J. Allen St. John (1872-1957) will always be remembered first and foremost as the artist who brought the imaginative worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs to visual life. He was, in fact, Burroughs’ favorite illustrator (and St. John was up against Burroughs’ own son, John Coleman Burroughs.) St. John would paint covers and illustrate the interiors of a large number of Burroughs books, as well as do art for magazine publication of Burroughs stories in such periodicals as Fantastic Adventures.
But no artist can live entirely on the work of one writer. It shouldn’t be any surprise that J. Allen St. John painted covers for magazines such as Weird Tales and its sister, Oriental Stories. It was this second publication that gave St. John his first trial with editor Farnsworth Wright, in the Winter 1932 and again in July 1933 when Oriental Stories was retitled The Magic Carpet Magazine. (One of the best things about St. John’s covers was that they were followed by black-and-white illustrations for the story.)
His first job for Weird Tales was not surprisingly a Burroughs rip-off by Otis Adelbert Kline, who had once been a sub-editor at the magazine. St. John did four covers for the novel serial, “The Buccaneers of Venus”, retitled The Port of Peril for novel publication. These installments ran November 1932 to February 1933. St. John’s first Weird Tales cover would appear on the dust jacket of the novel.
The next St. John art was only two months later in April and May 1933 for the two-part serial of Jack Williamson’s Golden Blood. This desert adventure follows a small group of prisoners tormented by magicians who can create illusions such as the gigantic tiger and riders on the first cover. Sadly, there was no similarly potent scene in the second half, and St. John had to settle for a battle on camelback. His work on Oriental Stories and his experience with Arab dress can be seen in these covers.
St. John would have a two year hiatus from the covers of Weird Tales as that magazine entered its Margaret Brundage era. But in October 1936, St. John would return to do two unusual covers (for him), being horror themed. The first was for “Isle of the Undead” by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, a dreary tale that got the cover most likely because of the nudity. St. John does what he can with it.
More interesting is the December 1936 issue which featured Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu Mythos tale, “The Fires of Asshurbanipal”. St. John does a stunning cover and interior art for this adventure, that takes two explorers into the desert to find a treasure and a squidgy (which St. John actually draws! Perhaps the best Mythos creature ever portrayed in Weird Tales.) And so ended the J. Allen St. John run at Weird Tales.
He had two decades of work ahead of him, including more Burroughs and Burroughs clone projects, including illustrating Robert Moore Williams’ Jongor series in Fantastic Adventures, as well as the Howard Browne’s Tharn novels from Amazing Stories. Everyone associated St. John so strongly with Edgar Rice Burroughs, simply having the artist illustrate your work was an instant clue to the reader what lie in store. Ray Palmer, in particular, knew this and when he created “Toka, King of the Dinosaurs” (Fantastic Adventures, October 1945) there could only be one man to paint that cover. J. Allen St. John!
