Swanson of Dakota By Karen Joan Kohoutek

Carl Swanson
with his wife, Evelyn

North Dakota, where I have lived for many years, is an under-represented state in the history of weird fiction. So one of my favorite footnotes is the elusive Carl Swanson (May 25, 1902 — November 16, 1974), who corresponded with Lovecraft, inspired The Fantasy Fan fanzine, and collaborated with Jerry Siegel, all while living in Washburn, ND. One of his best-known ventures is an attempt to start a magazine called Galaxy, although, judging by references in the letters of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, the idea swiftly rose and fell.

            Lovecraft commented on Swanson in several of his letters to Robert Barlow, starting in January 1932: “I am told that a new weird magazine is about to be started by one Carl Swanson of Washburn, North Dakota. I’ve sent in ‘The Nameless City’ & ‘Beyond the Wall of Sleep,’ but am doubtful about their acceptance” (21). Later that month, he added that he had “just heard from Swanson—the new magazine man. He has accepted both ‘The Nameless City’ & ‘Beyond the Wall of Sleep’” (22).

            In March 1932, Lovecraft provided more information. “Swanson’s plans are slowly taking form. The new periodical will be called Galaxy, & Derleth understands that the rate of pay will be about ¼ (cent) per word. The magazine will sell for 10 (cents), or $1.00 per year. Wright of W.T. is rather worried about the coming competition, & tends to resent the sale of reprinting rights to Swanson by his authors” (25).

            This would come up again in March 1935, when, speaking of Wright and reprint rights from Weird Tales, Lovecraft says, “The only smallness he ever displayed in a matter of reprinting was some years ago, when Swanson of Dakota intended to found a magazine of second appearances” (217). Also in March, Howard wrote to his friend Tevis Clyde Smith that “a man named Swanson is publishing a magazine in one of the Dakotas, on the weird order. I’ve neglected my chances, until I wonder if the thing’s about up ten years ahead. Lovecraft wrote me that he’d placed a couple of yarns, and evidently the old weird tale buccaneers have descended on it like a horde of vultures” (315).

Conan and the Acolyte: Robert E. Howard and F. T. Laney by Bobby Derie

I had previously read the January or February 193[7] WT with a Rimel story in it, and had been utterly unimpressed.— F. T. Laney, Ah, Sweet Idiocy! 2

Weird Tales, Jan. 1937

Duane W. Rimel’s story “The Disinterment” appeared in the January 1937 issue of Weird Tales; if Francis Towner Laney read the magazine through to ‘The Eyrie’, the letters pages of the magazine, he would have run across Clifford Ball’s “In Appreciation of Howard”—an homage to Robert E. Howard, the Texan pulpster who had died the year before. That would likely have been his first introduction to Howard.

F. T. Laney occupies an odd place in Howard scholarship. He missed the period when Howard was actively writing and didn’t come to pulp and fantasy fandom until about 1939. He rose to prominence in the early-to-mid 1940s as a member of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society, the Fantasy Amateur Press Association (FAPA), and as editor and publisher of The Acolyte fanzine (1942-1946), which was devoted primarily to H. P. Lovecraft. Yet being where he was when he was, and a vocal part of fandom, Laney ended up being at the confluence of a good deal of Howardian interest and ended up playing a silent but important role in Robert E. Howard’s legacy.

In the course of being an editor of a Lovecraft-oriented fanzine and searching out material, Laney came into contact with a number of Lovecraft’s correspondents, including Clark Ashton Smith, Duane W. Rimel, F. Lee Baldwin, Emil Petaja, Fritz Leiber, H. C. Koenig, Nils H. Frome, R. H. Barlow, August Derleth, Donald and Howard Wandrei, F. J. Ackerman, E. Hoffmann Price, and Stuart M. Boland; many of whom were also correspondents with Robert E. Howard, and it was largely through these contacts that Laney became in contact with things Howardian.

