Holiday Post: the Gift of Pulp, the Pleasure of Acquistion

For my first holiday post, I’d like to share some Christmas presents I received from my infinitely wise and always surprising wife, Nicole: four issues of *Weird Tales.*

I don’t want to assume everyone knows about this magazine (it’s really hard not to!). And so, here’s a little background: this is an important pulp magazine not just in terms of genre fiction but in terms of popular culture in general: film, television, comic books, etc., you name it, important elements can be traced back to *Weird Tales.*

In other words, it’s a Ur text of our popular culture (and many sub-cultures).

I study *Weird Tales* academically and have never collected it myself. Why? First: it’s an extremely expensive habit and grad students are scandalously poor (I, alas, am no exception). Second: one of the nation’s best—if not the best--popular culture library is no more than a two hour drive from my house (the Bowling Green Popular Culture Library). They have a full run of it.

I always told myself I wasn’t going to try and collect *Weird Tales* because it is one of the most sought after periodicals and can quickly become a financial liability. Well, Nicole saw to it that that tidbit of self-discipline was destroyed.

Within 10 minutes of receiving these I had begun imagining the fantastical day when I complete my collection (this will never happen, of course, unless I become an oil tycoon or a “ dot com” millionaire—better keep blogging!)

Here are the issues she got me: May 1944, January 1947, March and November of 1948. And here are some pictures of the covers:

I apologize for the crappy photography. I’ve never been good at it; however, for me, the cover art of *Weird Tales* is just as interesting as the material inside. I thought they would be a treat to see.

Here is a link to a full catalog of Weird Tales where you can consult the table of contents and see better graphics of the covers, if you so desire: Weird Tales Catalog

This is a great site for archival information on *Weird Tales* I’ve relied on often. While I’m at it, I might as well throw a reference book at you. If you’re interested in learning more about *Weird Tales,* then you might take a look at *The Weird Tales Story* by Robert Weinberg. It’s a history of the magazine with a lot of inside information related by previous writers that is simply not available anywhere else.

I am *drafting* a resources page on *Weird Tales* that you can access here. I plan on throwing things informative and useful in here as I come across them.

I plan on devoting more time to substantively discussing *Weird Tales* writers, artists, and fiction in this blog—but now! Now is not the time. Now is the time to celebrate the simple pleasure of *acquisition.*

I’m really interested in the May 1944 edition because the cover was done by Margret Brundage. She was a famous illustrator and artist who did some very good covers for *Weird Tales* from 1933-1938; however, this is only of her last covers (her final *Weird Tales* cover came out in January of 1945). I feel like I’m becoming a broken record, but, ::sigh:: I hope to devote a series of posts to her specifically in the future.

Anyhow—happy holidays!