Magic Carpet Tales are the other Weird Tales. The owners of “The Unique Magazine” had another short-lived publication that was sister to the world’s most famous horror Pulp. It ran roughly quarterly as Oriental Stories (October 1930-Summer 1932) then Magic Carpet Magazine (January 1933-January 1934). This pulp promised tales of exotic places, a large dollop of adventure mixed with sex and mysticism. (The name change came as a way of pinpointing what aspects of Asia the stories were focused on.)
The contents page reads like an issue of Weird Tales with Robert E. Howard, E. Hoffman Price, Otis Adelbert Kline, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Dorothy Quick, G. G. Pendarves, Frank Owen and many other regulars. To be fair, most these writers wrote for the adventure Pulps with Hoffman being the most successful. Robert E. Howard dreamed of being in Adventure but never cracked that market. Lt. Edgar Gardiner, S. S. Gurwit, August Derleth, James W. Bennett, Paul Ernst and Seabury Quinn all wrote for other kinds of Pulps too. Occasionally you got an adventure pro like S. B. H. Hurst or H. Bedford-Jones. Covers were done largely by Weird Tales artists like Margaret Brundage, so the look was similar to WT.
Exotic locales, sexy seductresses and plotting agents aside, much of what appeared was a type of Horror fiction. Not always supernatural, torture tales, conte cruels but not your run-of-the-mill werewolf and vampire stories. For those who love Robert E. Howard and other WT authors, this is a bonanza of secondary tales. You will find stories like “The Scourge of Mektoub” by Pal Ernst, “Four Doomed Men” by Hugh B. Cave (as Geoffrey Vace) and Robert E. Howard’s collab “Red Blades of Black Cathay” with Tevis Clyde Smith. Otis Adelbert Kline wrote the Hamed of Atar series, seven tales about a dragoman who meets adventure and evil in the desert. And then there are the actual Horror pieces like “The Kiss of Zoraida” by Clark Ashton Smith, “The Hidden Monster” by David H. Keller,“The Dancer of Djogyakarta” by Warren Hastings Miller and “The Djinnee of El Sheyb” by G. G. Pendarves.
The arabesque tale of magic, cruelty and sex hasn’t caught on like the Horror tale but you can occasionally find something of its like after 1934. Farnsworth Wright incorporated the last of his Magic Carpet stories into Weird Tales. E. Hoffman Price’s “Satan’s Garden” (Weird Tales, April May 1934) would certainly have been the headliner for several issues of Magic Carpet.
“The Improved Kiss” from Weird Terror #8 (November 1953) feels like a Magic Carpet story. The author is not known but the art was done by Marty Elkins. Baluk Khan is a pillaging terror. The Mongol makes the mistake of invading the village of Uzruk. He takes the king’s daughter as his plunder and receives a very unusual kiss.
Baluk Khan and his Mongols terrorize everyone from Turkistan to Black Cathay.
The conqueror has his eyes on Uzruk. The king of Uzruk fears for his daughter, Larla, and all of his people.
Baluk Khan is invited to Uzruk, but his appetites are bottomless. He desires Larla, and he will have her.
The king of Uzruk is assassinated but Larla will have her revenge.
Her kiss is lure enough. Only she has a surprise waiting for the Overlord…
The creepy ending is not really supernatural though that last frame is gross enough. (You gotta love Golden Age comics!) In the best tradition of Oriental Stories/Magic Carpet Magazine, this is a tale of lust and power ending on a Horror note. The Other Weird Tales finds its way into Sword & Sorcery, which also sprang from Weird Tales.
