Once you’ve read enough H.P Lovecraft you begin to see his mindbending interstellar/transdimensional beings everywhere, and we see one on this cover for L’homme à l’étrange tatouage by Belgian author Michel Dahin, aka Michel de Roisin. It’s basically a pamphlet—sixteen pages—written for the S.O.S. Police! collection published by Éditions Paul Dupont. The art is signed by Dunbar, who is as yet unknown to us, but considering he put Cthulhu or some other octopoid monstrosity on the chest of his cover figure, maybe we don’t want to know him. The book doesn’t actually deal with Lovecraftian cultists, though. Just some really creepy sailors. 1945 on this. 

In pulp and post-pulp literature, it’s a given that what we read isn’t up to the quality of serious fiction. Some might argue the point, but it’s probably true. While pulp writers have been important in creating new stylistic methods, even the best pulp novel doesn’t stand on the same level as, say, The Grapes of Wrath or Babbitt. That truth doesn’t diminish our enjoyment of pulp—it’s a literary form that leads us to places we’d never be taken in more serious writing. We tend to feel the same way about pulp art. A lot of it is quite nice when viewed from the perspective of what it accomplishes, rather than whether it is technically good. We hinted at that in yesterday’s post. So today, we chose three examples of that idea.

These mid-1940s covers are from Editions Nicéa’s Collection Rose Noire. The books are On a tue Madame Rose (Madame Rose was Killed) written by Maurice Lambert, aka Géo Duvic; La double vie de Lord Morton (The Double Life of Lord Morton) written by Michel Dahin, aka Michel de Roisin; and Le chaland du mystère (Mystery of the Barge) penned by an author who published only as Dominique. All three covers are anonymous, though are doubtless by the same person. While they aren’t up to the technical quality of Robert McGinnis or Alain Gourdon perhaps, we think the artist achieved exactly what he or she set out to do, not just in color and mood, but particularly in the confident use of perspective on the last cover. In our opinion, these are good. But maybe we’re wrong. Artist friends? Drop us a line.