Person Of Interest: Margaret Brundage

I'm starting something new with this post, called Person of Interest. These will be about people who interest me in various ways. Since it was recently Women Appreciation Day, I decided to start if off with, you guessed it, a woman.

Margaret Brundage

Margaret Brundage was known as the Queen of the Pulps. She is chiefly known as the cover artist for Weird Tales Magazine, where she painted the first depiction of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. Her work was so popular at the time, writers would put scenes in their stories they thought would make a good Brundage cover.

The first depiction of Conan The Barbarian

             It's interesting to note, the magazine received more criticism for their sexy covers once it was revealed M. Brundage, as she was credited at the time, was a woman.

One of her more famous pieces, "Bat Woman"

      She worked steadily, until there was a public backlash against the pulps for their racy covers and violent stories. When New York prohibited pulps with half-naked women on the cover displayed at news stands, it pretty much put her out of work.

The art she did for the pulps contain half-naked damsels in distress, befitting the genre, but for me, there is something more in her paintings. They grab you, and tell you a story just by looking at them. She worked in pastels, and the colors are striking, even the faded copies of the old magazines radiate a brilliance through the years.

Cover for another Robert E. Howard story

Margaret never really recovered from her drop in sales to the magazines, which supported her, her son and mother, and her bum of a husband. She lived the rest of her life in poverty, making the rounds at pulp conventions when they cropped up.

I look at her work, though, and I see something exciting. I see other worlds. Other places. I see stories to be told.