Laney got in touch with F. Lee Baldwin through their mutual friend Duane W. Rimel, and beginning in December 1942 Baldwin began working on material for The Acolyte, both in terms of a regular column (“Within the Circle,” a continuation of Baldwin’s column from The Fantasy Fan in the ‘30s), and writing to former pulpsters and their correspondents for material. (Laney 13) As part of this mailing campaign, in early 1943 Baldwin contacted Robert E. Howard’s friend F. Thurston Torbett, looking for information on Howard for a potential article, which can be read in F. Thurston Torbett and F. Lee Baldwin on Robert E. Howard. The correspondence stretched into 1944, and Baldwin’s article on Howard never appeared, nor did he mention the Texan in any of his other articles in The Acolyte.

CAS, Laney, & Bob Hoffman, circa 1940s

In November 1943, Laney moved to Los Angeles, California, where he met pulpsters like Emil Petaja and Fritz Leiber, and fans like Forrest J. Ackerman. Robert H. Barlow, the young literary executor of Lovecraft’s estate, had moved to San Francisco in 1938-1939, where he began attending university and indulging in fan projects, including one small press-effort to publish a collection of Robert E. Howard’s poems. Barlow began contributing to The Acolyte with the Summer 1943 issue, though his only direct contribution regarding Howard would be the Barlow-Lovecraft satire “The Battle That Ended the Century” (The Acolyte Fall 1944); more on Barlow and Howard’s can be read in The Two Bobs: Robert E. Howard and Robert H. Barlow.

E. Hoffmann Price had returned to his native California in 1934, stopping along the way to visit Robert E. Howard in Cross Plains, Texas, and settling near San Francisco. He became a friend and correspondent with Barlow; who even visited Price accompanied by an aged James F. Morton in 1939. (BOD 53, 355-357) It is not clear when exactly Laney got in touch with the native Californian but a letter from Price to Laney, dated 22 July 1944, on the subject of Robert E. Howard, was published in The Acolyte #9 (Winter 1945). This may have been inspired by Price’s essay “Robert E. Howard” in the fanzine Diablerie #4 (May 1944), as Laney was a friend of the publisher Bill Watson (Laney 31), or maybe it came from the same place as F. Lee Baldwin’s questions to F. Thurston Torbett.

Whatever the case, Price began contributing letters to The Acolyte, beginning with The Acolyte #7, then the letter concerning Howard in #9, and letter in #10 (Spring 1945) announcing the death of Dr. Isaac M. Howard:

Robert E. Howard and the Amateur Press (Part 4) by Bobby Derie

4: Fan Press: Marvel Tales, The Fantasy Fan, Fantasy Magazine, and The Phantagraph

By the way—I enclose a circular from a new weird magazine to which Clark Ashton Smith and I [are] contributing. There is no pay for contributions, but we are glad of a chance to get printed copies of the tales all other magazines have rejected. [...] First issue of The Fantasy Fan came the other day. It looks sadly amateurish, though the editor promises better things to come.

— H. P. Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard, 24 Jun 1933, AMTF 2.620, 630

Robert E. Howard’s correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft introduced him into a wider circle than any he had ever known—professional writers and fans from across the United States, like E. Hoffmann Price, R. H. Barlow, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith. As part of the “group,” Howard shared in the circulation of manuscripts, criticism of stories published and unpublished, and tips on the state of the industry and potential new markets for industrious pulpsters to splash...even if they didn’t always pay.

Pulps brought science fiction, fantasy, and weird fiction to the masses; while science fiction novels can trace their genesis to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), and dime-novels could reach a mass audience, pulp fiction created communities of fans who, instead of interacting solely through letter-columns, began to meet, organize in their own clubs and mailing lists...and publish. The products of the fan press are distinguishable from any other form of amateur journalism or literary “small magazines” only in focus, not in the material product produced, and must have reminded Howard clearly of the amateur papers produced by himself and his friends, if more ambitious and better-presented.

