk" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by an unknown artist. Also in the category man, woman, and monster.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Woman and Wolf

The category of woman and wolf would fit inside the category of woman and animal except that there are enough covers of the former to separate them from the latter. I think that fact alone is significant. Of the ten covers shown here, seven show the woman and the wolf as friends or companions. I would also call that significant, but I don't know in what way it is significant. Of the remaining three covers, two are of the wolf attacking or stalking the woman; the third shows the wolf as a woman. The identification of woman as wolf would seem to me merely an extension of the idea that the wolf and the woman are friends or companions. In other words, somebody--whether it's the author of weird fiction, or humanity in general--seems to be saying that the woman has some basic affinity with wolves. She runs with their pack or they run with hers. I'm still trying to puzzle it all out, and I welcome comments.

Weird Tales, April 1926. Cover story: "Wolfshead" by Robert E. Howard. Cover art by E.M. Stevenson. This cover would more properly go in the category of man and woman (or woman and monster), but because of the wolf theme, I have included it here. The male figure is apparently a human being, but the shadow of the wolf behind him suggests that he is more monster than man, perhaps a werewolf. Of all the covers in the category of woman and wolf, only this one shows the wolf attacking the woman.

Weird Tales, September 1927. Cover story: "The Wolf Woman" by Bassett Morgan. Cover art by Curtis C. Senf. Likewise, this cover fits into the category of man, woman, and animal, but because of the theme, I have included it here. Morgan's story and Senf's cover set the pattern for woman/wolf covers to follow: almost every one of them shows the two as being friends. Women have an affinity for animals, but why the wolf in Weird Tales?

Weird Tales, December 1930. Cover story: "The Wolf of St. Bonnot" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Hugh Rankin. Another cover that is not well represented on the Internet. Margaret Brundage's first woman-and-wolf cover (third illustration following) and the second Canadian woman-and-wolf cover (the last illustration below) are not very different from this one.

Weird Tales, June 1932. Cover story: "The Devil's Pool" by Greye La Spina. Cover art by J. Allen St. John. Here the woman isn't just friends with the wolf--she is the wolf. That may get to the question: Is the woman somehow identified with the wolf, either in her own mind or in the minds of men? What does a wolf represent? A kind of wildness I guess, but is that all? If not, what else?

Magazine of Horror, November 1965 (No. 11). Here is Carl Kidwell's version of the same scene from "The Devil's Pool." Kidwell drew one illustration for Weird Tales in 1952. More than a decade later, Robert A.W. Lowndes began a successful term as editor of Magazine of Horror, a digest that might have captured the spirit of Weird Tales better than any of its successors.

Weird Tales, March 1933. Cover story: "The Thing in the Fog" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Once again, a woman who runs with wolves.

Weird Tales, October 1935. Cover story: "The Six Sleepers" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

Weird Tales, August 1938. Cover story: "The Wolf-Girl of Josselin" by Arlton Eadie. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Note that a female artist drew three of the five American covers in which the woman and wolf are friends. Significant? Maybe.

Weird Tales, September 1942. Cover story (?): "Never the Twain" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by A.R. Tilburne. This cover doesn't quite fit the category. After all, there is a man in the picture. I have included it here because of the wolf theme. Again, out of ten covers, only two show the wolf as an enemy of the woman.

Weird Tales, January 1943, Canadian edition. Cover story (?): "Satan's Bondage" by Manly Bannister. Cover art by an unknown artist. It seems to me that the Canadian edition of Weird Tales has been pretty well ignored by fans and researchers. I base that on a lack of information on the Internet. I would like to correct that oversight with a future series of postings. If anyone has special knowledge of the Canadian edition, I would sure like to hear from you. 

Weird Tales, May 1945, Canadian edition. Cover story (?): "Bon Voyage, Michele" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by an unknown artist. This cover is both a woman-and-wolf cover and a ghost cover. The wolves may actually be huskies, but the theme is the same. 

