The First of Freas: Weird Tales, November, 1950 – Featuring “The Third Shadow”, by H. Russell Wakefield [Frank Kelly Freas]

The prominence and significance of Frank Kelly Freas’ art is well-known, with general awareness of his work – in terms of pop-culture recognition of his most significant creations – certainly extending well beyond the realm of devotees of science fiction, science, fantasy, and humor.

Having featured his art in many prior posts, I thought it’d be worthwhile to present his first efforts at cover art. Identification of these was straightforward, the Wikipedia entry for Freas stating: “The fantasy magazine Weird Tales published the first cover art by Freas on its November 1950 issue: “The Piper” illustrating “The Third Shadow” by H. Russell Wakefield. His second was a year later in the same magazine…,” this information presumably based on the biographical profile of Freas at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

And so, his first cover:

It shows an image of a satyr (Pan?) conjuring translucent red things (bubbles? globules? spirits?) from the earth, appears below. Even in this first work you can see an aspect an artistic technique which Freas developed and used to great effect in many of his compositions: The use of bright and dark shades of a single color to denote depth, texture, and “punch” to his characters. As for the irregular grayish skyline in front of the huge moon, at first I thought (!) it was a silhouette of a city, for it does have a certain “Manhattan-skyline-viewed-from-within-Central-Park-ish” appearance.

But, that’s probably just a coincidence, for the gray whatever-it-is simply and effectively adds depth to the scene.

(Curiously, the style painting is reminiscent of the work of Hannes Bok.)

And, here’s Lee B. Coye’s interior illustration for H. Russell Wakefield’s “The Third Shadow”…