Charles D. Hornig produced the first issue of The Fantasy Fan in September 1933; the first of the fan magazines dedicated to weird fiction. Clark Ashton Smith sent Howard a copy of the first issue, and Howard replied in a letter from October that same year:

Thanks for the copy of Fantasy Fan. I subscribed for a year; a dollar is little enough to pay for the privilege of reading stories by Lovecraft, Derleth and yourself. I enjoyed very much your “Kingdom of the Worm”. It is an awesome and magnificent and somber word picture you have drawn of the haunted land of Antchar. (CL3.136, cf. 141-142)

Howard’s letter asking for a subscription was likewise full of praise for the magazine (which Hornig would quote in the November 1933 issue).

Thanks for the copy of The Fantasy Fan. I found it very interesting, and think it has a good future. Anybody ought to be willing to pay a dollar for the privilege of reading, for a whole year, the works of Lovecraft, Smith, and Derleth. I am glad to see that you announce a poem by Smith in the next issue. He is a poet second to none. I also hope you can persuade Lovecraft to let you use some of his superb verse. Weird poetry possesses an appeal peculiar to itself and the careful use of it raises the quality of any magazine. I liked very much the department of “True Ghost Stories” and hope you will continue it. The world is full of unexplained incidents and peculiar circumstances, the logical reasons of which are often so obscure and hidden that they are lent an illusion of the supernatural. Enclosed find my check for a year’s subscription. I shall be glad to submit some things, if you wish. (CL3.139-140, cf.145)

Frank Frazetta's artwork for
"The Frost Giant's Daughter"

Howard by this point was working full-time as a professional writer, but following Lovecraft’s suggestion of submitting “tales all other magazines have rejected” (AMTF 2.620), sent Hornig a “The Frost King’s Daughter”—which originally had been written as a tale of Conan the Cimmerian, entitled “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” and submitted to Weird Tales, where it was rejected (CL2.315, 329); so he changed the hero to Amra and retitled it. Hornig accepted the story, which was published in the March 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan as “Gods of the North.” Lovecraft wrote to Hornig in praise of the story (“Glad to see the interesting tale by Robert E. Howard” UL 13).

A few months later, Howard submitted some verse to Hornig, which was duly published in The Fantasy Fan in September 1934 as “The Voices Waken Memory,” and in January 1935 as “Voices of the Night: 2. Babel”, which caused Lovecraft to write to Richard F. Searight:

Yes—the Wooley & Howard material is really admirable. Both writers are genuine poets, & really ought to be able to have verse in the remunerative magazines right along. Most of Two-Gun’s verse has never been submitted for publication. Some of it really marvelous in its savage, barbaric potency. (LRS 48)

For the most part, however, Howard’s interaction with The Fantasy Fan was mostly as a subscriber who wrote the occasional letter in praise of his friend’s writings, praising the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith (CL3.149, 150) and William Lumley (CL3.195, 197), Lovecraft’s stories and article-series Supernatural Horror in Literature (CL3.192, 194, 274-275), the fiction of R. H. Barlow’s (CL3.215) and Emil Petaja (CL3.260), and sometimes several at once:

Smith’s poem in the March issue was splendid, as always. By all means, publish as many of his poems as possible; I would like to see more by Lumley, and it would be a fine thing if you could get some of Lovecraft’s poetry. (CL3.203)

Yet, Howard never became as involved with The Fantasy Fan as he was with The Junto, nor was he ever a prolific contributor—understandable, as he was working to write salable material at the time. An example of Howard’s distance from the magazine can be seen in how he kept out of the kerfuffle in “The Boiling Point” (The Fantasy Fan’s letter column) between Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and a young Forrest J. Ackerman, limiting himself to a private comment to Lovecraft:

