Art by Joseph Doolin
Art by Joseph Doolin

Joseph Doolin: Jungle Cover Artist

Joseph Doolin (1896-1967) is my favorite Weird Tales artist if you are talking realistic style. I love Lee Brown Coye, Boris Dolgov, Hannes Bok, Virgil Finlay, etc. for their weird and fantastical styles. But if we are talking an illustrator that can draw with an eye for the real, Joseph Doolin wins every time. He did illustrations for many different Pulps but occasionally for Weird Tale. He illustrated the only Jules de Grandin novel, The Devil’s Bride (1932).

Like another great realistic artist, Harold S. De Lay, he moved into comics before 1954 and the death of the Pulps. He did illustrations for such pulps as Jungle Stories and Texas Rangers. These Pulps had comic versions that helped him make the transition to Jumbo Comics, Fight Comics, Rangers Comics and Planet Comics. Working in the tradition set by Dan Zolnerowich (as Zolne Rowich), Doolin was a master of the Jungle Triangle set-up, with heroic female lead, a vicious animal or monster and the male being recused in the background. This arrangement dates back to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first Tarzan novel, Tarzan of the Apes in All-Story in 1914.

For Robert E. Howard’s “The Gods of Bal-Sagoth” (1931)

He cut his teeth on Kaanga, Sheena and other comics.

But his best work was a run for Jumbo Comics #66-76 (August 1944-June 1945) with some strays after that.

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