Monster of the Day #3130

I said yesterday that more early covers featured spicy girl art than ‘weird’ content (odd for a magazine called Weird Tales, but then they invented that market and had to find their way). That’s not quite true. For instance, the eighth issued featured a great giant spider illustration that we’ve featured before. Still, most of the very early issues featured standard Man’s Adventure cover art–white guys fighting natives, pirates, etc. When women appeared, the art remained generally tame, as we see above.

The girly art started with issue nine, but really kicked off with the 17th issue:

You don’t have to be Freud to figure out some of that symbolism. I do appreciate the little candle flame that technically covers the nipple while suggesting it. After that, risque art was featured much more often. Apparently, who knew, there was a market for that. Fantastic content also was featured more regularly, but not as much as the dames.

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Gamera977

Well and much of the ‘girl’ art was done by Magaret Brundage. Every now and then in ‘The Eyrie’, the letters column someone did complain about having to roll up the magazine or rip the cover off to keep people from thinking they were reading a ‘girlie’ magazine.
Eric Hinkle

Margaret Brundage, who did many a cover for Weird Tales, is supposed to have been fond of scenes of women in bondage. When the more mercenary (saying that in the very best way) authors like Bob Howard and Seabury Quinn figured that out, they began putting tied-up damsels in their works. You got the cover, you got paid more, if and when your check arrived.

I also remember reading that Howard advised Lovecraft that if he wanted to make some more money with his work, he needed to ‘put some sex in it’. A horrified Lovecraft refused. Which may be for the best. I really don’t want to imagine a sex scene as done by HP Lovecraft.

Oh, and if anyone’s interested, all 90+ of the Jules de Grandin stories have been reprinted recently in $25 hardcovers and should still be available. They’re fun and sometimes surprisingly grisly stories. I recommend them to anyone looking for a fun read.
Eric Hinkle

To say nothing of the HPL rewrite ‘The Loved Dead’, a first-person account by a necrophiliac serial killer, that almost lead to lawsuits against Weird Tales and its getting banned from the stands. According to some people, anyway.
Gamera977

Who’s the publisher for the De Grandin stories? I’d love to get my hands on those too.
Eric Hinkle

They’re available on Amazon, and they’re published by Night Shade Books. Just Google them; they seem to be with Skyhorse Publishing these days.
Gamera977

Awesome thanks!!! I was looking under Haffner Press for them too.
thunderclancat

Good to see the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz getting some early work.
maggiesmith

I wouldn’t call a flying monkey with talons ‘tame’.
Headless Unicorn Guy

“Man Who Cast No Shadow”, one of Seabury Quinn’s Jules DeGrandin Occult Detective Mysteries, centered around a variant of a Vampire who when he starts aging must feed on the blood of a virgin damsel to restore his youth and extend his existence.

Or maybe that was an older version of the vampire, before Lugosi as Dracula set the pattern from then on.
(I’m not going to talk about Sparklepires (“EDWARD….”) resetting the pattern…)

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