Category: Fantasy Magazines – Weird Tales

[Created back in June of 2019, this post, a biography of illustrator Virgil Finlay written by Sam Moskowitz from the November, 1965 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, includes images that directly pertain to illustrations and publications mentioned within the article’s text.  I’ve updated the post to include an image of Finlay’s original cover art for the May, 1943 issue of Super Science Stories, which shows an intrepid (or foolish, take your pick) space explorer firing his ray gun at a rather befuddled giant alien giant, who has a face more devilish than extraterrestrial.]

And, here’s the cover.  You see view a larger image below…  

[[April 14, 2024: This post is once again updated!  Eight years after commencing this blog, I’ve acquired an original copy of the July, 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, which was so singularly significant in the history of science fiction, and which is indirectly alluded to in Sam Moskowitz’s article.  An image of this pulp is displayed below; I hope to create a separate (new) post about it, as well.]] 

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In terms of artistic style, visual symbolism, emotional power, and sheer productivity, one of the twentieth century’s most outstanding illustrators in the fields of science-fiction and fantasy was Virgil Warden Finlay.  Even the most cursory DuckDuckGo search will generate a plethora of his works, primarily representing his forte – black & white interior illustrations – and secondarily his relatively fewer, yet still visually distinctive, pulp magazine covers.  Though the works of his many contemporaries remain memorable, each in their own distinctive way (numerous examples are on display at this blog), the central and most striking quality of Finlay’s work – besides the originality and variety of the forms represented within it – whether human or alien; male or female; erotic or eerie; mythical or monstrous; scientific and technological, often in combination within the same composition – is that it presents images and symbols that impact upon the human psyche at a wordless, perhaps even mythical, level.

The Wikipedia entry for Virgil Finlay presents a quite solid overview of his life, listing the titles of published collections of his art, and, including links to websites displaying his works (the best being Jake Jackson’s “Virgil Finlay: Master of Dark Fantasy Illustration” at “These Fantastic Worlds – Articles on SF, Fantasy Fiction, Movies, and Art” (who also displays a collection of 19 images of Finlay’s art at Pinterest), JVJ Publishing – Illustrators, 74 images at artnet, and, Gerry de la Ree’s biography “Virgil Finlay: Master of Fantasy” from the June, 1978 issue of Starlog; the titles of eight of de la Ree’s books being listed in Finlay’s Wikipedia profile.

Complementing the above, you may find interest in science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz’s article “Virgil Finlay – Dean of Science Fiction Artists”, which was published in the November, 1965 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, six years before Finlay’s passing.  I discovered this article quite serendipitously: while perusing Archive.org’s Pulp Magazine Archive  to – as the expression goes “see what I could see”.  (There, one can see a lot!)

Moskowitz’s article – presented below – is transcribed verbatim, and has been enhanced by the inclusion of images of the many illustrations mentioned within it, along with the corresponding cover of the magazine in which each illustration originally appeared.  This almost certainly would have been quite impossible in the original Worlds of Tomorrow article, due to copyright restrictions, and especially, the technical difficulty of reproducing Finlay’s illustrations – designed for and published in large-format pulps – within a digest-sized periodical.  All illustrations and magazine covers within this post were similarly found at Archive.org, and slightly (but not too much, really! – at least, nowhere near as much as other images on this blog) digitally edited, where necessary.  Similarly, the article has been enhanced by newspaper articles about Finlay, primarily from the Rochester Times-Union, found via Thomas M. Tryniski’s fabulous Fulton History website / database.

Also interspersed within the article – here ‘n there – are a few of my own comments, delineated by brackets.  Y’know, as “[ c o m m e n t ].”

I hope you find this article informative, enjoyable, and for those so artistically inclined – inspiring!

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“Finlay is, five years after his death, virtually unknown.” – (February 3, 1977)

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VIRGIL FINLAY

Dean of Science Fiction Artists

by SAM MOSKOWITZ

Worlds of Tomorrow
November, 1965

First in a new series of articles by science fiction’s ablest chronicler!

Yet here upon a page our frightened glance
Finds monstrous forms no human eye should see;
Hints of those blasphemies whose countenance
Spreads death and madness through infinity.
What limner he who braves black gulfs alone
And lives to make their alien horrors known? (1)

H.P. Lovecraft penned the foregoing lines to Virgil Finlay after having been thrilled by the exquisite stipple and line technique, which exposed the monsters of Robert Bloch’s The Faceless God in almost photographic clarity to the readers of the May, 1936 issue of Weird Tales.  [Lovecraft’s full poem can be found at the end of this post.]  Lovecraft’s enthusiasm was in concert with the times.  No illustrator, in the history of fantasy magazines, had ever been greeted with so uniformly appreciative a chorus of reader approbation.