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Man and Monster

The relationships among man, woman, and monster are complicated. Those between woman and monster are perhaps less so. In comparison, the man and the monster have a simple relationship: they are contestants in a primeval struggle. The first and last images here are of monsters that are probably or definitely female. Note that the authors are also female. Both show attacks upon mostly defenseless men. (Note also that none of the images shown here was by Margaret Brundage, the only female cover artist for Weird Tales. That may or may not be significant.) All other covers that follow show men relating to monsters as they relate to animals or to other men: as predator to prey, as rival to rival, or as master to servant. Only one--the Virgil Finlay cover--shows a man as a kind of explorer and monsters as more marvelous than dangerous.

Weird Tales, April 1923. Cover story: "The Whispering Thing" by Laurie McClintock and Culpeper Chunn. Cover art by R.M. Mally. Too many weird tales have the word thing in their titles. Here's one of the first to appear in Weird Tales magazine, from the second issue. The eyes in this picture look upon the protagonist as in the previous category of woman and monster. This time however, the eyes are not just looking. They are also attacking. Their appearance is feminine.

Weird Tales, April 1925. Cover story: "When the Green Star Waned" by Nictzin Dyalhis. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. This was Nictzin Dyalhis' first story for Weird Tales and one of the most popular in the period 1925 to 1940. It also helped introduce science fantasy to the magazine. Here the struggle is over. Men have lost. Monsters from the moon have enslaved them. Only men of another kind from the planet Venus can save them. 

Weird Tales, June 1925. Cover story: "Monsters of the Pit" by Paul S. Powers. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. In movies of the 1950s, men fought giant everything: ants, praying mantises, tarantulas, gila monsters. Most of the time it had something to do with radioactivity. But the struggle against giants is as old as time. In the Bible, they were Nephilim. Before that they were wooly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and giant sloths. Here is just another variation on that same theme: the fight with the giant spider. Bilbo Baggins is engaged in that activity this winter at the movies. Nearly six decades ago, Grant Williams did it in . . .

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).

Weird Tales, July 1925. Cover story: "The Werewolf of Ponkert" by H. Warner Munn. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. Man against wolf is another old story. If you didn't know the title of the story, you wouldn't know these are monsters, werewolves in fact. I'll soon write about the woman and the wolf. You'll see a powerful difference between those covers and this one.

Weird Tales, Feb. 1931. Cover story: "Siva the Destroyer" by J.-J. des Ormeaux. Cover art by C. Barker Petrie, Jr. In this case the monster is man-like and a god (or demon), yet still monstrous. If the man at the desk were of the opposite sex, this image could have gone into the category of man, woman, and monster. Note the conventional pulp hero dressed in an aviator's getup and throwing hot lead. Note also the large cobra added for good measure.

Weird Tales, August 1931. Cover story: "Tam, Son of the Tiger" (part 2) by Otis Adelbert Kline. Cover art by Curtis C. Senf. I suppose Tam was just another offspring of the Tarzan character. I believe Kline's serial was set in a lost land like Pellucidar. The monster is sort of a lion-tiger cross--pretty much Napoleon Dynamite's favorite animal--with maybe a bit of baboon, hyena, or opossum as well. If the creature were more conventional, I could put this picture in with the category of man and animal. It misses another category as well: Instead of a woman, the hero is saving a pachyderm.

Weird Tales, November 1932. Cover story: "Buccaneers of Venus" (part 1) by Otis Adelbert Kline. Cover art by J. Allen St. John. If Tam was a Tarzan clone, I suppose Otis Adelbert Kline found inspiration for his next serial in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Carson of Venus series. In looking at this illustration, I can't help but be reminded of another:

A scene illustrating one of the Carson of Venus books, created three decades later by Frank Frazetta in his watercolor phase. It could have been an illustration for the same story.

Weird Tales, October 1936. Cover story: "Isle of the Undead" by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach. Cover art by J. Allen St. John. I believe that's a man in the picture. If so, he's pretty broad in the beam and maybe the only naked man to appear on the cover of Weird Tales. If it's a woman then I have her in the wrong category. In either case, the undead are monsters, even if they are humanoid. Notice that they're wearing the standard-issue red robes of the 1930s pulp villain.

