Before I read my first Lovecraft story ("The Festival"), I had seen his books advertised on the back pages of Creepy and Eerie magazines. I had no idea what they were, but it was clear they were horror stories.
When I first picked up HPL, it wasn't in these editions, but an edition of The Shadow Over Innsmouth published by Scholastic Books. These Ballantine collections, though, were all over the place in the late seventies and were among the first I bought myself.
Looking over the contents, they leave out a lot of the major stories, and The Shuttered Room persists in claiming Derleth's stories are based on actual unfinished HPL stories and not mere fragments or jottings in his commonplace book. The two Cthulhu Mythos anthologies, originally released as a single hardcover volume edited by August Derleth, are great. Between them, you get some of the best Mythos fiction. There's "The Hounds of Tindalos," "The Black Stone," "Notebook Found in a Deserted House," and other really good stories.
So, take a moment and take a look at some of the wildest Lovecraft cover art from the late John Holmes.
I'm almost positive I saw these covers at the Macy's book section when I was a kid. They freaked me out especially At the Mountains of Madness.
ReplyDeleteWow, imagine a dept. store like Macy's with books today. It was seeing that particular cover that triggered me to post them all.
ReplyDeleteI came to HPL a little later, so I remember seeing the Murray Tinkelman and then Michael Whelan covers, although the John Holmes covers would pop up in used bookstores. You may have seen this already, it turns out Holmes was pretty interesting in his own right: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/oct/18/john-holmes-obituary
ReplyDeleteI might still have a few in my sister's attic. They're just so bonkers. Thanks for the link. I've seen some of his other work - the Be Bop Deluxe cover always creeped me out in the record stores - but knew nothing about him or the rest of his work.
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