Cover by Margaret Brundage

“The stars would change in a most peculiar manner, so that the Great Ones could come pulsing from the outer gulf.”

Illustrating Robert Bloch’s story, “The Faceless God” (p. 565)

“Honor and festivals are due whatever gods were responsible for sending artist Virgil Finlay to you,” wrote Robert W. Lowndes to Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales.  “He is truly unique that one; reminiscent of the classic illustrations in high-priced editions of Greek and Roman masterpieces.”

The observation was astute.  Finlay belonged to the 19th century school of Gustave Dore, and was the equal of the finest of them on line and crosshatch technique, superior to virtually all of them on the use of the stipple, succeeding at will in giving a camera-lens quality to his artwork, a goal which 19th century illustrators strove for and rarely achieved.

With the rise of experimentalism in art, largely as a result of the competition of photography, artistic standards moved away from absolute realism, rendering Finlay an anachronism – except in the world of fantasy and science fiction.  To visualize and transfer to the illustrating board a razor-sharp rendition of the bizarre modern-day mythology of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert Bloch required a creative imagination of the highest order.  This Virgil Finlay possessed, and this the readers of first Weird Tales and then the science-fiction magazines instantly recognized and appreciated.

Virgil Warden Finlay was born to Warden Hugh Finlay and Ruby Cole, July 23, 1914 in Rochester, New York.  His father was half Irish and half German and his mother English Protestant, from a religious colony that had landed in the United States in 1643, leaving England for the freedom to observe the sabbath on Saturday.  His father was a woodworker, who at one time supervised a shop of 400 men when wood finishing was a construction art.  Changing times and the depression found his father scrambling for a living in his own business, to die disheartened at 40, leaving behind a daughter, Jean Lily, as well as Virgil.

In high school, the short, muscular Virgil was an all-around athlete, starring in boxing and soccer and attaining championship calibre in pole vaulting with jumps of 11.8 feet, a respectable height before the days of the plastic poles.  To his schoolmates he appeared an athletic extrovert.  At home evenings, his passion was writing poetry.  The only sample ever seen by fantasy enthusiasts was Moon Mist (illustrated by Finlay) published in the final, September, 1954, issue of Weird Tales.  [Likewise and significantly, the final issue’s cover was also created by Finlay.  The image seems to be purely symbolic; unrelated to the stories actually carried within the magazine.]

Illustrating Virgil Finlay’s own poem, “Moon Mist” (p. 31)

Despite the poetic muse, art was never far from the young Virgil’s mind.  The deepest impression made on him, as early as the age of six, was Gustave Dore’s line illustrations for a family bible.  Dore became the artistic figure he most admired and his major influence.  In grammar school he sketched, with a stylus on stencil, drawings for a mimeographed paper, and in high school he illustrated the Year Book.

All through high school he took two classes a day in art.  Another major of his was science.  At the age of 14 his wash drawings of human figures were exhibited at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester.  His father, while alive, taught construction supervision at Mechanics Institute.  Virgil was able to take free night courses in art at that school.  When the WPA (Works Progress Administration) inaugurated art projects during the depression, he took advantage of the opportunity to take classes in anatomy, landscape and portraiture.

Rochester Times-Union, February 23, 1935

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His skill at rendering faces was so pronounced that he was able to command $300 a portrait for what assignments were to be had during the Great Depression.  This served as one of his major sources of income during a period when he gratefully accepted jobs on a radio assembly line, in a stock room, with various wood-working shops and, as a prelude to his artistic career, actually held a card as a master house painter!

Though his preference was for the fantasy and supernatural, the first magazine he bought with any regularity was Amazing Stories in 1927, because it was the closest thing to fantasy he could find.  A year or so later, he encountered Weird Tales and it was love at first sight.

The one thing he disliked about Weird Tales was its interior illustrations.  He felt confident that he could do better.  Six sketches were mailed off to Farnsworth Wright for consideration in the summer of 1935.  Wright took only one as a test, because he doubted if the fine line and stipple work would reproduce on the cheap paper that the magazine was using.  [A portrait of the artist at the age of twenty-one appears in this article from the Rochester Times-Union.]

Rochester Times-Union, December 17, 1935

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Reproduction proofs run off on the pulp stock showed that while the drawings lost a great deal, they still printed with considerable effectiveness.

For the record, that first illustration was of a reclining nude Medusa, and Wright used it to fill a space at the end of a Paul Ernst story, Dancing Feet, in the December, 1935 Weird Tales, which Finlay also illustrated, as well as The Chain of Aforgomen by Clark Ashton Smith and The Great Brain of Kaldar by Edmond Hamilton, all in the same issue.

