Being an artist for Weird Tales was not a fast track to fame and fortune. It is only in retrospect that names like Hugh Rankin, A. R. Tilburne, Hannes Bok, Lee Brown Coye and Vincent Napoli take on a luster of grandeur. At the time, the gig of producing illos for Weird Tales was low-paying and largely obscure. Some, like Lee Brown Coye, were able to establish their reputations in the art world after a long apprenticeship in the Pulps. Most are the select favorites of fans. Boris Dolgov was one of these truly brilliant illustrators who time has not been as kind to as should be.
Boris Dolgov produce the bulk of his work for Weird Tales between 1941 and 1954. (No dates for his birth or death are available.) His style is idiosyncratic but delightful, with thin faerie characters, often lighter than air, but never cloyingly delicate like a Victorian visitor to Conan Doyle’s garden. They possess sharp eyes that promises behind the otherworldly form lies something darker. It is this quality that allows Dolgov to illustrate any kind of story. He was good with Manly Wade Wellman creepers or Edmond Hamilton Fantasy or even robots and space ships.
His covers were colorful and distinctive. This may be because, that like Hannes Bok, one of his inspirations was Maxfield Parrish. Bok took a picture of Dolgov and Parrish together, so the idol had real contact with his acolytes. It is in the covers you see this heritage, but in the drawings Dolgov looks more like Harry Clarke, with weirdly elongated human figures or more cartoony like the work of Sidney Sime. And it is in the black and white work that Dolgov was truly unbeatable. He could dress up a boring little piece of verse with a few wispy weeds and make the filler something to notice.
Sadly, there is little personal information on Dolgov. Unlike Hannes Bok, Dolgov never had a Lin Carter to chronicle some glimpse of those days back in the 1940s and 50s, when great stories were illustrated by great pictures. We will never know Dolgov’s thoughts on illustrating classics like Robert Bloch’s “Your Truly, Jack the Ripper” or Clark Ashton Smith, “Who Are the Living?” His work has to speak for itself. Fortunately, it speaks well and clearly of things unimaginable.
Dolgov had a unique talent. It’s a shame he isn’t more well known.