Ten Best 1930s Weird Tales Covers

In our last episode I groused that the cover of the July 1940 Weird Tales was a candidate for most boring WT cover ever.  Of course, I haven't made a comprehensive review of all covers of the unique magazine of the bizarre and unusual, so maybe there are plenty more boring covers out there?  What I have done is read from every issue of Weird Tales from the 1930s, so I am familiar with those covers, which gave me the idea of producing a specimen of that internet staple, the tendentious unfalsifiable list!  (How many "Top Five King Crimson Albums" and "Ranking all the Epic Tracks of Yes" youtube videos have I listened to while mowing the lawn?)   So today, in chronological order because I am not going to break my brain ranking them against each other, we have my ten favorite 1930s Weird Tales covers.

September 1932 

Margaret Brundage

Margaret Brundage's paintings are often static and flat, and their compositions weak, but her illustration for the September 1932 issue cover lacks those shortcomings; the figures seem alive, physically and emotionally, and the image has no wasted space--too often Brundage compositions have lots of negative space because she tries to fit in the entire body of a woman, maybe to appeal to foot fetishists?  This closer up view of the figures, which leaves out their legs, is obviously superior, filling the space and allowing the faces to be larger and thus more easily convey emotion.  

November 1932

J. Allen St. John

Weird Tales covers usually lean more on the sex and horror side than the heroic adventure side, which is good for Brundage because her style and abilities are more suited to exciting lust and fear than depicting John Carter style capers.  J. Allen St. John, of course, is not only a more experienced and accomplished painter than Ms. Brundage, but an old hand at illustrating the Baroomian type of adventure, and here delivers a terrific muscleman in a thrilling dynamic pose along with well-rendered frothing waters and a crazy sea monster.  

December 1932

J. Allen St. John

This one is even better than its predecessor; the muscle man isn't quite as good, but the monster is better, the frog man's body and pose are splendid, and we have a beautiful woman in bondage.  The whole thing, particularly the hero's cape and the serpent's mouth, gives a feeling of motion.  I love it!

May 1933

J. Allen St. John

There's no monster or muscleman in this one, but the dynamism is there and the muscles of the camels are great, and the woman and her assailant are posed beautifully.  

October 1933 

Margaret Brundage

Likely the ultimate Weird Tales image, a distillation of what makes WT distinctive, the focus on sex and fear and sheer oddness--Brundage's somewhat amateurish anatomy and brushwork add to the oddness in a way the more expert technique and knowledge of St. Allen cannot.  I love the colors, the green contrasting strikingly with the red, and the beautiful typeface of the logo looks better directly over the artwork than it does in a red box as previously.  An immortal icon of genre literature.

November 1933

Margaret Brundage

Another Brundage winner, with most of the strengths of its predecessor.  The gay colors of the woman's hair and dress offer a shocking contrast with the macabre subject matter.  Brilliant.   

December 1933

Margaret Brundage

Our last two Margaret Brundage masterpieces depicted women who were weirdos and maybe villains whom we could certainly believe had chosen to embrace oddity and maybe villainy, and who might present a threat to the reader.  But here we have woman as victim; we don't fear her, we fear for her.  Sexy, but from a different angle.  I like the Yellow Peril figure, with its satanic Ming the Merciless visage and long fingers, and the colorful background astrological geegaw.     

January 1934

Margaret Brundage

A variation on the themes of the previous issue's cover, somewhat inferior but still exciting, and far more sexually explicit and exploitative.  Nasty, but in a way that is mesmerizing rather than repulsive.

November 1937

Margaret Brundage 

The themes and appeal of this one are similar to the last two, though the foreign devil's face is more realistic and actually kind of disturbing--we are inching into repellant territory here, and this picture makes me uneasy in ways the earlier ones did not.  That probably makes it a superior work of art, but I wouldn't hang this one in MPorcius HQ so I could see it every day the way I would all the other illustrations we are discussing today--while the other pictures are a lot of fantasy fun, the figures in this one conjure up unpleasant thoughts of a hypothetical but totally believable abusive relationship.

June 1938

Margaret Brundage

OK, we are back in bondage fantasy land, no tormentor being depicted and the woman wearing more clothes--I find this one hypnotic.

Honorable Mentions

If I was to rank these ten covers, May 1933 and November 1937 would be the bottom two, and they almost lost out to J. Allen St. John's October 1936 with its fine nude and terrific monster faces, Margaret Brundage's evocative S&M October 1937 cover, and/or her witchtastic January 1938 cover.

Best of the Year

 

My ten best covers are clustered in only five years, so let's look at each individual year of the 1930s and choose a best for each.

1930

I've criticized Brundage's abilities a bit, but she has a compelling style and conveys feeling; C. C. Senf and Hugh Rankin, who did all the 1930 issues between them, don't seem any better technically than Brundage and they lack style as well as Ms. Brundage's ability to inspire emotion in the viewer.  For 1930 we are going with the dinosaur cover from November by Senf, which edges out the August cover by Rankin which has a snake on it, though neither is actually good.

1931

Senf did all the 1931 covers except for one, the February-March issue, the cover of which is by C. Parker Betrie, Jr.  Betrie's is easily the best of the year, with effective use of shadow, a strong composition, and cool monsters from the mysterious East.

1932

December, St. John

1933

October, Brundage

1934

January, Brundage

1935

Brundage did all the 1935 covers and her sometimes weak grasp of anatomy and questionable compositions mar almost every one of these productions.  To my eye, all twelve of the illustrations achieve about the same level of mediocrity, though I think the June cover, suicidal Hollywood starlet accompanied by a devil face, edges out the November, which has a nude surrounded by snakes, for title of best of a forgettable lot.  The tight clothes are actually sexier than the nudity, and the idea of self-destruction more scary than the cobras.

1936

October, St. John

1937

November, Brundage

1938

June, Brundage

1939

The '39 covers are mostly busy or banal; eight are by Virgil Finlay, who, in my opinion, was a far better draftsman than a painter.  I think the bold December cover by Hannes Bok is marginally better than the boldest of the Finlay covers, the fiery August one.  

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This was a fun exercise, so maybe when I have read a story from each issue of Weird Tales with a 1940s cover date I'll produce a sequel.