"The Eyes of the Panther": A Weird Tales Mystery [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Weird Tales, September 1942

The Jules de Grandins, the Conans, the Edmond Hamilton blockbusters were always prominently placed at the beginning of any issue of Weird Tales. Lurking in the last pages are the filler; stuff by also-rans who supplied regular, if not spectacular stories. It is interesting what you will find buried in these forgotten pages. Amongst them are to be found the first stories. Sometimes these initial sales prove to be a wonderful find like Tennessee Williams' "The Vengeance of Nitocris" (August 1928) under his real name of Thomas Lanier Williams. More often, they are obscure stories by authors nobody remembers. The one-offs. Writers who penned a single outing, were able to sell it to Farnsworth Wright or Dorothy McWraith, then disappeared into the dust of the past. "Off the Map" by Rex Dolphin in the final issue (July 1954) is one such tale that has been reprinted several times. But most never see the light of day again.

An example of such a forgotten tale is "The Eyes of the Panther" by Kuke Nichols (September 1942). Nichols is a complete mystery. Is this person a man or woman? Was the name a pseudonym, meant to sound like "kooky"? A little joke like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Normal Bean? Nobody knows. Kuke wrote this one story and it is all we have to go by. Let the detective work begin...

The title "Eyes of the Panther" is shared with a famous horror tale by Ambrose Bierce (October 17, 1897, The Examiner). Bierce's story within a story follows a family who suffered tragedy because of a panther that comes into the house by an open window. Bierce suggests that this incident causes the offspring of the victim to become a were-panther that is shot by her lover in the end. This story was filmed in 1989 with C Thomas Howell as the young man. He got to flip roles on Grimm, where he played a shapeshifting FBI agent named Weston Stewart.

C Thomas Howell in "The Eyes of the Panther"

Kuke Nichols' story has no real bearing on Bierce. It begins with an obscure quote from James Branch Cabell. The plot concerns a man who is tired of the city and returns to his ancestral home to live a quiet life. Becoming bored, he goes to the attic and discovers a trunk that was said to be cursed by his grandfather to keep anyone from opening it. Inside the rotting box is an ancient book, also falling to pieces. From this book, the narrator performs an old rite involving wooden poles that opens the gates to Hell. The familiar that lures him on is a panther with golden eyes, the source of our title.

But once the man has begun to open the door he sees what terrors he will unleash on the Earth and recants. He destroys the spell then flees for his house as trees all around him try to claw him and pull him down. Once inside he burns the book. The panther stares evilly at him before it disappears in the burning house. The narrator survives the fire and ends up in an asylum for a while. After that he chooses to set sail for the South Seas, though he knows he can't escape his fate, for at night, sea creatures stare up at him with the same eyes as the panther. He feels he is doomed, but holds a small hope that God will forgive him in the end.

The end result is that "The Eyes of the Panther" is not a terrible tale. It certainly is better than the many Cthulhu Mythos pastiches by August Derleth that follow a similar plot arc. The first person narrative is quick-paced and free of obvious defect. That being said, it never really rises above any of this either. There are a few interesting bits, like how their version of the Necronomicon "was wrapped three times each way by a tarnished silver chain, and that the chain was made of tiny crucifixes, linked end to end." Still, Nichols has all the denizens of Hell, but describes none besides the panther, first seen on the cover of the book: "Above the circle was stretched a great cat, a panther, perhaps; stained black in contrast with the rest of the carving, which was pale brown. The cat's face was turned outward from the book, and in its eyes were set tiny specks of gold."

Illustration by Boris Dolgov

Another odd fact about this story is the illustration by Boris Dolgov. Dolgov was responsible for some of the very best artwork in Weird Tales, a master alongside Virgil Finlay, Hannes Bok, and Lee Brown Coye. His soft, fantastic figures are elegant at the same time they are haunting. The illustration for "The Eyes of the Panther" is crude, asymmetrical, and extremely disappointing. I would not have known it was a Dolgov except it is signed at the bottom. In a tale with all the denizens of Hell to choose from - or the panther with the shining eyes - Dolgov draws a tree. And not even an interesting one. I have to assume he got the assignment very late or possibly even without a copy of the story. Even though there are trees that attack the narrator, this illo deserves to be buried at the back of the issue.

