The joey Zone
ROY V. HUNT. A Retrospective. Edited by David and Daniel Ritter. Cambridge, Massachusetts: First Fandom Experience, 2021. 144 pp. $45.00 tpb. ISBN: 978-1-7332964-6-5.
1.
I gave posthumous thanks to Leah Bodine Drake in my review of her recent Hippocampus omnibus collection two issues ago of this journal. She made me aware of Denver, Colorado’s Roy Vernon Hunt (1914-1986) through her review of fellow Denver Scientifiction fan, writer, and publisher Stanley Mullen’s Moonfoam and Sorceries (Gorgon Press, 1948). Happily, thanks to David and Daniel Ritter and First Fandom Experience (“FFE”) (firstfandomexperience.org) gratitude may be extended while contemporaneous.
This organization is doing important research, giving Credit Where Due to all of us fans, Past, Present and Future, from nascent talents cultivating art or writing up to Dirty Old Pros. Although decrying this collection of Hunt’s as “not fully comprehensive”, one is hard put to imagine any volume possibly more engaging or worthy of being on a shelf next to similar collections of Bok or Finlay.
The reproductions in this artist’s monograph are impeccable, from the restoration of faint empurpled mimeographed fanzines to white gouache stipple (Voice of the Imagi-Nation and Fantasy Advertiser covers). There is a ten-page section describing the various technologies used to produce early fanzines, from offset lithography down to hectography, while a four-page chronological index of work featuring Hunt’s art rounds out the text.
2.
At the age of 26, Roy Hunt was married with two daughters. So it was a more seasoned individual who debuted as an artist and writer in this period of Science Fiction’s First Fandom, putting out The Alchemist, Vol. 1, No. 1 (February 1940). It featured his review of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Others. One might say it was somewhat positive:
“…it is the most outstanding volume of bizarre classics to be published… You will entirely forget that you are reading printed pages as you are swept completely into the outer realms…Only here can you get the full meaning of horror and nameless things out of cosmic depths and of time’s abyss. Here in this volume all the splendours and marvels of far-flung galaxies are laid before your eyes in an unending pageantry of weirdness…in this reviewer’s opinion and that of many fans, Lovecraft excels Poe himself.”
Printed separately by lithography and bound in The Alchemist, Vol. 1, No. 4 (December 1940), Hunt’s “Star Spawn” was a further—this time visual—tribute to The Outsider, in particular Virgil Finlay’s beautiful dust wrapper. Finlay’s seminal piece was made up of collaged bits of work done previously by him for Weird Tales, The American Weekly and other publications. Roy’s is a complete original illustration delineating that “unending pageantry of weirdness.” The art ended up in the collection of one Forrest J Ackerman, who knew a good thing when he saw it…
Hunt’s first professional work was an illustration for Robert W. Lowndes’ Mythos tale “The Abyss” (Stirring Science Stories, February 1941). A non-traditional drawing of Cthulhu followed in the fanzine Starlight, No. 1 (Spring 1941), bearing more than a passing ancestral resemblance to Ray Harryhausen’s Kraken surfacing much later in Clash of The Titans (1981). Could Harryhausen, a confederate of early fans Ackerman and Ray Bradbury, have had access to this publication?
Roy designed a superb cover for the Third World Science Fiction Convention (The “Denvention”) in July 1941 as well as the cover and membership cards for the Fourth (”Pacificon”) held in Los Angeles (1946). Another non-traditional take on Cthulhu was done for the cover of Fanfare, Vol. 2, No.2 (February 1942). This was the first art by Hunt that this writer ever saw as it is one of his most reproduced works. Printed in an ichoric emerald ink, a “vague suggestion of a Cyclopean architectural” backdrop has Cthulhu in the foreground, IT’s general outline less anthropomorphic than usually depicted, possessing the crouching form of “a dragon… [with] a pulpy tentacled head” surmounting that. This version shows up again as a “bas relief” in Hunt’s illustration for Lin Carter’s “H. P. Lovecraft: The Books” (Inside, No. 16, September 1956).
