From its very first issue dated March 1923, Weird Tales would be home to strange creatures and nature gone wild. The prolific Anthony Rud got things going with “Ooze.”
Seizing the first two weapons which came to hand — a shotgun and hunting knife . . . The knife was ten inches in length and razor-keen, Cranmer rushed out again. He saw an indecent fluid something which as yet he had not had time to classify, lumped into a six-foot-high center before his very eyes! It looked like one of the microorganisms he had studied! One grown to frightful dimensions. An amoeba!
With Rud’s story, the tale of weird lifeforms or evolution amok became a returning motif in Weird Tales. J. U. Giesy’s “The Wicked Flea,” Edmond Hamilton’s “Evolution Island,” Frank Belknap Long’s “The Man With a Thousand Legs,” H. P. Loveraft’s “The Rats in the Walls,” Bassett Morgan’s “Laocoon,” John Murray Reynolds’ “The Devil-Plant,” and other stories chilled the spines of readers of “The Unique Magazine.”
We hope you’ll join PulpFest 2023 on Friday, August 4, at 7:15 pm for “Those Weird Men’s Adventure Magazines.” As part of our celebration of the centennial of Weird Tales, Bob Deis and Wyatt Doyle will explore cryptozoology, killer creatures, and other strange adventures in the men’s adventure magazines. They’ll touch on Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, supernatural phenomena, man-eating ants, fish with human hands, cannibal crabs, blood-mad bats, and the red tide of death in an entertaining discussion of creature features and other weird phenomena in the men’s adventure magazines.
Bob Deis has worked as a teacher, artist, musician, logger, magazine writer, and state government bureaucrat. By accident, he fell into a lengthy career as a political consultant. Now retired, Bob spends much of his time collecting, writing, and editing books about men’s adventure magazines.
In 2009, Bob created MensPulpMags.com, the popular website about the genre. Several years later, Bob and Wyatt Doyle launched the Men’s Adventure Library. In 2021, Bob and Bill Cunningham of Pulp 2.0 Press debuted a new magazine that features men’s adventure stories and artwork. Entitled Men’s Adventure Quarterly, it’s available through MensPulpMags.com, Amazon, and other booksellers.
Wyatt Doyle is a writer, designer, publisher, musician, and photographer from Pennsylvania. For two decades, he earned a living in the Los Angeles film and television industry. He launched New Texture in 2006 and edits and designs most of its publications. He assisted Georgina Spelvin in the publication of her memoir, The Devil Made Me Do It, and served as editor and publisher of Black Cracker, by writer and guitarist Josh Alan Friedman. He curates the New Texture website and Reverend Raymond Branch’s RevBranch.com.
Together, Bob and Wyatt co-edit the Men’s Adventure Library which collects classic stories and artwork from the men’s adventure magazines. Their books include Eva: Men’s Adventure Supermodel; Exotic Adventures of Robert Silverberg; George Gross: Covered; A Handful of Hell: Classic War and Adventure Stories; Maneaters: Killer Sharks in Men’s Adventure Magazines; Mort Künstler: The Godfather of Pulp Fiction Illustrators; One Man Army: The Action Paperback Art of Gil Cohen; Pollen’s Women: The Art of Samson Pollen; Weasels Ripped My Flesh! and other titles.
Both Bob and Wyatt have been presenting annually at PulpFest since 2018.
The general public is welcome to attend our evening programming events free of charge. To learn more about our programming, please click the Schedule button at the top of this page.
For those who also want to enjoy our dealers’ room, you can join PulpFest by clicking the Registration button at the top of this page. And don’t forget to book a room at the DoubleTree. They’re going fast!
Our featured image is excerpted and adapted from the March 1923 Weird Tales, with cover art by R. R. Epperly. Trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Epperly provided cover illustrations for both the March 1923 issues of Weird Tales and Detective Tales. It’s not known if he contributed any other artwork to the pulp magazine industry.
Our lead image was adapted by PulpFest advertising director William Lampkin from Clarence Doore’s cover art for the November 1955 issue of True Weird. True Weird published sensationalized accounts of myths, legends, and stories. Topics included Lincoln’s ghost, a 4000-year-old man, levitation, the Holland tulip mania of 1635, vampires, witches, and werewolves. Published by Weider Periodicals, it ran for three issues.
The January 1940 number of Weird Tales featured cover art by Virgil Finlay, illustrating the story, “Spotted Satan,” written by Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffmann Price. Their tale concerned a man whose appearance and demeanor created a hypnotic effect that led all who saw him to believe that they were seeing a leopard.
A prolific cover artist for the Fiction House line of pulp magazines, George Gross turned to other markets following the Second World War. This included paperbacks, men’s adventure magazines, and true crime magazines. Pictured above is Gross’s cover art for Male for December 1955. According to the Galactic Central website, Male was “a take-off on True, featuring so-called ‘true’ articles or fiction thinly disguised as true.”
For more on Weird Tales, please visit our YouTube Channel to view our video Weird Tales Celebrates 100 Years, created by PulpFest‘s Craig McDonald. While you’re there, please be sure to subscribe to the PulpFest Channel.
