Feldstein, Al - Weird Fantasy, issue 14, cover (July 1952)

I’m thrilled to add this Al Feldstein Weird Fantasy #14 cover to my gallery. When I began the search for a Feldstein cover, I knew I was not going to have the chance to be picky. But, given my druthers, I really wanted a cover from his Weird Fantasy run between issues #9-14. Why? Because from all of the reading and research I had done, I think Feldstein was creating covers in that run that he wanted to create – covers that represented his view of what was engaging about science fiction and fantasy and spoke to the little kid in him that dreamed of exploring outer space. They speak to a science fiction defined by the expanse and majesty of strange universes and moons, not scary aliens and exploding planets.

As a starting point, its important to remember that, according to Feldstein himself, it was Bill Gaines that was the impetus for pushing EC into creating science fiction and fantasy titles. Granted, it was at the urging of Feldstein who was trying to push EC into innovating and creating its own properties that would hopefully be more stable and rely less on trends. The first manifestation of that effort was their horror titles – Gaines & Feldstein had a shared love of horror movies and radio shows, and mutually decided to publish such stories in comics. But, it was Gaines who loved science fiction, something that Feldstein had never read. Gaines actually supplied Feldstein with copies of Astounding Science Fiction – John Campbell’s pulp magazine – to familiarize him with the genre and see if Feldstein could create science fiction titles for EC. The result was Weird Fantasy and Weird Science.

The Weird Fantasy covers were all created by Feldstein, with the exception of two by Joe Orlando (issue 19 and 22), one collaboration between Feldstein & Al Williamson (issue 18) and one collaboration between Al Williamson & Frank Frazetta (issue 21).

The first cover from the May/June 1950 issue (numbered as thirteen given the EC practice of starting a new title over an old one to save new title fees with the post office) is prototypical Feldstein – it’s crowded with lots of text. It’s more akin to one of his horror covers with a brain in a jar, a dismembered and headless robot in the background and the tag-line ‘Fantastic SuspenStories We Dare You to Read!’ – the same type of tag-line readers were seeing on EC’s Haunt of Fear title. In conjunction with the ‘Tales of Tension’ from Crime SuspenStories, the look of early Weird Fantasy covers mimics many of the same text, tone and visuals of EC’s horror titles.

It’s issue nine – a cover featuring spaceships with astronauts working outside – that begins a different run of covers. As Bill Spicer calls it in Russ Cochran’s EC Library Weird Fantasy collected edition, it was ‘as if Feldstein was on a hardware and topography kick and did not want to be interrupted’. The run of covers from issue #9-14 focuses on rocket ships, planet surfaces and astronauts. Spicer goes on to further speculate that perhaps ‘Feldstein was indulging his personal preferences over what traditionally sold better’. It was also about this time that the growing popularity of Wally Wood would result in him taking cover assignments from Feldstein (the first was Weird Science #9 – which was the same cover date of Sept-Oct 1951). Perhaps Feldstein was focused on drawing from the heart and not for others?

The run ends with issue 15 – we’re back to damsels in distress with a big monster attacking a handcuffed girl. While I’ve not been able to discover anything that would indicate what precipitated the change, it does highlight the different visual tone Feldstein had pursued for the previous six issues. In the end, it would turn out that neither motif would have the requisite impact on sales for the title to survive. Ultimately, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science were never as popular as their horror brethren in the EC line. They were eventually merged into Weird Science-Fantasy in 1954, which ran for seven issues before being changed to Incredible Science Fiction for four issues. While I’m a huge fan of pretty much every cover on the series, the run from issue #9–14 was really something special.

All of which is to say that I owe Terry Doyle, the former owner of this cover, an enormous thank you. Becoming a steward of this piece was made that much more enjoyable by virtue of my interaction with him. I had the pleasure of picking this up from him directly in London. We spent a few hours drinking pints of Guinness while he educated me on British comics, strips and dailies and introduced me to some artistic names that I was not even aware of (which is going to end up costing me some more money!). How I wish every deal was brought to conclusion in such manner. Thank you, Mr. Doyle – for both your friendship and the piece. I promise to take extremely good care of it!