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.

Windy City Pulp and Paper 2015 - photos

For the second year running, I attended the Windy City Pulp and Paper convention near Chicago. I will post a more detailed report later (probably this weekend), but for now I'll just share a few of the photos I took.

The convention took place at the Westin Hotel in Lombard, the weather was perfect - sunny and cool. It turned a bit cloudy on Sunday afternoon.

Westin Lombard Hotel

This year's convention theme was the 90th anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft, and so the signs for the hospitality suite (drawn by Randy Broecker, the Chicago based artist) were in keeping with the theme:

Hospitality Suite Sign 1

Hospitality Suite Sign 2

The dealer room was an Ali Baba's cave of pulps, but with much better lighting:



Dealer's room at Windy City Pulp and Paper 2015

BTW, I did not saw people in half to take this photo, that's what happens when you stitch together three photos and people are moving around.

As usual, there was a glorious display of art in the art display, much of it related to Lovecraft, made available for display by generous collectors who brought in art from their collections for display. Included were many illustrations by Virgil Finlay, Ed Emshwiller and at least one by Hannes Bok.  Want to read a more detailed biography of Virgil Finlay? More of his amazing artwork can be seen in the book The Collector's Book of Virgil Finlay, available from http://www.americanfantasypress.com/. I have the book, and it was wonderful to see the originals for the illustrations in the book.

I apologize for the reflections and occasional glare on the photos - the room had many light sources all around and the illustrations had been framed with glass, so reflections were unavoidable, I tried to keep them to a minimum by photographing at an angle as opposed to straight ahead, but sometimes I had to choose between having some reflection/glare/both or no photo at all. If you want to see a slideshow of the art in higher resolution, just click on the first image below.


H.P. Lovecraft portrait by Virgil Finlay



I

Illustration by Virgil Finlay for The Shunned House



Illustration by Virgil Finlay for The color out of space



Illustration by Virgil Finlay for Halloween in the suburbs

Illustration by Joseph Wirt Tillotson for The court of Kubla Khan

Cover by Ed Emshwiller for Jack of eagles



Cover by Ed Emshwiller for The Big Planet



Cover by Ed Emshwiller for The Garden of Time



Cover by Ed Emshwiller for Galaxy Magazine



Cover for Argosy Magazine



Interior artwork by Virgil Finlay for The Ship of Ishtar



Interior artwork by Virgil Finlay for The Ship of Ishtar



Interior artwork by Virgil Finlay for The Ship of Ishtar



Interior artwork by Virgil Finlay for The Ship of Ishtar



Interior artwork by Virgil Finlay for The Ship of Ishtar



Cover painting by Ed Emshwiller for Granny won't knit



Cover painting by Howard Brown for The Shadow out of Time



Gahan Wilson illustration for a book in the Cthulhu mythos




Gahan Wilson illustration for a book in the Cthulhu mythos



Illustration by Hannes Bok for The cats of Ulthar



Illustration by Virgil Finlay for The Black Butterflies



Illustration by Virgil Finlay for Kublai Khan

 



Interior illustration by Virgil Finlay for The fifth candle



Illustration by Virgil Finlay for The Golden City



Illustration by Virgil Finlay for The Hairy Ones shall dance



Illustration by Virgil Finlay for Citadel of Fear



Illustration by Virgil Finlay for Dread Summons



Illustration by Virgil Finlay for The Slayer of Souls



Cover painting by Ed Emshwiller for Let's build an Extraterrestrial



Cover painting by Ed Emshwiller for Strange Nestling



Illustration by Virgil Finlay for Tcheriapin



Cover painting by Ed Emshwiller for Space-time in one tough lesson



Cover painting by Edgar Franklin Wittmack for People's magazine

The dealers' room also had its fair share of art:

And of course, pulps everywhere:



P

Pulp reprints from Black Dog Books



Robert Weinberg's dealer table - art prints, pulp reprints and audio books from RadioArchives.com



Pulp reprints from Adventure House

And even more pulps at the Friday and Saturday night auctions, some of which went for high prices:

That's it for now folks. I hope you've seen enough reasons to attend either Windy City next year or Pulpfest. Thanks to the organizers, Doug Ellis and John Gunnison