A personal favorite blog of mine, Uncle Doug’s Bunker of Vintage Horror Paperbacks, has returned after what seems like forever. Every one of his blog posts is packed to the gills with incredible images and loads of great reminiscence about the golden age of the written word (that’s right). Technically before my time, I still managed to devour plenty of these through library sales and used book stores. And they’re all gone now.

A little gem from the most recent blog entry:

The very first time that I remember actually being conscious of the name Weird Tales and understanding that it was a, at the time, defunct magazine was while reading the introduction to the 1971 Scholastic Books collection The Shadow over Innsmouth and other Stories of Horror. I think I actually got a nose bleed trying to wrap my 10 year old brain this collection’s Lovecraftian delights such as The Festival, The Colour out of Space and The Shadow over Innsmouth! And even when I didn’t know what Weird Tales actually was, I sure as hell knew that it must have been something mighty special by the time I finished that collection of stories! It still boggles my mind to this day that Scholastic was peddling Lovecraft to 10 year olds. May the gods bless who ever was on their board of advisers. And on a side note; only after producing a physical copy of the book did my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Sennef let me get away with colour on a spelling test.

I’m definitely interested in hearing what you guys have to say on the subject. It’s hard to relate this to Call of Cthulhu, although I feel like you could probably file this one away under “inspiration.” The lurid and wild illustrations on these covers resemble the inside of a role playing game far more than Lovecraft’s actual stories.

Let me know what you think in the comments or on Facebook or twitter.