Weird Tales Dec 1939 Gas-Masked Soldier Lords of the Ice Cover

Surprisingly militaristic for a fantasy horror magazine, this Weird Tales cover deploys a WWI-era gas-masked soldier as its monster — a figure of industrial warfare recast as supernatural menace. Backlit by orange fire through an arched opening, the armored figure looms over skeletal and decomposing corpses, wielding a weapon with cold authority. The marriage of wartime dread and supernatural horror feels prescient given the December 1939 date, with Europe already at war.