Weird Tales May 1938 – Seabury Quinn's Strange Tale of the Future Cover
Before you stands a masterwork of pulp fantasy menace: the May 1938 cover of Weird Tales, Volume 31, No. 5. A pale, red-haired woman in golden jewelry and a flowing crimson drape dominates the foreground, while a dark-skinned sword-wielding villain looms behind her and a dark-haired captive kneels at her feet. Painted with confident, lustrous gouache brushwork, this cover exemplifies the sensational visual language that made Weird Tales the premier magazine of bizarre and unusual stories in the Golden Age of pulp fiction.
Brundage's signature pastel-soft figures create an electric tension between delicate rendering and overtly sensational subject matter — the villain's theatrical menace and the women's barely-there costumes push this firmly into peak pulp territory. The gap between the almost dreamlike painterly softness and the lurid dramatic scene is pure Weird Tales formula.
“16th Year of Publication Weird Tales MAY MAY, 1938 25¢ A Strange Tale of the Future By Seabury Quinn Robert E. Howard Edmond Hamilton Jack Williamson Henry Kuttner The No. 1 Magazine of Bizarre and Unusual Stories Vol. 31, No. 5 Weird Tales Printed in U.S.A.”
