While most interested parties nowadays know that H.P. Lovecraft's stories almost all appeared in the pages of pulp magazines during the 1920s and '30s – the vast majority of them in "the Unique Magazine," Weird Tales – what they may not know is that a great many of these appearances were accompanied by illustrations. I posted a couple of these at the start of the month, but I thought readers might enjoy seeing a few more of these, particularly those associated with some of his more famous yarns.
This one, for example, depicts the bayou ceremony described by Inspector Legrasse in "The Call of Cthulhu."
This piece shows the end of "The Whisperer in Darkness," when Professor Wilmarth finds the face and hands of Henry Akeley left behind in the chair in which he'd been sitting for most of the story.
Disappointingly, only one Lovecraft-written story ever appeared on the cover of Weird Tales, "Under the Pyramids," but it did so both with a changed title ("Imprisoned with the Pharaohs") and a Harry Houdini byline (no surprise, since HPL had been hired by Houdini to be his ghost writer).
Lovecraft had much better luck in this regard with Astounding Stories, which featured two of his tales on the cover, starting with At the Mountains of Madness, which features what is likely the first ever illustration of a shoggoth.
Both of the Astounding appearances also include interior artwork as well, some of which is quite interesting and probably deserving of a separate post.
It's interesting to see different illustration styles by magazine.
ReplyDeleteThe Weird Tales artists know it's a horror story, so they don't show the monster clearly. Art is vague, mysterious and shadowy, allowing your imagination to run wild.
Astounding Stories go the other way, especially that last one. In it, everything is brightly lit and brightly colored, giving you a full schematic of exactly what the monster is, preventing you from adding to the horror with your own imagination. In that last one, what if it had the same layout but the monsters were in shadow and only their bizarre silhouettes were clear? And maybe their three eyes reflecting the light? Much more evocative, suspenseful and scary.
That's a very good observation.
DeleteI certainly don't disagree in principle, and I think Weird Tales had better art all 'round anyway, but in this case the horror of the tale isn't really the reveal of the monster (well, it's one of the horrors, but not THE horror). In fact, the narrator gets used to living among the Great Race during his little mind-transfer sojourn (to the extent anyone could. of course). Turns out they aren't Cthuloid lurkers but time-scholars moving around the ages cataloging events first-hand via what is essentially body-snatching and mind-switching. Getting good look at the monsters doesn't really detract, though this is nowhere near the best illo I've seen of the Yith.
DeleteOf course, you're almost certainly correct anyway, since I suspect the illustrator, working on deadline for a pulp, didn't give this much thought to it and decided to give us frightful beasties.
Frightful beasties holding stacks of books? Maybe they weren’t meant to be horrific, just as they really weren’t in the tale (unlike the flying polyps). But like Etrimyn Cat something less goofy would be more to my taste.
Delete...i favor tabletop RPGs with abstract or vaguely evocative art for the same reason: player imagination is so much more immersive than videogame-style rendering...
DeleteUndoubtedly the first illustration of the Great Race on that Amazing Stories cover for June '36.
ReplyDeleteA few years back Girasol collectibles produced a high-grade facsimile of the 1928 Weird Tales where call Cthulhu first appeared. It's pretty neat to hold that in your hand and read it the way it originally hit the world. They also produced a facsimile of the 1932 issue where Conan first appeared.
ReplyDelete