Cover by Margaret Brundage

Illustrating Paul Ernst’s story, “Dancing Feet” (p. 685)

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Illustration of Medusa, following “Dancing Feet” (p. 694)  [Unrelated to “Dancing Feet”, the image appears at the tale’s end.]

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“Madly he implored from Xexanoth one our of that bygone autumn.”

Illustrating Clark Ashton’s Smith’s story, “The Chain of Aforgomon” (p. 695)

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“It was a bloody, staggering confusion of men and swords.”

Illustrating Edmond Hamilton’s story, “The Great Brain of Kaldar” (p. 707)

Farnsworth Wright didn’t have to wait for reader reaction to know that he had stumbled on a good thing.  Finlay was the key to a special project he had in mind.

All his life Wright had been a lover of Shakespeare.  It had been his dream to publish Shakespeare in low-priced magazine format.  When Max Reinhart and William Dieterle produced A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a moving picture for Warner Brothers in 1935, with a banner cast including James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Mickey Rooney, Dick Powell, Joe E. Brown, and Hugh Herbert, he felt this might be the spark to light a popular Shakespeare revival.  He would produce Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the first of a series of Wright’s Shakespeare Library, similar to Weird Tales in size, but on better paper, to sell for 35c.  It would be an illustrated edition, with 25 drawings by Virgil Finlay, which, together with the fact that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a fantasy, would supply the motivation for support from readers of Weird Tales.

The financial failure of both the film and Wright’s Shakespeare Library were far removed in order of magnitude but in each case they were a disaster.  The effect on Wright was multiplied by the fact that in order to finish the 25 drawings for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Finlay would fail to appear in three consecutive issues of the none-too-economically-stable Weird Tales, risking the ire of impatient readers who clamored for more of his work.

Today, Wright’s edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is remembered only for the Finlay illustrations.

As Finlay appeared regularly in the magazine, the praise of his work reached the proportions of a perpetual anvil chorus.  He so thrilled readers that frequently letters would discuss the illustrations, without a word of comment concerning the story.  A case in point was Fred C. Miles, a New Providence, N.J. fan, whose letter appeared in The Eyrie for May, 1937 literarily exploded: “Virgil Finlay’s illustration for Hasse’s yarn was shattering in its impact.  A cold demonic force hurled itself from the page, smashing its way through to the very brain.”

The accolades Finlay obtained may have been surpassed by those accorded Michelangelo and Leonard da Vinci, but only because wider distribution and longer exposure of those artists had given them an unfair advantage.  It is said that man does not live by bread alone.  Finlay was incontrovertible proof that one may sustain himself on high praise, because there certainly wasn’t very much money passing his way.

Weird Tales paid eight dollars for a black-and-white illustration.  It took Finlay from three days to a week to execute one in his style, depending upon its complexity.  Taking a practical approach to the entire matter, Finlay rationalized that since in 1936 and 1937 it was virtually impossible to find work and if you did $15 a week was considered a fair starting salary, the choice was fundamentally between drawing for Weird Tales at a pittance and being hailed as a “master” or doing nothing and being called a bum.

Farnsworth Wright, who needed every “plus” to hold his shaky publication together, became worried that sooner or later he would lose Finlay to some other magazine.  One way to give Finlay more money without hurting the slim Weird Tales’ budget was to permit him to do covers, which paid more.  The problem was that for three years almost all the covers had been done by Margaret Brundage, a Chicago housewife who specialized in bright pastel nudes.  Wright had always felt that he needed the suggestion of sex to sell his high-priced (25c) periodical.  Brundage had first appeared on the cover of Weird Tales with the September, 1932 issue featuring The Altar of Melek Taos by G.G. Pendarves.  Eventually she had crowded even famed Tarzan illustrator J. Allen St. John, master of anatomy and action, from the cover spot.

Readers had raged unavailingly for years against the scenes of flagellation, suggestions of lesbianism, conclaves of concubines and harems guarded by eunuchs that her covers promised but the stories failed to deliver.  Finally Wright brought St. John back for a few covers.  The reaction to the change was so positive that, in the Dec, 1936 issue, he wrote: “We have received many letters asking that we also use Virgil Finlay for one or more covers.  We are happy to announce that Mr. Finlay will do the cover design for a new Seabury Quinn story, which will be published soon.  If it is as good as his black and white work, then it should be something to talk about.”

