Skull-Face Robert E. Howard Cover, Famous Fantastic Mysteries Dec.
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Skull-Face Robert E. Howard Cover, Famous Fantastic Mysteries Dec.

Published in the late 1940s when pulp fantasy was at its lurid peak, this December issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries features a revival of Robert E. Howard's classic 1929 serial Skull-Face. The cover depicts a cadaverous skull-like figure rising from dark waters beneath a stone arch, flanked by a sinister turbaned villain, a grotesque green-skinned monster, and an ethereal Asian woman — a nightmarish ensemble that captures Howard's pulp horror aesthetic with maximum visceral impact.

Category: Magazine Cover
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Artist: Lawrence Sterne Stevens
Era: Pulp Era (1920s-1940s)
Decade: 1940s
Country: United States
Coolness: 9/10

A death-faced ghoul rising from black water surrounded by a multicultural rogues' gallery of villainy, draped in cobwebs — this is pulp horror firing on all cylinders. Howard's lurid orientalism rendered in ghastly gouache with maximum menace and zero restraint.

Text in image:

Famous Fantastic Mysteries Dec. 25¢ SKULL-FACE A FANTASY CLASSIC by ROBERT E. HOWARD

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