A mix of the unfortunate and the not

Okay, so the racial not-so-subtext isn’t great, but at least we get to see Margaret Brundage at work on more kinky whipping, a subject for which it seems she has something of a feel. This April 1934 issue of Weird Tales has an early story by C.L. Moore among other pulp fiction luminaries.

The E. Hoffman Price story, “Satan’s Garden,” which I believe the Brundage cover also illustrates, has some tasty interior art by someone named H.R. Hammond, about whom I’m afraid I haven’t been able to find out very much at all.

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

That unfortunate trope again

A white woman somehow menaced by a sinister-looking Oriental is one of the more unfortunate tropes common in the pulp era, but Margaret Brundage did make use of it in an early Weird Tales cover (December 1933). I suppose I’m fair game for reproducing it here, but I hold to the view that we don’t make ourselves wiser in the present by blotting out parts of our past.

(I confess to be unusually pleased at seeing the little blue NRA eagle in the upper left-hand corner of the cover. We do our part!

In the interior, Hugh Rankin (1878-1956) provides a little tasty cheesecake to go along with Frank Owen’s story “The Ox-Cart.”

“Her glowing silver body was a gem of rarest worth.”

A biographical detail which caught my eye and which I’ll probably post more on tomorrow is that Hugh Rankin was the son of Ellen Rankin Copp (1853-1901), a pioneering American woman sculptor.

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

Death makes the maiden

This Margaret Brundage cover is from the March 1938 issue. Is our unclad cutie being evoked or dissolved by death? Either way, she looks surprised. She illustrates a Seabury Quinn story in another star-studded (as future generations would reckon it) cast of authors in Weird Tales. Virgil Finlay has an interior illustration to the cover story which, somewhat unusually for Finlay’s art in this period, presents exposed female nipples — Finlay would usually artfully conceal them.

“She cannot quit the earth, but must wander among the scenes of her misspent life.”

(Sorry about the severe yellowing of the page, but the medium was called “pulp” for a reason.)

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

A nice kinky whipping

This cover (September 1933) is pretty classic Margaret Brundage: an almost-nude in a kinky situation probably at best remotely related to the contents of the stories beneath the cover. Our distressed damsel has the long flowing locks Brundage was so fond of, possibly because they were so useful in providing a bit of just-barely-there strategic covering so as to keep nosy postal inspectors and local district attorneys at bay.

The interior has a not-bad illustration of Edmond Hamilton’s story “The Horror on the Asteroid,” done by J.M. Wilcox (1895-1958). Also classic stuff, spaceman using spacegun to defend space damsel against space monster.

“He fired without consciously willing to do so.”

Wilcox would achieve a measure of artistic fame within a few months as the first artist to draw Conan the Barbarian, also in the pages of Weird Tales. I shall try to dig that up.

An uncredited and indeed pretty much unnoticed small illustration at the end of the story suggests perhaps things worked out better between monster and damsel than one might have predicted.

This issue of Weird Tales is available for reading and download at the Internet Archive.

If pro wrestling had undead nearly-naked women in it, I might watch

I mean, does anyone really wear anything like that and if so, why do they bother? But we shouldn’t really bother asking, as it’s another Margaret Brundage cover on a Weird Tales issue (January 1936) that as one can see by its cover (Paul Ernst, C.L. Moore, Robert E. Howard, August W. Derleth) was a cavalcade of pulp author stars. There is also interior art for the story which (I guess) Brundage did the cover, in this case done by Vincent Napoli (1907-1981), an artist who seems to have gotten his professional start painting WPA murals and found his way into pulp.

“I hated myself for having let her make a slave of me.”

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

Is the woman blue because she’s cold?

Rarely would Margaret Brundage hesitate to get as much female nudity as she could onto the covers of Weird Tales, which was no doubt good for Depression-era sales. This issue also contains a piece of interior art by Jack Binder (1902-1986) would would go on to greater fame as a Golden Age comics artist. The picture illustrates Arlton Eadle’s story “The Carnival of Death.”

“She felt an icy hand on her shoulder.”

Also in this issue, a very early story by Robert Bloch (he would have been at most eighteen when he wrote it), “The Shambler from the Stars.”

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

Tiger Cat

Margaret Brundage
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29768229

Here we present the first of a what is likely a series of covers for Weird Tales. This little magazine, the October 1937 cover of which we reproduce above, was where many of the stories of H.P. Lovecraft first saw the light of publication, and in those days its principal cover artist was Margaret Brundage (1900-1976), she of the ballooning breasts and, incidentally, an art-school classmate of Walt Disney.

The scan quality on most old issues of Weird Tales is unfortunately pretty low, but we shouldn’t keep that from appreciating an interior artwork contribution by the ubiquitous Virgil Finlay.

“She whirled and undulated to the barbaric rush of the music.”

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

Tumblr favorite #2098: The hand of glory

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My original tumblr post was here. This pulp cover was first posted on tumblr by UDHCMH who added this commentary:

Weird Tales, July 1933, featuring the Seabury Quinn story “The Hand of Glory.”

Illuminati burglars use a “hand of glory” to steal a magical artifact from an archaeologist. The thieves use the object’s weird powers to lure an innocent young beauty into the clutches of a cult that worships a hermaphroditic demon from ancient times. Only paranormal detective Jules de Grandin and the unflappable Dr. Trowbridge can save the young woman and deliver cult-infested Harrisonville NJ from its latest peril.

The artist isn’t specified, but by the style I would guess Margaret Brundage.