I’ve also been considerably amused by the controversy raging there, apparently precipitated by this Ackerman gentleman — I believe that’s the name. It’s always been a strange thing to me why some people think they have to attack fiction they don’t care for personally. If it was an article on government or sociology, dealing with some vital national problem, it might be different. But it seems rather absurd to me for one to attack a fiction story that has no connection with everyday problems at all. If Ackerman doesn’t like Smith’s stories, why, no law compels him to read them. (CL3.192)

The Fantasy Fan ran monthly from September 1933 to February 1935, running for 18 issues in total. Subscriptions for a year (12 issues) was a dollar; Howard subscribed around November 1933, and probably the first issue he received was December 1933. His subscription would then have run out around November of 1934, and apparently he sent another check to renew, but of course the publication ceased a few months later. Hornig, to his credit, sent Howard a “refund” on his subscription in the form of stamps covering the remainder, to which Howard replied:

I’m very sorry to learn that The Fantasy Fan has to be discontinued. I enjoyed the magazine very much, and had hoped that it would be able to carry on. It doesn’t seem quite fair for the editor of a fan magazine to have to bear all the financial loss of the magazine’s failure. In the case of my unfinished subscription, at least, let’s split the expense. I’m taking the liberty of returning half the stamps you sent me. I got all my money’s worth and more out of the pleasure I derived from the magazine. (CL3.305)

Having been involved in the amateur press a bit himself, Howard was probably very conscious of the cost of producing such periodicals, hence his magnanimous gesture.

In the fall of 1933, as Hornig was first issuing The Fantasy Fan, small publisher William F. Crawford was sending around a circular for a magazine to be titled Unusual Stories, soliciting material from Lovecraft and his correspondents, including Howard:

I hope Crawford has good fortune with Unusual Stories. I let him have a yarn entitled “The Garden of Fear”, dealing with one of my various conceptions of the Hyborian and post-Hyborian world. He seemed to like the story very well, and I intend to let him have some more on the same order if he can use them. I have an idea which I’d like to work out in a series of that nature. (CL3.136)

This was, like “The Frost-King’s Daughter,” another story that had been rejected by Farnsworth Wright when Howard had submitted it to Weird Tales. When Crawford’s magazine did appear, the name had changed to Marvel Tales, and Howard’s story appeared in the second issue (July 1934). Lovecraft’s assessment of the fanzine was frank (“ambitious size but rotten contents” AMTF 2.892), excepting Howard’s story (“I really can’t understand Wright’s rejection of that item.” AMTF 2.791) and other items. Howard’s opinion isn’t given, though he praised Emil Petaja’s poem “Witch’s Berceuse” (CL3.366, 369) and looked forward to Lovecraft’s “Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction” (CL3.274).

The Fantasy Magazine had begun life as the Science Fiction Digest in 1932, and by 1934 had changed its name and come under the editorship of Julius Schwartz, who would go on to act as an agent for H. P. Lovecraft, and later would have an influential career in comics. Schwartz arranged several round-robins, the most famous of which is “The Challenge from Beyond,” which was serialized in the magazine and included contributions by Catherine L. Moore, A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long; with Howard’s contribution appearing in the September 1935 issue. (LRS 64-65)

If Howard was otherwise a subscriber to the Fantasy Magazine prior to being approached for this endeavor, there is no evidence for it in his surviving letters, though as Fantasy Magazine advertised in The Fantasy Fan, he must at least have been aware of it, and it remains essentially his only contribution (though a portion of one of his letters was excerpted in the July 1935 issue as “A Biographical Sketch of Robert E. Howard”). “The Challenge From Beyond” stands out as Howard’s first original fiction created solely for a fanzine, as opposed to a previously rejected tale, and his only “collaboration” with Lovecraft et al. Lovecraft himself was enjoyed Howard’s section (“It amused me to see how quickly Two-Gun converted the scholarly & inoffensive George Campbell into a raging Conan or King Kull!” LRBO 163)

