The bony clutch

Visitor from Venus by Penerotic
Forever Frozen
A man and a woman are grasped in the clutch of giant skeleton hands on the April 1946 cover of Famous Fantastic Mysteries.

It looks like a grim situation for these good-looking young people on the April 1946 cover of Famous Fantastic Mysteries. This cover painting is by the artist Lawrence Sterne Stevens (1886-1960), who was often credited simply as “Lawrence.” As can be seen from the cover, FFM had as some of its content reprints of already-published stories, and for this issue they’ve picked a great example of cosmic horror, Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows.”

Lawrence Sterne Stevens was also a deft hand at interior illustrations, here providing one for S. Fowler Wright’s “The Island of Captain Sparrow.”

A black-and-white ink illustration of a nude woman i in a tropical scene. An ominous clawlike hand can be seen at the base of the illustration.
“Silence brooded over the scene of tropical peace.”

This issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries is available to read and download at the Internet Archive.