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Peek in the Stacks

Detail of cover illustration from Weird Tales Volume 29, Number 1, "Children of the Bat"

The cover of Margaret Brundage’s Weird Tales: Satan’s Palimpsest  greets the reader with a nude blonde, seemingly excited to invite the bat-like Satan into her boudoir. Similarly, Margaret Brundage’s Weird Tales: Children of the Bat cover greets the reader with another nude blonde—this one half-bat with breasts and chained by another bat, who seems to be half-human as well. Through the covers' portrayal of hyper-sexualized, imprisoned women and bats as their captors, the Weird Tales pulp art combines both the scariness and seduction of the Gothic monster, which represents the Other in U.S. culture. 

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Detail image from the cover of The Fold-Away Doll House and Play Book of Cut-Out Furniture, TT174.5.P3 F6 1949

Special Collections & Archives holds numerous interactive books for children including a range of paper dolls, a dollhouse, and more. Here we highlight three selections ranging from an 1810 publication that is lesson-based to a play-based interactive dollhouse published in 1949. 

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Cover of Detective Comics: Batman Robin and Batgirl “Challenge of the Man-Bat!” Issue #400

Written by Frank Robbins, Batman issue number 400, Challenge of the Man-Bat1, was published in June of 1970 after a paradigmatic shift in U.S. comics censorship history. Challenge of the Man-Bat was published a decade and a half after the creation of The Comics Code Authority in 1954, which regulated or censored comic book content.

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Detail of the illustration on the cover of Weird Tales, v.25 no.5, May 1935

Welcome… to Weird Tales. Initially founded in 1923, the Weird Tales pulp magazine boasts an impressive lineup throughout its just over thirty year run, having been one of the first places where American audiences could be introduced to later sci-fi staples such as Cthulu and Conan the Barbarian. Weird Tales was one of the first magazines of its kind, publishing exclusively horror and sci-fi tales, and was even the starting point for several authors who later became household names, such as Ray Bradbury and Robert E. Howard.

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