The final, and arguably most important, interaction between Robert E. Howard and the fan press occurred near the end of his life, when H. P. Lovecraft sent him a copy of a new fanzine:

And I got a big kick out of your sonnet in the current issue of the Phantagraph, which is the first copy of that publication I’d seen. A nice looking little magazine, and one which I hope will have a better future than many of such ventures. I believe of all the various clans of readers, the weird and scientific-fiction fans are the most loyal and active. (CL3.461)

Similar to how The All-Around Magazine and possibly even The Junto had grown out of the Lone Scout “tribe papers,” the Phantagraph had started out as The International Science Fiction Guild’s Bulletin, a fan club paper that first appeared in 1934, but was reincarnated in July-August 1935, under the editorship of Donald Wollheim (and actually printed by William Crawford of Marvel Tales).

Howard and Lovecraft had apparently discussed the Phantagraph some months prior to the Texan ever seeing an issue; though those specific letters don’t survive, we have a letter dated 9 July 1935 from Lovecraft to Wollheim suggesting he solicit Howard for material, and providing the Lock Box 313 address (LRBO 313), and Howard duly sent his contribution along to Lovecraft to forward to Wollheim:

Here is something which Two-Gun Bob says he wants forwarded to you for The Phantagraph, & which I profoundly hope you’ll be able to use. This is really great stuff—Howard has the most magnificent sense of the drama of “history” of anyone I know. He possess a panoramic vision which takes in the evolution & interaction of races & nations over vast periods of time, & gives one the same large-scale excitement which (with even vaster scope) is furnished by things like Stapledon’s “Last & First Men”. (LRBO 319, cf. LRS 69)

“The Hyborian Age” was a lengthy historical essay that served as kind of historiographic background to Howard’s stories of Conan the Cimmerian, starting in dim prehistory and proceeding up to the roots of known history, and apparently never intended for publication. Wollheim began to serialize the essay in the Phantagraph, publishing the first three parts of the essay in February, August, and October 1936—the latter two published after Howard’s suicide in July of that year—but left it incomplete after only three installments.

The critical importance of Howard’s work in the fan press is less the fiction he produced, than the simple interaction with the burgeoning fandom. As a professional writer during this period, Howard was growing more prolific and profitable, writing less weird fiction but splashing western, spicy, and other markets with some regularity, and most of his efforts went to paying markets, usually through his agent Otis Adelbert Kline. Yet part of the enduring popularity of Robert E. Howard is due in no small part to his legion of fans, and the Texan’s contribution to the fanzines and interaction with the burgeoning fandom left a legacy that was felt after his death.

Charles D. Hornig

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 4) - Dec 1933 - letter (CL3.142, cf.139-140)

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 5) - Jan 1934 - letter (CL3.145)

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 7) - Mar 1934 - “Gods of the North”

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 9) - May 1934 - letter (CL3.149)

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 2, no. 1) - Sep 1934 - “The Voices Waken Memory”

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 2, no. 5) - Jan 1935 - “Babel”

William L. Crawford

  Marvel Tales (vol. 1, no. 2) - Jul 1934 - “The Garden of Fear”

Conrad H. Rupert

  Fantasy Magazine (vol. 5, no. 2) - July 1935 - “A Biographical Sketch of Robert E. Howard” (based on a letter from Robert E. Howard, cf. CL3.287-288)

  Fantasy Magazine (vol. 5, no. 4) - Sep 1935 - “The Challenge From Beyond”

Shepherd & Wollheim

  The Phantagraph (vol. 4, no. 3) - Feb 1936 - “The Hyborian Age” (part 1)

  The Phantagraph (vol. 4, no. 5) - Aug 1936 - “The Hyborian Age” (part 2)

  The Phantagraph (vol. 5, no. 1) - Oct 1936 - “The Hyborian Age” (part 3)

______________________________

Works Cited

AMTF  A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (2 vols., Hippocampus Press, 2009)

BT       Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard (REH Foundation, 2013)