There could scarcely have been more reader excitement if Wright had come up with an unpublished Edgar Allan Poe story.  Finlay’s cover for The Globe of Memories by Seabury Quinn (a tale of a love that survives many incarnations) appeared on the Feb., 1937 Weird Tales and was executed with the same photographic realism and full confrontation of horrors that made his black and white drawings so popular.  Henry Kuttner summed up the readers’ feelings in a letter which read: “Just get the February WT.  That Finlay cover is a knockout!  And so is Virgil’s illustrations for Owens’ yarn.  In the name of Lucifer, let’s have a Finlay cover along the lines of his extraordinary illustration for Bloch’s The Faceless God.”

“‘Diabolus?'” she called. “Are you here, my love?  I cannot see you.”

Illustrating Seabury Quinn’s story, “The Globe of Memories” (p. 130)

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“A girl who blended with sunsets and soft, warm music.”

Illustrating Frank Owens’ story, “The Poppy Pearl” (p. 195)

Finlay became a cover regular and might have replaced Brundage entirely, except for a letter he received at his Rochester home, which changed the direction of his career.  Dated Nov. 26, 1937, it read: “As a reader of Weird Tales, I have been interested in your illustrations.  There might be an advantageous opening on The American Weekly at the present time for you.  I do not know whether you have thought of changing your town or whether you would want to come to New York.  If you can do what we want someone to do, it would probably mean living in N.Y.”

The letter was signed in pencil: A. Merritt.

Merritt was one of the great elder gods of the fantasy world exalted author of The Moon Pool, The Ship of Ishtar and Dwellers in the Mirage: the penultimate creator of escape fantasy, whose popularity would sustain itself long after his death.  He was also editor of The American Weekly, the newspaper supplement to Hearst papers.

The salary offer was $80 a week.  During a period when a man could support a family on $30, and anything above that lifted its earner into a comfortable middle class strata, it spelled heady success.

In the Big City, the 24-year-old Virgil Finlay immediately ran into trouble.  He was the youngest man on the working staff of The American Weekly and the cocky favorite of A. Merritt.  His talent was great but his inexperience colossal.

He was not a trained illustrator and was ignorant of publication production and the terminology of the trade.  The stipple and line technique which Merritt so admired was a laborious process.  It took days to produce an illustration, something which made the art director, Lee Conrey twitch nervously as he sweated out his weekly deadlines.

His first assignment, never finished, was to copy a full-color painting so it could be reproduced in black and white.  The initial illustration of his to appear depicted some bowery bums.  His first weird drawing, in his best style, presented an apparition of an old coach and horses.  Learning the ropes proved tough, keeping regular hours even tougher.

He was fired after six months for taking two-hour lunch periods, a temptation in New York City where cliques of office workers tend to try a different restaurant each day.  For about four months he was put on a picture-by-picture basis Then Merritt had a change of heart and sent a note to hurry back, that all would be forgiven if he mended his ways

Merritt was no easy man to work with.  He would have a story conference with Finlay in which the sketches would be decided upon.  When they were finished, Merritt frequently had mentally rewritten the story and wanted an entire new set of sketches.  Story conferences with Merritt were physically difficult.  Periodically Merritt would take off in a chauffeured car, rounding up exotic cheeses from gourmet shops.  He would bring them back to the office and forget about them or use them for cheese rabbit prepared on a little electric stove.  Either way, the odors made a conference with Merritt an ordeal.

A psychological bloc prevented Merritt from continuing to write the marvelous fantasies which made him famous.  The nature of that bloc he eventually confided to Finlay.  Essentially, it boiled down to the fact that he could no longer make literary transitions.  A sword battle ended in a room and Merritt found himself stymied as to whether to permit the hero to exit through a door, window or secret passage; to leave with sword in hand or in scabbard.  He was afraid the wrong choice would destroy the poetic rhythm of his prose.  In earlier years, this bloc had been broken every time he urgently needed money and pushed his protagonist through his heroics to a climax without regard as to whether the “poetic” sequence was broken or not.  Now financially well off, and writing for art’s sake, he no longer had a prod to unfasten his self-imposed shackles.

Finlay learned that magazine illustrating demanded certain liberties.  When unable to find an illustrative scene for The American Weekly’s serialization of John and Ward Hawkins’ novel The Ark of Fire, which began April 3, 1938, he wrote one in.  Not only was there no complaint from the authors, but when the novel of the earth plunging towards a fiery death in the sun was reprinted in the March, 1943 Famous Fantastic Mysteries, the added scene remained intact!

