The art of John Newton Howitt

[dem bones]

John Newton Howitt

The stories are tremendous fun, but one of the main selling points of the "shudder pulps" was unquestionably the lurid damsel in distress - and then some cover art, much credit for which belongs to John Newton Howitt (1885-1958). Incredibly, sometimes the stories even managed to live up to the bizarre thrills promised by his eye-boggling paintings.

A biography and more examples of Howitt's work can be found at Pulp Artists

Correction: In Terror!, Peter Haining identifies the two-headed woman on cover of Horror Stories, Dec. 1940, as Howitt's work, but according to Dave Saunders' Field guide to Wild American Pulp Artists, it was painted by John Drew. I am inclined to take his word for it over PH's any day!

[dem bones]

it's John Newton Howitt's anniversary next week (he died at age 72 on January 25, 1958), so by way of a tribute:

Howitt cover for Horror Stories, September 1935

I think Robert Weinberg puts it best in The Penguin Book Of Horror & Supernatural (Viking, 1986)

"Howitt did a series of astonishing covers for Horror Stories and Terror Tales that have remained unmatched as examples of the pulp concept of madness triumphant. Typical Howitt paintings feature a solitary heroine fleeing from a horde of madmen while all around her are corpses, crawling rats, and decaying buildings. His work is the stuff of modern nightmares, madness in the sewers beneath the streets, lunatics running wild in an asylum, men and women hanging from meat-hooks to embellish a story entitled The City That Dared Not Eat. Although virtually unknown outside a small group of collectors and students of the pulp magazines of the 1930's, Howitt is unquestionably the greatest modern artist of graphic terror."

Howitt cover (borrowed from the indispensable Galactic Central), Horror Stories, April/ May 1938, also notable for its inclusion of Frederick C Davis's enduring classic, The Molemen Want Your Eyes

Howitt cover (again via the superb Galactic Central gallery) for 'Grant (Norvell Page) Stockbridge's The City That Dared Not Eat, The Spider, October, 1937

[dem bones]

this poster has a habit of going missing for months on end so thought it best to photograph and upload while it's nailed down. It advertises a series of Women In Terror trading cards - most of 'em by Howitt - issued by 21st Century Archive, late 'eighties, early 'nineties, who knows?

thanks to the very lovely bride of dem for performing camera duties.

Howitt original for Horror Stories, Oct. 1935, as later swiped for cover of Tony Goodstone's The Pulps: Fifty Years Of American Pop Culture (Chelsea House, 1970)

Babe in red dress running from sex-crazed, bestial, virus of idiocy victims, straight into the axe of a waiting madman? It can only be John Newton Howitt (until his wife told him to stop).