In the end, "The Eyes of the Panther" provides no real answers, only more questions. Was Kuke Nichols a pseudonym? If so it would mostly likely be for an author already in the issue, as avoiding duplicate bylines was the most common reason for using them. If so, the tale had to be penned by Manly Banister, Seabury Quinn, Greye la Spina, Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, David H Keller, Clark Ashton Smith, HP Lovecraft, or Nelson S Bond. Most of these are immediately dismissed: (stylistically) Lovecraft and Smith; (too big a name to waste) Quinn, La Spina, Keller; (never used pseudonyms) Leiber and Banister. Of those who did use pseudonyms, Robert Bloch used Tarleton Fiske and Nathan Hindin in Weird Tales. Nelson S Bond also used them in other magazines, but there is no record of his using Kuke Nichols. Most likely, Kuke was a fan of the magazine and wrote the one story, basing it on familiar themes and authors.

Could it have originally been a Cthulhu Mythos tale? August Derleth would clamp down on the Mythos properties as he was building Arkham House. (Shutting down authors like C Hall Thompson who wrote "The Spawn of the Green Abyss" and "The Will of Claude Ashur" four year later.) This story appears a little too early for that to be likely. The quote by James Branch Cabell suggests another inspiration than Lovecraft. Kuke Nichols was a fantasy fan more than a Mythos one, I suspect. The story feels almost more like an A Merritt story with its panther and gateway than something Poesque or Lovecraftian. Ultimately, we'll never know. Could Kuke have gone on and written even better stories? It never happened. The mystery remains, as does this minor tale for those who want to dig it up for some autumnal reading. Enjoy.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

The Door to Infinity: Mythos without Lovecraft [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

I got my start in the Mythos business by playing Call of Cthulhu, a role-playing game in which private detectives, soldiers, dilettantes and hobos face off against cultists with one goal: to return the Great Old Ones to the earth. This fun blend of adventure and horror was created by Sandy Petersen and Gene Day and based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

The game led me to read virtually every story Lovecraft wrote. And what you don't find are adventures featuring private detectives, soldiers, dillentes and hobos facing off against cultists with one goal: to return the Great Old Ones to the earth. Lovecraft's protagonists are usually people much the same as Lovecraft himself: New England gentlemen, librarians and writers. A few stories - such as "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Dunwich Horror" - feature "cultists," but usually in the background.

So what gives? Some of this is the gamification of the Cthulhu Mythos by Petersen. To make the game fun to play, you have to DO something. He included the 1920s Private Eye and other historical professions such as the Hobo and former veterans of WWI. But this was all the way in 1982. Did anyone ever try the Mythos adventure back in the day? Plenty of people wrote pseudo-Lovecraft including August Derleth, Robert Bloch, C Hall Thompson, Henry Kuttner, and Frank Belknap Long. And these were just the ones in Weird Tales. But did anyone ever write a Call of Cthulhu (referred to as CoC from now on) style story to inspire Petersen fifty years later?

Just one writer, a contemporary of HPL with a long list of credits all his own, Edmond Hamilton. The story was "The Door to Infinity" and of course it appeared in Weird Tales (August-September 1936), six months before HPL's death. Hamilton got his start in WT in August 1926 with "The Monster-God of Mamurth", a tale of an invisible temple and its giant spider god. Most of Hamilton's reputation in 1936 rested on his Science Fiction which included gigantic space battles, giving him the sobriquet of "World Wrecker Hamilton". So why would he write a CoC style tale?

The reason is simple. Hamilton was versatile. He wrote all kinds of Science Fiction and Fantasy for WT. He wrote Heroic Fantasy in "Lost Elysium" and "Twilight of the Gods", monster SF in "The Metal Giants" and "The Star-Stealers", lyrical Fantasy like "He That Hath Wings" (inspiring Angel of the X-Men), Animal SF in "Day of Judgment" (Kamandi before Jack Kirby), horror tales like "The Vampire Master" as Hugh Davidson, space opera in "Corsairs of the Cosmos", and every kind of fantastic story you can think of. Hamilton was a writer up for anything, even a Mythos romp.

