Hannes Bok: Ground-Breaking Artist

In the early days of horror, weird tales, and scientifiction fans across the country (U.S.A.) used the postal service like we do the internet or texting.  It was a seemingly smaller world then, but one still had to “network” and exhibit a passion to achieve success.  From that early world came a simple Midwesterner, Wayne Woodard (July 2, 1914–April 11, 1964).

He was not to be Wayne for long.  Maybe because his world was a rough and struggle, he began to explore new mental vistas, and even new names for himself.  He bounced around, gave up contacts with family members, but found a new family in the fan community.  Perhaps that is not so different than many of you reading this blog post today?

A typical vibrant illustration by Bok

Moving (1937) to the then small Los Angeles, he met folks like Ray Bradbury, Forest Ackerman, and Ray Harryhausen who had formed a loose group of fans wanting to either write for a living, or make a small splash in the motion picture industry.  They loved weird and horrific fantasy, and for a while Wayne hung out with them.  Then in 1938 he moved to Seattle and corresponded with folks like Max Parrish.  Not much was happening, so he dabbled in astrology, and being a fan of Bach, toyed with a pseudonym.  At first he liked “Hans Bok” after Johann Bach, and then fancied it to Hannes Bok.

Ray Bradbury seized a stash of Bok’s artwork, and in a typical bundle of bravado and coiled-up energy burst across the country to New York brandishing his pal’s work at the first World’s Science Fiction convention.  There, A-type personalities collided for the first time in person, and deals were made.  One was to get Bok noticed, and eventually got him illustrating jobs.

From a mid-20th century "pro-zine" Fanscient.

Some do not know that Bok was also a writer.  He submitted many essays, and perhaps one crowning achievement was to finish an A. Merritt story in illustrated book form- The Fox Woman/Blue Pagoda.

So, today, we celebrate another “hero of the faith”, the great illustrator, Hannes Bok.  If you liked his work, please post a comment and tell your friends.

Linwood Vrooman Carter

Lin as Baby ! Won first prize (of course).

Horror and Weird Fantasy has its characters, and sometimes that rare individual becomes a lightning rod. Forest Ackerman, August Derleth, Adolph de Castro, L Sprague de Camp, and Lin Carter all spring to mind.

Lin had an odd name, Linwood Vrooman Carter, and from the time he found a stack of old pulps getting ready to be tossed out, he became fixated on fantasy. His lifelong dream, from his earliest days, was to be a professional cartoonist. That didn’t happen, but along the way he became a poet, a convention stalwart, collector of all things weird, and in the 1960′s he made quite a mark as an editor, writer, and correspondent of Tolkein.

Lin's High School Photo

Lin was a Florida boy, and got terrific marks in school, but became known quickly as a poet and extrovert. He attended college, and in his spare time created his own fan magazine and hob-nobbed via correspondence with most of those in the field.

Lin Posing in Costume - about age 20

In the 1960′s, after placing numerous illustrations and articles in fanzines and prozines, he and L Sprague de Camp came up with a plan to revive Conan the Barbarian and created Sword and Sorcery with a few of their colleagues. Science Fiction didn’t know what to make of this, but it soon consumed the then-stagnant sales of SF and is now a dominant part of the field. Over a roughly ten year period, millions of S&S paperback and comic issues were sold. Lin had his own monthly column in an SF magazine, and for about a year wrote scripts for Marvel’s TV comic cartoon, Spiderman. These were some of the oddest segments in its history, presaging the 21st century oddities of the Cartoon Network.

Now virtually forgotten except by those who are still fans or knew him, Lin was always a cutting figure filled with life and energy.  He was one of the true celebrities of the genre.

Lin About 1975

[Some images, above, from Chris Perridas' collecion]

The Ancient World of Fanzines

Long, long ago on a primitive planet teenagers went amok.  Fed by imagination and fueled by pulp paper and ink they formed little local clubs and passed Weird Tales and Hugo Gernsback scientifiction (later Sci-Fi and SF) back and forth between each other.  When a “pen pal” in a far off town couldn’t get the latest works of E Hoffmann Price, Seabury Quinn, Dr. David Keller, Ray Bradbury, Damon Knight, L Sprague deCamp, Isaac Asimov, or some other fantasy-horror-weird tale writer, they traded them or sold extra copies.

Not content to merely talk about it, or send a USPS letter about it (long distance!  too expensive!), they made their own “fanatic magazines”, or fanzines.  These were the rawest of raw by the most amateur of amateurs.  The art was drawn, and then hectographed (by gelatin plates) or sometimes a raid to the local high to use the mimeograph machine!

Crude?  You bet.  Fun?  Better than an Indie forum firefight.  In fact, fanzines invented the flame war.  One of the first practitioners of the flame war was a guy from Providence named Howard Lovecraft.  When “H P Lovecraft” wasn’t calling down astrologers in the newspapers, or ripping into Edgar Rice Burroughs for not portraying Mars correctly, he critiqued other people’s stories.  That is until he met a kid from California named Forest Ackerman.  Whew, was that something.  Later, along came cratchity Harlan Ellison, frenetic Ray Bradbury, and a boy from Florida whose name was almost as long as his state:  Linwood Vrooman Carter.

Those were days when amateurs drooled to be in the “prozines”, or *gasp* land a letter in the  PULPS!  A few rare dreamers thought they might one day live to have a short story published like their heroes Robert Bloch, August Derleth, or Robert Heinlein.  Darest they reach for the stars and think they might even get a BOOK  published?

Forest J Ackerman ‘zine from August 1942

Many youths between the years 1935 and 1975 learned their craft and landed contracts (such as Marion Zimmer and later Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire, Jr),  became critics or editors (Sam Moskowitz), or went on to write for radio, television, and movies (Arthur C Clarke is one example).  As they say, cream rises to the top.

Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of those fandom days is how 4SJ managed to sneak him risqué magazine covers through the USPS censors!  Hey, anything for the G. I. Josephs!

So the next time you visit an Indie horror forum and post there, think how hard that person is working to grow the genre.  Support Horror!  It may be down, but it ain’t over yet!