There might have been seven million people in New York in 1938 but Virgil Finlay was still lonesome.  Among his correspondents was Beverly Stiles, a Rochester girl he had known, and who had in common the same birth date.  She had repeatedly refused his proposals of marriage for religious reasons, as she was Jewish.  When he agreed to convert to Judaism they were married Nov. 16, 1938 in New York by Rabbi Dr. Clifton Harby Levy, a salaried consultant on religious matters for The American Weekly since 1899, a friend of A. Merritt, and a leader of the Jewish Reform Movement.

The Finlays set up housekeeping in a 1 1/2 room apartment at 1800 E. 12th St., Brooklyn.  One of their early guests was Henry Kuttner, who had been in correspondence with Finlay whom he finally met at a bar in the Times Square area.  Kuttner brought with him Jim Mooney, an aspiring West Coast artist who boasted the distinction of having sold one illustration to Weird Tales for Henry’s story The Salem Horror (May, 1937).  It was Easter, and Kuttner carried a live rabbit as a gift for Finlay’s wife.

Despite his job on The American Weekly, Finlay had continued to illustrate for Weird Tales.  Kuttner urged him to seek other markets.  Like Finlay, Kuttner had been discovered and developed by Weird Tales, but he found that the growth field was really science fiction.  Mort Weisinger at Thrilling Wonder Stories had been receptive to Kuttner’s work and now Kuttner effectively petitioned for Finlay.  A single illustration by Finlay done in a technique which vested a silvery sheen to the art work for Experiment by Roscoe Clarke, F.R.C.S., a grim tale of a man who turns into a living rat cancer, in the April, 1939 Thrilling Wonder Stories brought an immediately favorable response.

As a result, Finlay also began to illustrate for Startling Stories and Strange Stories, two companions to Thrilling Wonder Stories.

Of all the people he worked with in the fantasy field, Finlay was fondest of Kuttner.  Finlay was best man at a civil ceremony at which Henry Kuttner married C.L. Moore, at the New York City Hall, the morning of June 7, 1940 and his wife, Beverly, was matron of honor.  Finlay paid the justice of the peace and bought the bride and groom breakfast.

The closeness of this friendship is best expressed in Henry Kuttner’s story Reader, I Hate You! (Super Science Stories, May, 1943), written around a Finlay cover and depicting a puzzled giant holding in one hand a space ship with a defiant little man on top.  The two lead characters of the story are Henry Kuttner and Virgil Finlay, who are involved in a search for a science fiction fan “Joe or Mike or Forrest J.,” who accidentally carried the wife of a superman (turned to a chartreuse crystal) off in their pocket.

…Finlay’s original art, from Heritage Auctions.  The original is described as “acrylic on board, 14 x 10.25 inches, framed under acrylic to 18.5 x 15.5 inches, from the Glynn and Suzanne Crain Collection”.

From the standpoint of professional advancement, A. Merritt was Finlay’s best friend.  In a photograph he gave Finlay he inscribed: “To Virgil Finlay who illustrates stories just the way I like them.”  And he meant it!  At that very time Argosy was reprinting Seven Footprints to Satan and Merritt arranged with the editor, G.W. Post, to have Finlay illustrate all five installments, beginning with the June 24, 1939 issue.  Finlay would remain an Argosy illustrator, including many covers, until its change to large-size by Popular Publications with its September, 1943 number.

When The Frank A. Munsey Co. began the issuance of Famous Fantastic Mysteries dated Sept.-Oct., 1939, and dedicated to reprinting great science fiction and fantasy classics from its files, it was Merritt again who induced the editors to use Finlay to illustrate the serialization of The Conquest of the Moon Pool (Nov., 1939).

“I saw a white fire that shown like stars in a swirl of mist and I stood helpless while the sparkling devil pulled my dear ones over the ship’s rail into the eerie light.  I saw them a little while whirling away in the moon track behind the ship – and then they were gone!”

A Sequel to “The Moon Pool”

“Through the moon door, to grapple with the dread dweller and wrest the six Lost Ones from their prison of icy flame.”

Illustrating Abraham Merritt’s story, “The Conquest of the Moon Pool (Part I)” (p. 6)

It was in this magazine and its companion Fantastic Novels that Finlay achieved a new pinnacle of popularity.  The colorful old classics of A. Merritt, Austin Hall, George Allan England, Victor Rousseau and Francis Stevens, with their rich imagery and strong symbolism, were made to order for Finlay’s talents.  The result was a development almost unprecedented in pulp publishing.  Famous Fantastic Mysteries offered in its August, 1941 issue a portfolio of eight Finlay drawings from the magazine, each on an individual sheet of high-grade glossy paper, suitable for framing.  The portfolio sold for 60c or in combination with a one year subscription to the magazine for $1.00.  A second portfolio of eight was sold for the same price in 1943 and a third of eight for 75c in 1949.  After the demise of Famous Fantastic Mysteries in 1953, Nova Press, Philadelphia, brought out a paperbound portfolio of 15 outstanding Finlays to sell for $2.00.