"Door to Infinity" has two heroes, Inspector Pierce Campbell of Scotland Yard and handsome, young American, Paul Innis. Campbell and Innis have to track down the dangerous Brotherhood of the Door when they steal Innis' wife, Ruth. The agent of the Brotherhood is Chandra Dass, an evil Malay with plenty of henchmen. The two heroes are captured and sent to their deaths down a trap door to the Thames. Only Campbell's resourcefulness saves them, allowing the duo to chase Dass along the river and discover the secret headquarters of the cult in a limestone cliff. Once inside, posing as cultists, the two men find that the Brotherhood has several sacrificial victims, including Ruth, who will supply the energy to open a dimensional door. Paul Innis sees:

The spherical web of wires pulsed up madly with shining force. And up at the center of the gleaming black oval facet on the wall, there appeared a spark of unearthly green light. It blossomed outward, expanded, an awful viridescent flower blooming quickly outward farther and farther. And as it expanded, Ennis saw that he could look through that green light! He looked through into another universe, a universe lying infinitely far across alien dimensions from our own, yet one that could be reached through this door between dimensions. It was a green universe, flooded with an awful green light that was somehow more akin to darkness than to light, a throbbing, baleful luminescence.

Ennis saw dimly through green-lit spaces a city in the near distance, an unholy city of emerald hue whose unsymmetrical, twisted towers and minarets aspired into heavens of hellish viridity. The towers of that city swayed to and fro and writhed in the air. And Ennis saw that here and there in the soft green substance of that restless city were circles of lurid light that were like yellow eyes.

In ghastly, soul-shaking apprehension of the utterly alien, Ennis knew that the yellow circles were eyes—that that hell-spawned city of another universe was living—that its unfamiliar life was single yet multiple, that its lurid eyes looked now through the Door! 

Sax Rohmer

Out from the insane living metropolis glided pseudopods of its green substance, glided toward the Door. Ennis saw that in the end of each pseudopod was one of the lurid eyes. He saw those eyed pseudopods come questing through the Door, onto the dais.

The yellow eyes of light seemed fixed on the row of stiff victims, and the pseudopods glided toward them. Through the open door was beating wave on wave of unfamiliar, tingling forces that Ennis felt even through the protective robe. 

Campbell's trusty revolver takes out the web-wires and the door closes. A big shoot out and a fiery escape and there you have it. One quality CoC adventure.

Was this Hamilton's best work? No, CoC aside, the whole set-up reeks of Sax Rohmer and Fu Manchu. Campbell is Weyland Smith-fantastic and Paul Innis is too handsome and too American. Weird Tales readers in 1936 would have been quite familiar with Fu Manchu, since Rohmer had resurrected his 1917 character and had been writing new Fu's all through the 1930s: Daughter of Fu Manchu (1931), The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), The Bride of Fu Manchu (1933), The Trail of Fu Manhcu (1934), and President Fu Manchu (1936). Rohmer's racism is also evidenced by the dastardly Chandra Dass.

What I find so interesting about this story is how close Hamilton comes to Lovecraft but does not cross over into the Mythos. Was this because Lovecraft hadn't invited him to join his circle? (I wonder what HPL's reaction to the tale was?) Was it because Hamilton had had no real interest in the Cthulhu Mythos? Did Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales request this tale? Perhaps Hamilton just got there on his own, for Wright never rejected any story by Hamilton in their twenty-four years of working together. Wright allowed Hamilton great freedom and the rewards were many. The tentactular beasties are squamous and eldritch enough for Lovecraft but in the end they are aliens coming from another dimension. The Mythos magic just isn't there. For us time-traveling back to the days of the Pulps, "The Door to Eternity" makes a great "what could have been". Who knows, I just might get that old box set out and chase some cultists around London or Arkham or even Hamilton's own Ohio.

