Weird Tales

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Weird Tales was a very influential 20th Century pulp magazine. It featured horror, the supernatural and sci-fi. Among writers it discovered and promoted were H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, and Robert E. Howard. It discontinued publication in 1954 but has had several attempts to restart. Since 1988 it has been published under its current incarnation.

These covers are from the original 1923 to 1954 run.

Rudolph Belarski

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Rudolph Belarski (1900 - 1983) was an American artist who specialized in pulp magazine art. At a young age he quit school and went to work in coal mines. During that time, he taught himself art via correspondence courses. Eventually he began painting covers for various magazines. He did crime, sci-fi and adventure covers. Late in his life he became an instructor for correspondence schools, completing the circle so to speak.

Rudolph Belarski

All-Story Weekly covers

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All-Story Weekly was an early 20th century pulp magazine. It was eventually bought by Argosy and published under the name Argosy All-Story Weekly. It featured serialized adventure and science-fiction stories that were aimed at men. Its most famous authors were Edgar Rice Burroughs, Max Brand, Rex Stout and Johnston McCulley, the creator of Zorro.

Film Fun magazine covers

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In the early half of the 20th century there were two Film Fun magazines, one British and one American. These are from the American Film Fun magazine. It was mainly a comic book with the strips featuring movie stars and other celebrities. From the pulp cheesecake covers, all of them done by the artist Enoch Bolles, it appears it was aimed at men. 

Edited to add: after posting I realized that one of the covers, the one of Charlie Chaplin, is actually from the British Film Fun.

Necessary detail for pulp cover art

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In my earlier post Popadanets -- Russian pulp propaganda about a genre of current Russian pulp fiction I ended it by making fun of the old-fashioned style of their cover art. I also noted the lack of buxom babes in their cover art, which seemed to me to be de rigueur for pulp cover art and sorely lacking in the Russian covers. 

So, in the spirit of international friendship, and in the unlikely chance that mixed in with my daily traffic of spam-bots are some Russian pulp book cover artists, I've posted some American pulp art featuring buxom babes for enlightenment. 

These examples, and those after the jump, are from 70-90 years ago and appear to match the art style the Russians are currently using. They were taken from Magazine Art's  Adventure magazine post. There are more examples at the link.  

Beadle's New Dime Novels

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These are covers from Beadle's New Dime Novels. They were published between 18974 to 1886. The featured a mix of historical, war, adventure ands western fiction. At the time of their publication the settling of the American West was in full bloom. Many of the stories revolve around the Indian wars of the time. As you might imagine considering the conflicts, the Indians are portrayed as dangerous and bloody antagonists. Not surprisingly, it seems that white women were also frequently at peril in these stories.

They are from the Nickels and Dimes website. There are more pictures after the jump as well as many more at the link. Also, if you follow the link the full magazines are archived, so you can read the stories in them.

There goes the neighborhood

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A short lived 1940s pulp magazine, Fantastic Adventures, ran a series on life in our solar system. It turns out we have some strange neighbors, such as the Neptunian lizards pictured above, as well as bat people from Pluto, giant slugs living in the swamps of Saturn, giant insects on Mercury and, as near as I can tell, a cross between panda bears and penguins that occupy Jupiter's moon Io.

Perhaps most alarming are the Martians. They're the most advanced beings in the Solar System and they tote around atomic rifles. We had best not irritate them. 

I must say that the creatures pictured below, crawling out of a hole in Uranaus, did remind me of the Robotolizer (What? You didn't really think I was mature enough to resist making a Uranus joke, did you?).

Via La Boite Verte. The rest of the series can be seen after the jump.