Except for an unfortunate experience Finlay might have become a regular illustrator for Astounding Science-Fiction, then the field leader.  [I’ve long been puzzled by the absence of Finlay’s work from the pages of Astounding Science Fiction, given the magazine’s preeminence and centrality to science fiction literature.  Was this due to a “falling out” or personality clash between John W. Campbell, Jr., and Finlay, or, something else entirely?  Within the following paragraphs, I finally discovered why: Something else, entirely…]

Street & Smith had launched a companion titled Unknown, to deal predominantly in fantasy.  Finlay had been commissioned to do several interior drawings for a novelette The Wisdom of the Ass, which finally appeared in the February, 1940 Unknown as the second in a series of tales based on modern Arabian mythology, written by the erudite wrestler and inventor, Silaki Ali Hassan. [According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database – ISFDB – the pen name of Ulysses George Mihalakis, 7/22/13-9/17/73]

Cover by Edd Cartier (Edward D. Cartier)

Illustrating Silaki Ali Hassan’s story, “The Wisdom of an Ass” (p. 67)

Illustrating Silaki Ali Hassan’s story, “The Wisdom of an Ass” (p. 76)

John W. Campbell had come into considerable criticism for the unsatisfactory cover work of Graves Gladney on Astounding Science-Fiction during early 1939.  So it was with a note of triumph, in projecting the features of the August, 1939 issue, he announced to his detractors:

“The cover, incidentally, should please some few of you.  It’s being done by Virgil Finlay, and illustrates the engine room of a spaceship.  Gentlemen, we try to please!”

Herewith and forsooth, here’s an image of my recently (as in early 2024) acquired original (physical-and-not-purely-photon!) copy of the July ’39 issue of Astounding Science Fiction:

(Here’s the “original” low-resolution cover image of this issue as displayed in this post.)

John W. Campbell, Jr.’s, mention of the forthcoming appearance of a cover illustration by Finlay appears in the second paragraph of “In Times to Come”:

The cover proved a shocking disappointment.  Illustrating Lester del Rey’s The Luck of Ignatz, its crudely drawn wooden human figures depicted operating an uninspired machine would have drawn rebukes from the readers of an amateur science-fiction fan magazine.  The infinite detail and photographic intensity which trademarked Finlay was entirely missing. [Here’s the cover of the issue, as printed, from the Luminist Archives.]

[And…  Here is Finlay’s preliminary cover design.  Found at artnet, via pinterest, the original item is there described as “gouache, watercolor and tempera on board Size:10 x 7 in. (25.4 x 17.8 cm.)”.  The design is also representative and thematically typical of the nautical style characteristic of depictions of spacecraft in science fiction illustrations from the 1930s through the early 1950s.]

No one was more sickened than Virgil Finlay.  He had been asked to paint a gigantic engine room, in which awesome machinery dwarfed the men with implications of illimitable power.  He had done just that; but the art director had taken a couple of square inches of his painting, blown it up to a full-size cover and discarded the rest.

The result was horrendous.  A repetition of it would have seriously damaged his reputation, so Finlay refused to draw for Street and Smith again.  [Thus, Finlay’s absence from Astounding is amply accounted for.]

Finlay’s genius for graphically depicting the nightmarish finally proved his undoing.  Whipping all of his considerable talents into line he turned out an imaginative interpretation of the Sargasso Sea for The American Weekly that was so nauseous that a telegram arrived from William Randolph Hearst to “Fire Finlay.”  This time Merritt could not save him, though three weeks later Finlay did again receive the first of a number of small free-lance assignments from Harry Carl of that publication, predominantly for the food page.

To add the “crusher” to his misfortune, Finlay was welcomed into the all-embracing bosom of the U.S. armed forces on June 2, 1943.  After three months training as a combat engineer he was made a corporal. [News about Finlay’s military service, from the Rochester Times-Union.]

Rochester Times-Union, May 2, 1944

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Following a stint at Hawaii he was sent to Okinawa in April, 1945, where he stayed until March 17, 1946.  There he was promoted to sergeant and served as chief draftsman to the Surgeon General Brigadier General Maxwell.

The induction of Finlay into the armed forces created a crisis at Famous Fantastic Mysteries.  His illustrations had been beyond question one of the periodical’s mainstays.  Without them many of the “classics” reprinted took on the aspect of creaky period pieces.  Desperately, editor Mary Gnaedinger and Alden H. Norton who had also been using Finlay in Super Science Stories cast about for a replacement.  Their one dim hope was an old man who illustrated regularly for Adventure, Lawrence Sterne Stevens, who was in the business so long, that in his youth he had received considerable training in the fine line and cross-hatch techniques.

