Tag Archives: Curtis C. Senf

Red menace

A C.C. Senf cover for Weird Tales, July 1928. A redhead is meanced by a man in a red costume.

Another early (July 1928) Weird Tales cover, this one by C.C. Senf. The issue is a good one for fans of the H.P. Lovecraft circle, as it contains stories by August Derleth and Frank Belknap Long, Jr. as well as a poem (!) by Robert E. Howard. It also contains a reprint of a famous story by Arthur Machen, “The Bowmen.” And of course, it has interesting interior art, of which the most memorably weird is this head-of-story piece by sometime Weird Tales cover artist Hugh Rankin.

A story illustration by Hugh Rankin for Bertram Russell's "The Bat-Men of Thorium," which appeared in the July 1928 issue of Weird Tales.
“Stranger kisses have never been given.”

I confess I am at a bit of a loss to understand what is going on here. Doesn’t this dude understand that kissing is more fun if you take your diving helmet off first? Perhaps all that Thorium has corroded his bat-intellect.

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

Two takes on a theme

This woman with the wolves (and clothed only with her hair) on the September 1927 issue of Weird Tales is the work of C.C. Senf. Evidently it was a theme that the editors liked, because they would commission Margaret Brundage to do something very similar for the March 1933 cover.

And to perhaps no one’s surprise, Seabury Quinn has stories in both issues.

Both the September 1927 and the March 1933 issues of Weird Tales are available to be read at and downloaded from the Internet Archive.

Home of Dark Lore

Another early Weird Tales, this one from October 1927. Te cover painting was executed in this case by Chicago-based German-American artist Curtis C. Senf (1873-1949), who achieves an almost pre-Raphaelite look here.

Hugh Rankin was busy doing interior illustrations on this one. One quick example is this weird bacchanal illustrating Nictzin Dyalhis’s “The Dark Lore.”

“They burst into song — the most dreadful song in all the universe.”

I should perhaps note that “Nictzin Dyalhis” appears not to have been someone’s over-clever attempt at a pulp pseudonym, but the real name of a reclusive writer, whose dates are 1873-1942.

This issue of Weird Tales is available to read or download from the Internet Archive.