Lee Brown Coye

Recent years has seen a resurgence of interest in artist Lee Brown Coye (1907-1981).  First there was the illustrated biography Arts Unknown: The Life and Art of Lee Brown Coye (2005), by Luis Ortiz. In 2011, Centipede Press published a large retrospective of Coye's art.  And more recently, Mike Hunchback and Caleb Braaten have published Pulp Macabre: The Art of Lee Brown Coye's Final and Darkest Era (2015).  All three of these volumes have their attractions. 

Coye's macabre artwork is perhaps best known from its appearance in three anthologies edited by August Derleth in the 1940s—including Sleep No More (1944), Who Knocks? (1946), and The Night Side (1947)—and in Weird Tales magazine from 1945 through 1952.  Coye also did illustrations for Arkham House books, including Three Tales of Horror (1967) by H.P. Lovecraft. 

Pulp Macabre focuses on the Coye's projects from the 1970s, including work published in Carcosa Press books and Whispers magazine. Coye had a stroke in the late 70s, and tried to turn back to art, but the examples shown here are sketchier than was Coye's wont, though their style is still characteristically Coye's. Still Pulp Macabre makes for another fine Coye collection. 

The Seventh Ogre

Lee Brown Coye (1907-1981) was primarily an artist of the weird.  Early in his career, he adapted and illustrated an East Indian folk tale as his first book, The Seventh Ogre (1932).  The story tells of a blind man and a deaf man who team up and have a number of adventures, including while scheming to steal the gold of an ogre, who calls upon six other ogres to help him (unsuccessfully) defend his gold.  While Coye's macabre illustrations are interesting and well-done, they don't seem a very good match for the tale. Still the combination makes for an interesting little book.