“You’ve been asking for more work,” Alden H. Norton told him, “if you can make like Finlay, we’ll turn Famous Fantastic Mysteries over to you lock, stock and barrel, covers as well as interiors.”

Stevens opened up the November, 1942 issue of Super Science Stories, where he had done the opening spread to Henry Kuttner’s We Guard the Black Planet, of a man and a woman with wings, executed in superbly delicate line.

Cover by Stephen Lawrence

“Earth is not for us, lad.  Earth is for the weak, for the worms that crawl on the ground.  For us is flight, and the mad rush of the winds past our hurtling bodies.  That we must have, without it we cannot live – though Death be the price we pay for it!”

Illustrating Henry Kuttner’s story, “We Guard the Black Planet!” (pp. 10-11)

“I believe that’s why you asked me, Al,” Stevens replied.  “I don’t think there’s any question I can do it.”

Stevens first job was the cover and interiors for the novel Three Go Back by J. Leslie Mitchell (Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December, 1943), telling of three moderns thrust back in time to the era of the cave man.  His approximation of the Finlay techniques was remarkable.  While inferior to Finlay in creative imagination, in anatomy and in the fine nuance of the stipple, he brought to his pictures a charm, painstaking and pleasing detail, and the gracious feel of the era in which the story illustrated was set that created for him his own niche.  Eventually, Famous Fantastic Mysteries would issue two Portfolios of Stevens’ work.

“The waterfall was like a silver pillar in a dark Pagan temple.”  (p. 25)

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“A lark!  The piping song of youth forgotten…”  (p. 41)

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“The land behind them had vanished in some fissure of the earth!”  (p. 71)

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“Sinclair’s bowstring tightened as the Neanderthaler approached.”  (p. 85)

While stationed on Hawaii, prior to shipment to Okinawa, Finlay found time to do one fantasy illustration which he mailed to his wife, now living with her parents in Rochester.  His wife sent it on to Mary Gnaedinger who had C.L. Moore write a story around it.

The illustration showed the head of a unicorn alongside a strange woman with a tremendous uplift of leaves in place of hair.  Interpreting it, C.L. Moore wrote the sensitive confession of the dying Luiz o Bobo, a simple lad who could see the “daemon” that follows every man around.  Appropriately titled “Daemon,” by the time the story appeared in the October, 1946 Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Virgil Finlay was long back in Rochester with his wife.  He would thenceforth share the work in Famous Fantastic Mysteries and its later companions with Lawrence.

Cover by Finlay or Lawrence

“For such as Luis o Bobo the powers of the ancient earth will gather when his cry for help is heard … but only for such as he, who have no souls – who can see the dainty hoofs of Pan and can hear the strange and terrible music of his pipes…”  (p. 99)

[Note that Finlay signed the drawing “Cpl. Virgil Finlay, Oahu, Hawaii, 1946”]

There was more than enough work for both.  Finlay found himself occupied seven days a week illustrating for Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Startling Stories and later for Super Science Stories and Fantastic Novels, as well as other magazines that were to spring up in the wake of a gathering boom.  His illustrating techniques sharpened magnificently after World War II, and readers of the fantasy and science fiction pulps were given a display of inspired symbolism, breathtaking imagery, along with a glorification of the human figure, closeups of evil incarnate and dazzling visions of a scientific future, all executed in a meticulous style that made even the black and white tones appear to possess infinite graduations of light and dark.

Finlay bought a house in Westbury, New York, in a development that was part of the fringe of the famed Levittown complex.  There, his only child, Lail, was born February 9, 1949.  By the dint of endless hours, he managed to prevail against inflation despite the time-killing pace of his method.  In the end his dedication was betrayed by circumstances beyond his control.  The boom in science fiction that gathered steam in 1949, began to lose it in 1953.  Finlay’s biggest markets, first, Famous Fantastic Mysteries and its companions (1953) and then Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories (1955) were found among the casualties.

The trend to digest-size science fiction magazines also led to the elimination of interior illustrations in some.  Those used were paid for at rates reminiscent of the depression.  Finlay was soon forced to utilize swifter techniques to enable him to turn out a large enough quantity of work to sustain himself and his family, and then increasingly he had to look for income outside the fantasy and science fiction field.  This “extracurricular” work even took the extreme of designing lamp shades, as well as special illustrating projects.

One notable illustrating achievement, destined to become a collector’s item, is The Complete Book of Space Travel by Albro Gaul, issued by The World Publishing Company in 1956, featuring a cover jacket and 19 superb black and white illustrations in a variety of Finlay’s most effective artistic approaches.

