When you are an avid Burroughian like myself, it is very hard to find images you haven’t seen countless times. You goggle at the Frazettas, the Kuberts, the St. Johns. They become part of you. The other side of this is they also become familiar. And it is almost impossible to be surprised by a painting of Tarzan, or a drawing of the fauna of Pellucidar, or a warrior riding a thoat over the sands of Barsoom.
When you do find something new, it is usually very new. But every once in a while you stumble upon something old that is new. Blue Book’s covers and interior art were such a delight. Here was a collection of Burroughs artwork that you just never see. Not in the old fanzines, not in the non-fiction books. It is almost like we all forgot they existed.
Blue Book had the reputation in the Pulp World as the best illustrated magazine. It was one of the Big Four, along with Argosy, Short Stories and Adventure. For Edgar Rice Burroughs, it was one of the competitors to Argosy for new Tarzan novels. All-Story famously lost its exclusive with ERB early on (over editorial interference) and New Story scooped up the sequel to Tarzan of the Apes as well as The Outlaw of Torn. After that, Burroughs felt the Pulps could via against each other for any new novels. The first publications in Blue Book were the individual stories that would form The Jungle Tales of Tarzan. Sadly, at this time, most of the big magazines did not illustrate their stories on the cover but featured portraits of pretty young women. So no Tarzan covers here. They also published The Caspak trilogy, but same problem. No covers.
For a long time All-Story/All-Story Cavalier/Argosy bought all the new Burroughs material, but in 1927 the books all went to Blue Book, where most were illustrated by Frank Hoban. Every heard of him? The man illustrated pages and pages and cover and covers, but does his name come up with Frazetta, Krenkel and Vallejo? What really makes me sad is that Hoban’s illustrations would certainly have improved my enjoyment of certain Burroughs books had they been available. Especially his interior art. The covers are alright but I like his line work better.
Burroughs last stories for Blue Book would be the ones collected as Beyond the Farthest Star in 1942. Being wartime, the cover went to a picture of a battleship. Burroughs himself was swept up into the war as a correspondent, the oldest on record. Other than the last of the Ray Palmer stories to appear in Amazing Stories, ERB’s time as a writer was drawing to a close.