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.

Starblazer covers

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Starblazer was an English comic book series that published science fiction stories and eventually fantasy stories as well. It was published between 1979 and 1991 for a run of 281 issues. Along with the fiction stories it wrote about astronauts, space missions and planets. At the link you can view all of the covers as well as flip through and read the stories and articles.

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.  

Adventure pulp covers

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These are some old pulp magazine covers from the days when men were men and damsels were all too frequently in distress. These covers, and those after the jump, are from Magazine Art's Adventure Pulp archive. There are many more at the archive.

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.

Pulp magazine covers

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The website Pulp Gallery has a very nice, and large selection of old pulp magazine covers. These samples, and the ones after the jump, are taken from it. There are many, many more at Pulp Gallery.

What struck me about the set these were taken from is the large number of covers that featured bondage in the form of tied up women, whippings and what-not.

Romance - pulp covers for a vintage women's magazine

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When you think of old pulp magazines you tend to think of them as being testosterone laden. However, there were pulps for women also. One of them was the magazine Romance, which was a bit odd in that it had two brief spurts of being published: 1919-1920 and 1928-1930. It featured exotic locations and time periods for its stories.

The cover images are a lot less active than the one's seen on men's pulps, while it seems to me that they're a lot more colorful. It was surprising to see Joseph Conrad's name on the November 1919 cover -- I never thought of him as a writer of romantic tales, but a paycheck is a paycheck and that's pretty much what pulp was all about.

These samples are from MagazineArt's Romance, the adventure pulp.  There are more examples after the jump, and more at the MagazineArt link.

Frank R. Paul pulp covers

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Frank R. Paul was an early illustrator of science fiction magazine covers. Although technically not a very good artist, he was richly imaginative and his images had an enormous influence on the iconography of science fiction. You still see echoes of his work today.

These images are taken from the Frank R. Paul gallery, which discusses each image as well as having detail views. There are more samples after the jump, and many more at the Paul gallery.

Lex Barker as Tarzan

Sometimes a banana is just a banana?
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These are a series of old Dell Tarzan comics featuring Lex Barker posing as the legendary ape man. They're from a remarkable archive of old Tarzan comics -- it has literally thousands of both comic books and strips scanned in to view -- called the ERBzine.

Lex Barker was the 10th actor to portray Tarzan. after his American movie career dried up he moved to Europe where he had further success. Surprisingly he was married to Lana Turner at one time, although their marriage broke-up and there were rumors that one of the reasons for the divorce was him molesting her 13 year old daughter. Sick stuff if true.

There are more sample covers after the jump, and many, many more at the ERBzine site.

Argosy magazine covers

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Argosy is a pulp magazine I remember from my youth. If you went to manly-men sort of places -- barbershops, repair garages and the like -- there would always be a stack of them. 

It was a long running magazine, started in 1882 and at first aimed at kids. It quickly evolved into a men's magazine featuring fiction 'adventure' stories and serials for most of its life. By the time I saw it, it was mixing in some non-fiction and drifting towards soft porn (which was a good bit of its mystique to a young lad). It stopped publishing in 1978.

It had a pretty good stable of writers for a pulp. Edgar rice Burroughs, C. S. Foster and Max Brand being perhaps the most well known of the stable.

These covers, and the ones after the jump, are from Magazine Art, which has many more.  

If you like them you might also like some of my other posts on pulp covers: Adventure magazine covers, There goes the neighborhood, Babies for sale and Man's Life magazine covers.