Big Satanic Cat

Thrall...what?
Who should we report this incident to? Alien Resources?
A weird-looking giant cat assaults a woman on the January 1940 cover of Weird Tales, as painted by Virgil finlay.

Rarely if ever would I want to pass up a Weird Tales cover painted by Virgil Finlay, and this one for the January 1940 issue strikes me as particularly dynamic.

This issue also has a lot of interior art by an artist named Harry Ferman (1906-1973), who seems to have spent much of his life as a newspaper artist in Wichita, Kansas (you can read a short account of his life here) but who seems to have had a burst of pulp-magazine creativity between 1939 and 1942. His interior illustration to Earle Peirce, Jr.’s “Portrait of a Bride” shows him capable of evoking images of ethereal beauty.

Harry Ferman interior illustration to Earle Perice Jr.'s "Portrait of a Bride."
At first I saw only a vague outline of a woman’s body, with the moon shining through it.”

While his interior illustration to Mary Elizabeth Counselman’s “Twister” is one of the creepier images I’ve seen in Weird Tales.

Harry Ferman illustration to Mary Elizabeth Counselman's stor ""Twoster"e
“Shadows moved here and there — dim human faces looked out at them.”

This issue of Weird Tales is available to read and download at the Internet Archive.