CL       Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index & Addenda, REH Foundation, 2007 – 2015)

CLIH    Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard (REH Foundation, 2011)

HAJ     The History of Amateur Journalism (The Fossils, 1957)

LC       The Last Celt: A Bio-Bibliography of Robert E. Howard (Berkley Windhover, 1976)

LRBO  Letters to Robert Bloch and Others (Hippocampus Press, 2015)

LRS     Letters to Richard F. Searight (Necronomicon Press, 1992)

LS        “Robert E. Howard and the Lone Scouts” by Rob Roehm, in The Dark Man (vol. 7, no. 1; 2012)

LSL      Lone Scout of Letters (Roehm’s Room Press, 2011)

PWM   Robert E. Howard: The Power of the Writing Mind (Mythos Books, 2003)

SFTP   So Far the Poet & Other Writings (REH Foundation, 2010)

THA     The Hyborian Age Facsimile Editions (Skelos Press, 2015)

TJ        “The Junto: Being a Brief Look at the Amateur Press Association Robert E. Howard Partook In as a Youth” by Glenn Lord, in Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard (Hippocampus Press, 2006)

UL       Uncollected Letters (Necronomicon Press, 1986)

WGP   Robert E. Howard: World’s Greatest Pulpster (Dennis McHaney, 2005)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

An Escape from The Depression: The Fantasy Fan, Marvel Tales & The Pulps by Todd B. Vick

The Great Depression was the longest lasting economic downturn in the history of mankind. It not only had a deep effect here in the U.S. but the rest of the world felt its squeeze as well. Despite its woes, those who lived through The Great Depression still had to get on with their lives and try and find a way to survive. By 1933 when the Great Depression had reached its nadir, some 15 million people in the U.S. alone were without work, almost half the banks in the U.S. had closed their doors, and Americans (as well as the rest of the world) were in dire straits. However, in the midst of this nadir, the entertainment industry was booming. People were trying to forget their troubles by turning their attention to films, sports (in large part boxing), books, magazines and other distracting things.

     In 1933 some of the greatest classic films were released: King Kong, Duck Soup, I’m No Angel, Queen Christina, Little Women, and others. The first drive-in movie theater was built in Camden, NJ that year, and MGM worked on gaining the rights to a film titled The Wizard of Oz. In June of 1933, Primo Carnera defeated Jack Sharkey in the sixth round (with a KO) to win the World Heavyweight Championship. That same year, Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster created the iconic character “Superman.” Underneath all these hugely popular events a seventeen year old teenager was hard at work developing the first fanzine for the weird fiction genre in hopes that it would attract some of the most popular writers in the Weird Fiction and Science Fiction pulp magazine industry.

     

Charles D. Hornig, from New Jersey, was a huge fan of weird fiction and science fiction. He was a regular subscriber to Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories. There’s no written history/information on why or where Hornig got the idea of beginning a fanzine. Even so, Hornig contacted the editor of “The Science Fic-Digest”—Conrad H. Ruppert—in an attempt to find out how such an effort could get off the ground. Ruppert guided Hornig in his endeavors, and in September of 1933, volume 1, no. 1 of The Fantasy Fan was first printed. It is believed that Hornig, a somewhat long time reader of Wonder Stories, sent a copy to its publisher Hugo Gernsback (who has been called the Father of Science Fiction). Through a series of circumstances, Gernsback had recently fired his editor, David Lasser, and after seeing Hornig’s first issue of The Fantasy Fan, hired Hornig. This is apparently confirmed in The Fantasy Fan Oct. 1933, Volume 1, no. 2 issue. “Managing Editor: Wonder Stories” is typed in that issue under Hornig’s name on the title page.  This would certainly explain how Hornig was able to get such high profile authors during The Fantasy Fan’s existence between Sept. 1933 to Feb. 1935.

