The first appearance in any medium of Robert E. Howard’s Conan came in this issue with the publication of The Phoenix On The Sword. The entire issue can be downloaded here
Interestingly, Buccaneers of Venus is the serialization of the previously featured novel The Port of Peril
This seminal pulp marks the very first appearance of the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft, via the oft-imitated but never surpassed story The Call of Cthulhu. It also contains The Dream Snake by Conan creator Robert E. Howard.
Of course, neither of those stories were quite good enough to get featured on the cover, which went to “an exciting tale of occult phenomena – a rampant beast, lusting to kill, this table with the tiger-claws.” The entire issue can be downloaded here
This may be the cover least related to the story I have ever seen. Rather than being a sword-and-sorcery slash-fest, Pigeons from Hell is one of several regional horror stories by Howard set in the piney woods in or near the Ark-La-Tex region of the Deep South. It centers on a seemingly abandoned plantation and the legacy of terror the former slave-masters inflicted.
You can read the whole thing here.
This scene sort of looks like it is from Howard’s 1935 story Moon of Zambebwei (aka The Grisly Horror)
Skull-Face originally ran as a three-part serial in Weird Tales in 1929….
Robert E. Howard clearly took his inspiration from the Fu Manchu books, but went far beyond that model to create a villain that could eat old Fu for breakfast. The guy with the skull-like face is first believed to be some sort of Chinese crime lord, then an ancient Egyptian, and finally a master sorcerer who should have gone down with Atlantis. He’s a guy who would have made a fine nemesis for Conan.
This story is in the public domain, and the full text is available here. Of course, it is one of the most racist stories I have ever read, but there it is.
