Planet Stories 'Thing of Venus' Cover — Tentacled Monster Seizes Woman, 1940s
Visceral dread radiates from this lurid pulp cover as a massive green serpentine creature — bulbous-headed and studded with pink suckers — coils possessively around a terrified woman in a torn red skirt, her body arched in helpless horror. Behind them, a spacesuited hero raises a weapon against an alien landscape of rocky spires and purple-blue sky. The painting's feverish colors and melodramatic composition epitomize Golden Age pulp excess at its most unapologetically sensational.
A grotesque green tentacle-beast with a gaping maw and sucker-covered coils wraps its entire sinuous body around a barely-clothed woman in classic damsel-in-distress pose — pulp objectification and monster menace cranked to maximum voltage. The fact that an early Isaac Asimov story is buried in the credits while THIS is the cover art tells you everything about 1940s editorial priorities.
“PLANET STORIES STRANGE ADVENTURES ON OTHER WORLDS — THE UNIVERSE OF FUTURE CENTURIES 20c THE THING OF VENUS by WILBUR S. PEACOCK THE LAST MARTIAN by RAYMOND VAN HOUTON BLACK FRIAR OF THE FLAME Novelet by ISAAC ASIMOV BOND · KUMMER · F. BROWN · CUMMINGS · BRACKETT”
