Windy City 2019 - photos

t's always a pleasure to go to Windy City, and love sharing photos with you. This years highlight was the expanded dealers room and the auction, where the action was fast and furious. Walker Martin talks about some of the prices in his report: http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=60956

Here are some photos from the convention:

The expanded dealer's room, which gave me plenty of exercise as i walked around

The organizers: Doug and Deb Ellis looking dapper in their new Adventure shirts, John Gunnison getting ready for the marathon auction sessions

Great selection of art for sale in the dealers' room:

Frederick Blakeslee cover for one of the aviation pulps

Norman Saunders Northwest Romances cover

Fred Rodewald western cover

A paperback cover

Earle K. Bergey sports pulp cover

Lyman Anderson pulp cover. The odd angle was the only way i could photograph it without glare

Harry Kirchner cover for Clues, i think

Lovely Rolf Armstrong cover, this is the angle with least glare

Outrageosuly insane paperback cover art has everything you need to sell
Hitler, dinosaurs, UFOs and exploding zeppelins all tastefully arranged inside a Swastika 

Don't remember seeing a caption on this nice art

Another great paperback cover - The Ballad of Typhoid Mary

More art in the dealers' room

And now to the auction room:

Friday night auction material

Some beautiful condition issues of Weird Tales, including a few Canadian editions

A rarity - one issue pulp Husbands, what were they thinking?

Excitement at the auction (a complete run of the magazine):

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Jerome Rozen painted most (if not all) of the Excitement covers
Someone found this in the dealers' room (not me)

Walker Martin with a couple of Dime Detective covers for which he owned the original art at one time.

Another rarity (this one sold for 1700 dollars)

Hersey one-shot pulp, Medical Horrors

It's probably the only time I was going to see a copy of this, so i took a few interior photos as well. 

Medical Horrors issue #1, table of contents

The million dollar baby farm, from Medical Horrors #1

Confessions of a nurse, from Medical Horrors #1

The convention suite was great too:

Artist and Zorro fan Pete Poplaski showing a page from his sketchbook
He sketched people in the auction room last year (one of them is me)

A few highlights from the art show (this year's theme was Chicago based artists)

The Art Show room

Jerome Rozen cover for The Popular Magazine

Allen Anderson Planet Stories cover

Donald Von Gelb, Oriental Stories cover

Virgil Finlay cover for Weird Tales

Paul Strayer Western Story cover

Windy City 2019 - See you there

Register now or you'll miss out 

Auction lineup

Lots of rare high grade magazines up for auction, including a complete run of Excitement. Full catalog here.

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Windy City Pulp and Paper convention 2018 - photos

Visited Windy City Pulp and Paper for the fourth year running, and had a great time there. Some photos:

A few photos of the dealers' room:

Dealer's room at Windy City 2018, held in the Westin, Lombard

Dave Smith of Fantasy Illustrated had his usual array of high grade rare and unique items

Murania Press had a table

Adventure House had more tables and boxes, the wall of pulps was a little smaller this time

Weinberg Books had original art and books

Comics as well

I forget whose table this was

Another dealer offering books, art and fanzines

The art show and the art in the dealers' room, which is one of the main reasons to visit:

Anton Otto Fischer frontispiece for Skipper John of the Nimbus

The theme this year was aviation art:

Frederick Blakeslee cover for Fighting Aces, September 1941

Right: George Rozen cover for Sky Fighters, Spring 1949

Left: George Rozen cover for Sky Fighters, Winter 1947
Right: Rudolph Belarski cover for Aces, Winter 1939/40

Left: George Rozen cover for Sky Fighters, Winter 1948
Right: Rudolph Belarski cover for The Lone Eagle, April 1941

Art in the dealers' room:

Paperback, men's magazines and digest cover illustrations on sale

Left: Walter Baumhofer sports illustration
Right: William Reusswig pulp cover painting

More art from Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Henry J. Soulen painting

H.L. Parkhurst cover for one of the "spicy" pulps

Original illustration for Conan the Barbarian book by Robert E. Howard

Some unique and rare items in the dealers room and the auctions:

Short Stories 1914 July issue, with a Sax Rohmer story in it

Unusual photo collage cover for The Popular Magazine, January 1907

New Detective Magazine, February 1946
Moral of the story: You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Robert Bloch letter to Sam Peeples, one of two in the auction

Early issue of Illustrated Novelets, soon to become North-West Romances 

Amazing Stories issue containing the first Buck Rogers story and one instalment of the Skylark of Space serial

Black Aces, the rarely seen, short-lived competition for Black Mask from Fiction House 

The Orchidengaarten, first fantasy magazine

Other highlights

Auction material this year was from the collection of Glenn Lord, and was focused on Robert E. Howard's work. It was impressive to see Howard's lifetime body of work in Weird Tales, Action Stories, Fight Stories and Golden Fleece. I was informed by a reliable source that what we saw in the auction was the tip of the iceberg in a Texas size collection, so perhaps there will be more in future.

Talk: The secret origins of Weird Tales by John Locke - Great talk, new information on the early years of Weird Tales, the partnerships, the people and the feuds. Looking forward to the upcoming book which should have more details.

Book signing: Art of the pulps

Book signing, with all the contributors lined up to sign copies

I also met a lot of people, new to me this time were Howard Andrew Jones of Blackgate.com and John C. Hocking ; Malcolm Edwards and Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books from across the pond. And that's it till the next one. Thanks to Doug Ellis, John Gunnison and the rest of the organizers for doing an excellent job.