As the reader’s departments disappeared from most science fiction periodicals, Finlay found that the intangible benefits as well as the tangible ones were no longer to be found in magazine illustrating.  The 11th World Science Fiction Convention, Philadelphia, 1953, had awarded Virgil Finlay a Hugo as the best interior illustrator of the year.  He made his sole public address before any science fiction group before The Eastern Science Fiction Association, Newark, N.J., March 1, 1964, where he received a plaque naming him “the dean of science fiction art for unexcelled imagery and technique.”  These were pleasant but scarcely enough compensation for years of diminishing satisfaction both economically and personally from fantasy work.

Beginning in 1959, Virgil Finlay made a decision to devote part of his time to gallery painting regardless of whether he succeeded in selling any or not.  He started with a series of abstract, impressionistic and experimentalist paintings, works at the opposite extreme of his traditional precise realism, yet holding in common with it a distinctive intensity that was recognizably his own despite the variance in style.

Gradually the experimental basis of this new tack resolved itself into near realism, enhanced by the new lessons Finlay had learned.  Today, Finlay is still a science fiction illustrator but his paintings may also be purchased at select galleries.  Colleges of fine art are beginning to invest in Finlays, counting on his ability to provide them with an eventual dividend in the constantly growing art market. (2)

It is almost a certainty, that in the near future, while fantasy enthusiasts are wildly bidding for a Finlay original for a pulp magazine illustration at some science fiction convention, art connoisseurs, oblivious to that phase of Finlay’s activities, will be doing the same in a higher financial key for his gallery paintings at important auction centers.

(2) Gallery Beyond the Blue Door, Inc., 2307 Merrick Road, Merrick, Long Island, New York, maintains a perpetual gallery of his serious work.

[News about the above-mentioned showing of Finlay’s work, from Newsday (Long Island newspaper) of May 15, 1965.]

“GALLERY BEYOND THE BLUE DOOR.   Illustrator Virgil Finlay’s one-man show.  Through May 23.  Oils, water colors, drawings, abstractions.  Open Tuesday through Saturday 11 AM to 5 PM; Sundays 1 to 5 PM.  Closed Mondays.  2307 Merrick Road, Merrick.” 

______________________________

To Virgil Finlay
Upon his drawing for Robert Bloch’s Tale, “The Faceless God”

By H.P. LOVECRAFT
Weird Tales
July, 1937

In dim abysses pulse the shapes of night,
Hungry and hideous, with strange miters crowned;
Black pinions beating in fantastic flight
From orb to orb through soulless voids profound.
None dares to name the cosmos whence they course,
Or guess the look on each amorphous face,
Or speak the words that with resistless force
Would draw them from the halls of outer space.

Yet here upon a page our frightened glance
Finds monstrous forms no human eye should see;
Hints of those blasphemies whose countenance
Spreads death and madness through infinity.
What limner he who braves black gulfs alone
And lives to make their alien horrors known?

______________________________

Virgil W. Finlay died on January 18, 1971.  Here is his obituary from Newsday (Nassau, New York), published on January 22 of that year.  He is buried in Rochester, New York, the city of his birth, at Riverside Cemetery.]

______________________________

[And, we close with a book review of Gerry de la Ree’s “The Book of Virgil Finlay”, one of eight compilations of Finlay’s work published by de la Ree between 1975 and 1981; de la Ree also authored the article about Finlay in the June, 1978 issue of Starlog – mentioned in my introduction.  This review is from the Alexandria Bay New York Thousand Island Sun of February 3, 1977.]

THE BOOK OF VIRGIL FINLAY by Gerry de la Ree.  Flare-Avon.  $4.95.  Finlay is, five years after his death, virtually unknown.  Yet in the field of magazine fantasy and science fiction he was a giant.  I remember, as a boy, being spirited away to other planets by his brilliantly executed pen and ink drawings in Weird Tales and Thrilling Wonder Stories.  He labored for many hours over each of his drawings using a combination of cross-hatching and stipple that few artists of their century had ever mastered.  And, remembering that boy I was some thirty years ago, I have to confess that he had another talent that endeared him to those of us traversing the perils of puberty.  Boy, could he draw naked ladies!  Always in good taste, and of course, with strategically placed bubbles floating in the air.  He was a master, who would have been so considered had he been born fifty years earlier.  This collection is a gem.

[And, his work is still masterful.] 

Reference (…well, one reference…)

“Reader, I Hate You, Super Science Stories cover, May 1943”, at Heritage Auctions

June 10, 2019