THE WEIRD, WEIRD ART OF MATT FOX

THE CHILLINGLY WEIRD ART OF MATT FOX

By Roger Hill

TwoMorrows Publishing

June 2023

Hardcover

ISBN: 978-1-60549-120-2

128 pages

$29.95

Among the largely unknown and underrated artists from the Golden Age of pulp magazines and early comic books is Matthew "Matt" Fox (1906-1998). While his unique style may be recognizable to some, few know who the enigmatic man behind the work really was.

During his career, his preferred media was lithography, color woodcuts, oil and watercolor painting and etchings in the fields of illustration, advertising art, pulp magazines and comic books. Like many other illustrators of that period, Alex Raymond was a major source of his inspiration.

Prior to World War II he worked for Fiction House on the PLANET STORIES pulp title. His first illustrations for WEIRD TALES were in 1943 and after that he worked exclusively for the magazine for the next eight years. He landed his first cover assignment for the November 1944 issue, depicting a scene from August Derleth's "The Dweller in Darkness". In total, he would complete 12 covers (one went unpublished when the magazine finally folded) and 40 illustrations.

Weird Tales - July 1950

His first comic book story and cover was in 1952 for Youthful's CHILLING TALES and he would later produce a substantial amount of work for Atlas Comics, many times inking Larry Lieber's (brother of Stan Lee) pencils.

Fox worked a short period of time for Bhob Stewart (1937-2014), who was editor of 

CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Mr. Stewart later commented on his relationship with Fox:

"Fox came across as a straight-arrow, no nonsense sort of guy. I recall him looking very slim and fit. He was selling glow-in-the-dark posters, and he wanted to run an ad in the magazine. He unfurled his glowing poster, which depicted demons and banshees dancing in the pale moonlight. We took it into a dark corner of the room, and yes indeed, it did emit an eerie green glow. He had designed an ad for the posters with clever hand drawn effects. The style for his half-page ad fit in nicely with the type of art we ran in the magazine. I suggested he create one of our department headings and he said, 'Sure. I'll do those.' The Matt Fox ad ran on the bottom of the last interior page of issue #8 from October of 1966. His neatly rendered copy read, 'Weird and monster fans! Something new! Demons and Banshees! See astonishing monsters that will glow in the dark in weird green light! A lot of fun, shock and surprise!' That same issue also featured his heading for the Ghostal Mail department, which showed a variety of demons looking on as Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster peruse letters from readers. We later produced The 1967 Castle of Frankenstein Monster Annual Fear Book, which included the same Matt Fox ad as well as a new heading he illustrated for the fanzine review column. That second drawing was much larger, showing a demon chasing a terrified man across a cemetery where one of the tombstones says 'Rest In Peace Matt. Fox.' When he dropped off the second illustration, I casually asked, 'So how many orders did you get for the glow-in-the-dark posters?' he responded bitterly, 'None.' After that I never saw him again. He became the 'phantom' artist, whereabouts unknown!"

Very little is known about Fox's personal life, but Roger Hill has probably written as much as there is available about that and his career. In his book, The Chillingly Weird Art of Matt Fox (TwoMorrows, 2023) he has done an amazing job on piecing together Fox's life (a lucky break by Stan Lee put him in contact with Fox's sister, who still had some of his original work), as well as sharing numerous examples of unpublished art.

Chilling Tales #17 - October 1953.

The slender volume is a fairly quick read, but without Mr. Hill's efforts we would have had considerably less. As usual, TwoMorrows has done an excellent job with the book design and the art has been reproduced as per their extremely high standards. That it was printed as a hardcover scores even more points for quality. I give this my highest recommendation, as it is a treasure of rare material that we would have most likely never known about without the diligence and scholarship of Mr. Hill.

The book is sold out from the publisher, but they are selling digital copies HERE.

Below: Matt Fox's work for CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN as described in the above quote: