Tag Archives: Monroe Eisenberg

No, I don’t really get the point of it either

A nude blonde woman held in a makeshift stocks faces traumatic quadruple amputation from a rotary saw on Monroe Eisenberg's May 1940 cover for Horror Stories.

I do, however, have the pleasure of presenting a superior version of Monroe Eisenberg’s cover which I originally posted back in 2017. Looking under the cover, we find a rather nasty proto-A.S.F.R. story “Models for the Pain Sculptor” by “Russell Gray” (Bruno Fishcer). Here is my composite of introductory text and uncredited illustrations.

Helpless women models are turned into statues by a fiendish process in "Models for the Pain Sculptor" by Russell Gray.

I’m not sure why the yellowing of the cheap pulp paper has proceeded at different rates on (supposedly) facing pages.

This issue of Horror Stories is available to read and download at the Internet Archive.

Dime Mystery Meme #11: Mummification

Another truly strange trope that came up frequently at Dime Mystery appears to be some sort of involuntary mummification, possibly in connection with forced mating with some long-dead Egyptian. A good example would be July 1936 (issue ISFDB entry here).

And there’s an even more thorough one for September 1940.

But perhaps my favorite of the trope is actually an inverse, a cover painting by Tom Lovell for the May 1937 issue (ISFDB entry here). It’s actually a man undergoing the wrapping, under the gaze of a laughing cultist. There’s a girl, and what’s she’s undergoing is rather more mysterious, with wisps of mist or mystic energy or whatever providing another example of just-barely-implied nudity.

This is another example of a page worth visiting at Pulp Covers where the curators provide some interesting interior art (described on the issue title page as having been done by “Monroe Eisenberg and Others”) and also make the whole issue available for download.

Pulp Parade #82: Saw

You know, I’m beginning to suspect that it’s the same woman on this and the previous two Horror Stories covers and clearly, she’s having the worst year ever. This is the May 1940 issue, cover by Monroe Eisenberg. The ISFDB entry for the issue is here. The version of the cover above is from (as it so often is) this French-language collectors site. The version at Galactic Central is a bit smaller but looks a bit less washed-out: