Introduction

Weird Tales is a current magazine and you can find it here at the DNA Publications web site. This site is often out-of-date, however, and currently features the issue two behind the most recent one to be published. There is also a fan site here which shows a selection of the US covers

There are two known Canadian editions of Weird Tales

• WTC1 - 14 issues in 1935-6. and
• WTC2 - 58 issues 1942-51, both published by the American News Company of Toronto

and three British editions

• WTK1 - three issues published by GG Swan in 1941 or 1942
• WTK2 - a single issue published by WC Merrett of London in 1946
• WTK3 - 23 pulp and 5 digest issues by Thorpe & Porter and its associate company, Strato Publications, from 1949 to 1954

WTC1 - First Canadian edition

This edition ran from June 1935 to July 1936. Both Tuck and SFFWF describe it as "identical to the US edition", in contents at any rate, though there are some cover differences. Most were simply overprinted on the front with "Printed in Canada" and a rather curious injunction by the price to "Pay no more", like the August 1935 issue shown here. The Canadian censors' starchy attitude to some of the Margaret Brundage covers, however, required some slightly more intrusive changes. The modesty of the model on the front of the November issue, for example, is protected by a strategically placed notice slap in the middle of the cover, while the Brundage nude on the front of September 1935 has mysteriously lost her breasts. These are the only three I have of this series and I have shown them here with the US versions to highlight the differences. I would be very interested to see the rest of them.

WTC2 - Second Canadian edition

Tuck states that this edition, which ran for 58 issues bi-monthly from May 1942 to November 1951, was "identical to the US edition except that it ran one issue behind ... and had different advertisements", though he goes on to say that some Canadian illustrations were used. Since Tuck's book was published in the 1970s, however, this edition has been indexed in SFFWF and a much more complicated picture emerges. It is true that each issue of WTC2 is based primarily on a single issue of the US original Weird Tales, but:

• initially, the Canadian edition ran two issues - four months - behind the US, from May 1942 (US January 1942) to January 1945 (US September 1944)
• from March 1945, the Canadian edition ran only one issue behind the US, jumping to US January 1945 and omitting November 1944. Stories from November 1944 were picked up and reprinted in later Canadian issues, however
• only the first two Canadian issues contained the same content as the US issue, but even then they were scrambled into a different order. Not having the magazines to hand, I don't know why - possibly to accommodate different advertisements or illustrations
• most Canadian issues contained most but not all of the original US content - poems were very often omitted or substituted for example - and also drew content from alternative US issues. But, as you can see from the table below, the Canadian edition for most of its run had more pages than its US counterpart, so it was sometimes able to include all of the corresponding US issue and material drawn from other issues as well
• in one or two instances, the additional material comes not from Weird Tales at all but from another magazine, and there are even examples of original stories published first in the Canadian edition later reprinted in the US edition.

SFFWF indexes only as far as the January 1948 issue (reprinting US November 1947) and says that the remaining 23 issues of the run are identical to the US version.

The covers run in three distinct phases.

• For 17 issues from the beginning of the run to January 1945 - i.e., over the same period that it was running four months behind the US - original Canadian covers were used. SFFWF can only identify the first of them, by the artist Edmond Good, the rest are cited as "unknown". I have seen, and show here, about half of them, and you can see that they are not reprints of US Weird Tales covers, or from any other magazine that I can recognise.
• For the next 18 issues to January 1948, the cover of the US issue corresponding to the main content was used, i.e., the one dated two months earlier than the Canadian magazine . It was overprinted with the Canadian date and price but otherwise unaltered. SFFWF cites the original artist in all but a few cases where it give "unknown", but I have checked these and they, too, look identical to their corresponding US covers.
• From March 1948 onwards (which, coincidentally, was billed as the 25th Anniversary issue), the covers are wholly identical to the US edition, without even a date and price overprint. I have not seen all of them to confirm this, but it is certainly true of March 1948 and all of the dozen or so later covers that I have seen. Since they are identical, I have not bothered to feature them here. This applies only to the front covers - I can't speak for whether they carried the same advertisements on the back.

There is one final oddity to record about the Canadian edition. They carried a volume and serial number which started out almost making sense, in that the first issue had the same number as the US issue on which it was based. This lasted only one more issue before the numbering scheme set off on an erratic course of its own which rarely intersected with the US edition and finally got stuck on v38#4 for eleven consecutive issues before giving up altogether. In other words, you should ignore the numbers as they are useless for identifying issues of the Canadian magazine.

WTK1 - First British edition

For my information on all three British editions, I have drawn heavily on an article by Mike Ashley entitled "Weird Tales - English Style" first published in "Etchings and Odysseys" in 1986, but still to be found here at Sean Wallace's Waystation Central web site. I have checked my information wherever possible against my own collection of these magazines, but it is far from complete. I have also had useful information from Alisatir Durie on the dating of these magazines. None of the British editions is indexed in SFFWF, though they are all listed (but not indexed) in Tuck.

The first series comprised three issue published by Gerald G Swan early in the war years. There is some doubt about the exact dates and I have used those given by Tuck, but Ashley thinks the first one may have been issued as early as February 1941. #1 was a partial reprint of the US issue; #2 was complete except for a single omitted poem and achieved this in its limited page count by using a very small typeface, while #3 lacked only a short story from the original. The three issues were all printed on flimsy, poor-quality war-time paper and the covers were printed in blue rather than in full colour. Besides this and the "English edition" and price overprints, they seem to use the original artwork.

WTK2 - Second British edition

This single issue was published by the London publisher William C Merrett - the "WCM" overprinted on the cover - in 1946. It was only 36 pages and reprinted just three stories from the October 1937 issue. It carries what appears to be the Brundage cover from that date, but Ashley thinks it probable that it was repainted, possibly to accommodate the different sized paper used on the British issue. Just adding the publisher's mark and UK price and removing the date would not have required this. After examining the best scans I have of the British and US magazines side-by-side, however, I am inclined to agree with him. There are differences in detail in the stonework to the left of the standing woman, for example, also in the hairlines of the male faces. Whoever repainted it, though, did a remarkably convincing job.

WTK3 - Third British edition

This is the longest-lasting of the UK editions and ran from 1949 to 1954, 23 pulp-sized issues published by Thorpe & Porter and five digest issues by Strato Publications, distributed by Thorpe & Porter. Both these companies had their address as Oadby, Leicester, England - as did the printers, the Jenson Book Company Ltd - and they are thought to be associated companies. The digest issues followed directly on from the pulp numbers (though, curiously, the first digest issue came out in the UK before the last pulp) so they are normally considered to be a single series. Tuck says that all the pulp issues were numbered on the spine after the first, but this is not correct. The numbering did not start until #10. The first digest issue was curiously identified as v3#1 - like the first UK issue of "Galaxy", which was also a Strato import - then they reverted to v1#2 to v1#5. Where dates appear, whether on the cover, the spine or inside, they are of the US original, not the British issue date.

The dates normally acknowledged for this edition and which I have given in the table below are those given by Tuck, but there is reason to doubt their accuracy at least as far as #9. Several of these early numbers showed the dates of the original US issue, in some cases 6-7 months earlier than Tuck's date. It would seem distinctly odd to publish a magazine that already seemed to be months old when it would have been very easy to remove the US date. Several issues carry advertisements on the back for International Correspondence Schools that dates them in 1950, while Tuck places them in 1951. It seemed likely, therefore, that some of these pulp issues actually appeared several months before Tuck says they did. Alistair Durie and others have pursued this suspicion and examined the advertisements in the magazines, which correlate with similar advertisements placed in magazines that are dated, and has come up with an alternative dating scheme for the first nine issues. I believe this to be more probable, within a month or so, and have shown it below alongside the Tuck dates.

Tuck describes the pulps as "fairly complete copies of the US originals", other than the substitution of UK adverts, and Ashley says that all that usually was omitted or truncated was the letters column. I have about two thirds of the pulps and four of the digests and I can confirm that they all follow this pattern - even the poems and crosswords have been included. It appears that the original front cover artwork was used, the only changes being that a UK price was added and sometimes the US date was blotted out.

The digest issues each carry an advertisement inside for an aid to giving up smoking, by the way, with the main emphasis on saving money rather than your life and a packet of 20 cigarettes costed at 3/6d! Which may seem cheap, but is more than twice the price of the magazine. Sadly, 50 years later, it is in the UK at least relatively speaking cheaper to smoke than it is to read.

The US magazine continued for only two more issues after those reprinted in the UK and died with the September 1954 issue, to be resurrected briefly 19 years later before falling silent again after four issues. But not for nothing was Weird Tales called the "The Magazine that Never Dies" and, after several more resurrections and changes of ownership, it continues on an approximately quarterly schedule today.

Source of images

Many of these covers were scanned by Alistair Durie, to whom many thanks. Others are from my own collection, while most of the Canadian issues were offered for sale on the Internet, either on eBay or on ABE Books