     The first writers to jump on board Hornig’s fanzine were Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, and August Derleth. Other writers would join the fanzine in its first year: Julius Schwarts (who would eventually make his name in the comic book industry), Forrest Ackerman (magazine editor and an agent for Sci-fi writers such as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, L. Ron Hubbard, etc.), R.H. Barlow (author, poet, and previous executor of H.P. Lovecraft’s literary estate) and Robert E. Howard. In its second year, Robert Bloch made a contribution. The circulation of The Fantasy Fan is unknown. My guess is that it was fairly exclusive. Additionally, according to Wikipedia, here are some of the new stories from weird fiction authors that appeared in The Fantasy Fan,

First publication of several works by noteworthy authors occurred in The Fantasy Fan, including works by Lovecraft, Smith, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Robert Bloch. Perhaps one of the magazine's greatest achievements, though, was the serialization of the revised version of Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature (October 1933-February 1935); the serialization proceeded until it had reached the middle of Chapter VIII and the magazine folded. The Fantasy Fan also saw the first publication of Lovecraft's stories: "The Other Gods" (November 1933) and "From Beyond" (June 1934) as well as reprints (from amateur papers) of "Polaris" (February 1934) and "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" (October 1934); it also published the poems "The Book" (October 1934), "Pursuit" (October 1934), "The Key" (January 1935), and "Homecoming" (January 1935) from Lovecraft's sonnet cycle Fungi from Yuggoth. Lovecraft was represented in no less than seventeen of the eighteen issues published. The October 1934 issue was dedicated to Lovecraft.

     

Marvel Tales w/Slipcase
The Fantasy Fan

Fortunately, a little over 5 years ago (in 2010), Lance Thingmaker put together an extremely nice hardback facsimile of The Fantasy Fan. The collection was limited to 100 copies and sold rather quickly on Ebay. In its heyday, The Fantasy Fan was a way for fans and writers to connect. Also, for those people who were reading the pulps and various science fiction and fantasy magazines, this was just another way for them to find a little escape from the hardships of the Great Depression.

     In the same year that The Fantasy Fan ceased publication, another fanzine called Marvel Tales began publication.  Marvel Tales was edited by William L. Crawford. He was the first to use the name Marvel Tales which would be subsequently used again several times after Crawford’s zine ended. William Crawford was a publisher and editor who also wrote science fiction stories. Crawford lived in Everett, PA and had been an ardent science and weird fiction fan. He was also responsible for the inception of another non-paying weird fiction zine titled Unusual Stories. His Marvel Tales zine had a very short run, all of 5 issues. However, he was able to garner a few top-notch fantasy and science fiction authors of the day to contribute: H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long.

     Marvel Tales has a more mysterious history and demise than The Fantasy Fan. After the fifth issue, the magazine announced with great enthusiasm that its next issue would be on newsstands. After this last mention, no other issues were printed. It disappeared. This was probably due to its non-professional (non-paying) status and the high costs of publishing such a zine in the 1930s. It also never gained a strong enough readership to keep it alive. There is scant material written about Crawford’s Marvel Tales. Even so, in 2012, Lance Thingmaker, after the success of his facsimile for The Fantasy Fan, created a facsimile for Marvel Tales. Thingmaker did a 300 print run with the first 100 books tagged, numbered, and placed in nice slipcases.

     

In the 1930s, if fans of the pulps were fortunate enough to hear about these two fanzines, they would have access to original stories written by some of the more popular pulp writers. Moreover, the paper quality of these fanzines was a notch better than those of the pulps. Like films and sporting events, these fanzines and especially the pulp magazines were a nice inexpensive escape from the troubles that stemmed from the Great Depression. 1939 fanzines more or less fell by the wayside to World War II, dime novels, and the comic book industry. However, weird fiction and science fiction fanzines made a strong comeback in the early 1970s, but eventually faded again toward the mid to late 80s. Fortunately, the stories have survived through the years and are enjoying a steady growth today with a surge of new fans.