Read "The Door to Infinity" at Project Gutenberg.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Elsewhere... Halloween Stuff!

It was a horror-filled week for my other online writing...

What Are You Reading?



Brief reviews of Living with Zombies and Alan Moore's The Courtyard.

 Custom Jumps



Last week's Five for Friday wasn't exactly horror-related, but I did include a couple of horror titles in my list. The assignment was to Name Five Manga Serials -- Or Works That Could Be Serialized -- That Would Be In The Japanese-Style Anthology Created Just For You. Mine were:

* Lone Wolf and Cub
* Buddha
* Anne Freaks
* Priest
* Samurai 7

Food or Comics?
 


This week's comics on a budget shopping list included Frankie Stein, Fish N' Chips, Perhapanauts, and The Anchor.

Attack of the Mini-Comics!



The most recent Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs column covered four, horror-related mini-comics.

Adventureblog Gallery: Whozits and Whatzits Galore

20,000 Leagues



By Gedeon Maheux.

Brick Bradford in the City Beneath the Sea



By Clarence Gray.

Swordfish Wrestling



By Lou Fine.

Mermaid



By Anne Acaso.

You want Thingamabobs? I've got twenty!



By Jess Hickman.

"The Call of Sigmund"



By Sleestak.

The Awesome List: Hitchcock mashups, 30 Days of Night contest, T-Rex vs. Kitty, Lolthulhu, Reptisaurus, weekly Wonder Woman, and more

I know what I'm buying at the grocery store tonight.



Vanity Fair's Hollywood Issue featuring reshoots of Hitchcock movies with modern stars.

Curious about Spiderwick again

My interest in The Spiderwick Chronicles was slipping, but Neil Gaiman and family give it a thumbs up and that's a high recommendation even when the review is simply, "I really enjoyed (it)."

30 Days of Night movie contest

Win a buttload of stuff related to the 30 Days of Night movie.

From the "I Wish I'd Thought of That" Dept.

T-Rex vs. Kitty! And don't bet too quickly on the dinosaur.

Lolthulhu



UR Soul. I Has It.

Obedience

Bookgasm's on a roll lately with adding stuff to my Wish List. The latest is Will Lavender's Obedience, a thriller about a college professor who challenges students to unravel clues in order to save a girl who may or may not be hypothetical.

Indy trailer update

Someone commented here that the Indy trailer "will be broadcast Feb. 14 on Good Morning America, sometime between 8-9 am. It will then be available online at the official site." The press release is also up at IndianaJones.com again (if it ever went away).

Jericho cast appearance update

Got an email with the following update about the cast members who'll be appearing at the Los Angeles Comicbook and Science Fiction Convention this Sunday:

"Appearing on the CBS-TV Jericho panel at 2:00 P.M. will be stars Esai Morales (joining the series in season two as Major Beck), Kenneth Mitchell (Eric Green), Brad Beyer (Stanley Richmond), Alicia Coppola (Mimi Clark), Jonathan E. Steinberg (Co-Creator of Jericho), Executive Producer Carol Barbee, Co-Executive Producers Karim Zreik and Dan Shotz. At 1:00 P.M. there will be a advance screening of the next week's episode of Jericho."

So, no Skeet, but not a bad lineup at all. Especially with Stanley and Mimi. I love those kids.

Reptisaurus

Someone's making a movie out of an old Charlton comic about a giant monster. It doesn't sound very good.

Of course I'm going to see it.

Weekly Wonder Woman comic

Not really, but almost. DC's announced that their next attempt at a weekly comic will be called Trinity and will feature Wonder Woman, Batman, and Superman.

This one bodes well for me, I think. I enjoyed 52, but would've liked it more if it had featured more heavily characters I already cared about. Countdown should've had a leg up on 52 in that regard by co-starring Mary Marvel, but as everyone has pointed out, it's too tied into 600 other series to be enjoyable on its own. I've taken to skimming through issues at the store and only buying them if there seems to be development in the Mary Marvel plot.

Trinity promises to fix both of those things by a) featuring Wonder Woman, and b) not being tied to other events in the DC Universe.