Hunt’s two very different versions of The R’lyehian are further argument that there can, if not should, be a multitude of visions of “forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught”.
3.
While working as a curator and artist at The Colorado State Historical Museum in Denver, Roy produced a series of woodcut prints on commission for the WPA (Works Progress Administration). He would use this medium in fanac going forward. The highpoint of his woodblock art had to be the cover of the first issue of The Alchemist published after WWII (Vol. 2, No. 1) in August of 1946.
A photo of Hunt published in Stanley Mullen’s fanzine The Gorgon, Vol. 2, No. 1 (August 1948) shows him in front of his bookcase. You can make out the spine of John Coleman Burroughs’ dustjacket for his Dad’s Synthetic Men of Mars (1940—enthusiastically reviewed by RVH in The Alchemist, Vol. 1, No. 2, March 1940). Also on Roy’s desk is a studio portrait photo of the writer A(braham) Merritt, who was an extensive correspondent with the budding artist (“There’s nobody I’d rather have want my photo more than you.”—Merritt to Hunt, August 20th, 1941). Merritt’s side of the conversation is published in Sam Moskowitz’s A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool (Oswald Train, 1985). It is hoped that someone (FFE perhaps?) could find and reprint Hunt’s letters in this dialogue. Roy apparently lobbied for Hannes Bok, acting as an intermediary, for the job of illustrating Merritt’s The Metal Monster (1920), perhaps in a definitive edition: “Thanks for the offer on Metal Monster and full edition…I like the black and gold idea…” (Merritt to Hunt, May 11th, 1941).
We need to ‘hear’ Roy’s letters!
Like Bok, a fair amount of Hunt’s art for fanzines has an Art Deco style prevalent at that time. Roy did contribute a bibliography of Merritt’s work to the premiere issue of The Gorgon in March 1947, Covers for another ‘40s fanzine Le Zombie not only show what appears to be the use of a litho crayon for additional shading but the influence of Alexander King’s voudon tableaus in William Seabrook’s Magic Island (1929).
4.
Roy seemed foremost to be a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, beginning with his enjoyment of Hal Foster’s adaptation of Tarzan of The Apes in the Sunday newspapers. Hunt aspired to “study under J. Allen St. John [ERB’s main illustrator]…I would set about copying [pictures and colored jackets] diligently”. This is especially evident in Hunt’s own cover design and typography. After high school, he had worked creating handcrafted marquees for theaters. His lettering shows the clear influence of St. John’s titles for Burroughs’ dust jackets (Capital ‘T”s especially looking ‘sword-like’. Not to mention St. John’s iconic redesigned logo for Weird Tales.)—a bespoke hand drawn jacket for John Taine’s novel The Gold Tooth being the best example (and superior to the actual printed edition’s design from 1927). While doing his wartime service with the US Navy, Roy actually ran into his idol ERB who was then serving as a war correspondent.
Hunt also recounted meeting the screen’s first sound Tarzan, Frank Merrill, in ERB-dom, No. 21 (July 1967). His cover for the 80th number of that same publication is one of this writer’s new favorites: A profile of The War Chief, Shoz Dijiji, rendered in concentric hues of a Colorado sunset. It transcends the influences of other artists, being a definitive illustration for a Burroughs work (1927) that is purely Huntian. I remember when this fanzine came out in 1975, this writer was less receptive to its cover’s style, preferring something more…Frazetta-like? With age comes wisdom. The art of Roy V. Hunt became then more than just the sum of his influences—Lovecraft, Merritt, Burroughs, Finlay, St. John, etc.—achieving that rare alchemy of being an inspiration to those of us who come after him.
All of those book illustrations for Mullen’s Moonfoam and Sorceries which started this appreciation are reproduced fully herein, yet one now needs the totality of the actual published tome in its dark blue inked silver wraps. The quality of art and accompanying research is strong proof to anyone interested in great Old School fantasy illustration that they also need Roy V. Hunt. A Retrospective.