Weird Tales, July 1939. Cover story: None. Cover art by Virgil Finlay. Despite the blurb on the cover, this illustration is not for "Giants of Anarchy" according to Jaffery and Cook. Instead it's a picture of a man encountering marvels, none of which threatens him overmuch. In that, this image is unique among the category of man and monster. Update (Feb. 10, 2014): I heard from Lemuel Nash who points out that Finlay's illustration is for "Far Below" by Robert Barbour Johnson. Thanks, Mr. Nash.

Weird Tales, March 1942. Cover story: "Hell on Earth" by Robert Bloch. Cover art by Hannes Bok. This cover could be included in two categories, man and monster; or man and man. But the villain, who is monstrous in his way, has some monsters as his helpers, so I have decided to include it here. That brings up a distinction we can make between the monster that is merely animal-like and driven by animal needs vs. the monster that knows good from evil. The monster capable of evil is usually humanoid or is possessed by a human spirit (as in the werewolf). In other words, an animal is incapable of evil. Because of that, it occupies a spot lower on the hierarchy of monsters. The distinction between the animal/monster and the man/monster goes back to my assertion that the only real monsters in this world are human.

Weird Tales, May 1942, Canadian edition. Cover story: "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" by H.P. Lovecraft. Cover art by Edmond Good. H.P. Lovecraft helped pay the bills at Weird Tales, yet when it came to spots on the cover, he got pretty short shrift. If I count correctly, Lovecraft had the cover story on exactly zero issues in his lifetime and only one after this Canadian edition (in September 1952). Good old Canada. And good old Good--Edmond, that is, the cover artist. The Canadian editions of Weird Tales have been overlooked in most sources. I will have to correct that oversight soon. And I'll have to write about Edmond Good.

Weird Tales, November 1942, Canadian edition. Cover story: "Coven" by Manly Wade Wellman. Cover art by an unknown artist. (His or her signature was probably covered up by the red box on the cover.) The Canadian version of the cover for "Coven" is much different than the American version by Margaret Brundage. (See the previous posting.) The woman is gone, replaced by a man (who kind of looks like Ernie Pyle). The horned and winged creature is less ambiguously a threat. That's not an easy pose to draw by the way. Note the translucent wing and the low lighting on the face.

Weird Tales, September 1943. Cover story: "Black Barter" by Robert Bloch. Cover art by A.R. Tilburne. Another cover showing marvels, although the man is more defenseless than in Virgil Finlay's earlier cover. Tilburne, the artist, excelled at drawing animals, monsters, and trippy, phantasmagoric scenes. We'll see more of him later.

Weird Tales, March 1944. Cover story: "The Trail of Cthulhu" by August Derleth. Cover art by John Giunta. This and the following cover are the only two in this category that show the monster as a helper to the man. John Giunta (1920-1970) was also a comic book artist.

Weird Tales, July 1944, Canadian edition.  Cover story: "The Trail of Cthulhu" by August Derleth. Cover art by an unknown artist. An interesting variation on the same theme. Though completed in 1944, the art looks like it could have come from a generation later.

As Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun. Here is Frank Frazetta's very similar scene from Lin Carter's novel Thongor in the City of Magicians (1968). Carter tended to get carried away with exotic names. There are three shown here (Thongor, Zaar, Valkarthan) and this is just the cover. It's worth noting that John Giunta was a mentor to Frank Frazetta when Frazetta was still a teenager.

Weird Tales, January 1950. Cover story: "The Ormolu Clock" by August Derleth. Cover art by Matt Fox. A scene as only Matt Fox could have created it. If there isn't yet a book-length collection of his art, there should be.

Weird Tales, January 1954. Cover story: "Effie's Pets" by Suzanne Pickett. Cover art by W.H. Silvey. This is the only image from the category of man and monster in which the monster is obviously female. She reminds me of a Morlock from the later movie version of The Time Machine. Note the menacing trees, a theme for a later category of covers.

Updated on January 22, 2014.

Captions and text copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley