From Lovecraft to Tight, Tight Pants... Rex Weldon - Paperback Writer

    Being a part time book dealer and vintage paperback historian of sorts can lead you down some funky roads.

    I was cataloguing a sleaze book entitled "Babe In Blue Jeans" for sale and had to do an internet search for the author "Rex Weldon" because I had never heard the name before and I always do a little bio search on books and/or authors I am selling in order to add a little extra oomph to the sales ad.

  

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Babe In Blue Jeans by Rex Weldon. Cover artist uncredited

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    Well, it took only a second or two to come across the Wikipedia page of one "Duane Weldon Rimel" who wrote novels under the pseudonym "Rex Weldon". I won't go much into his bio as the Wiki page is sufficent reading unto itself, but it just got me to thinking of how odd that such a well respected man about town (Newspaper Editor, Commissioner of the Housing Authority etc.), who was an early fan and correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft in the 1930's, wound up penning soft core sleaze with bodacious cover art such as "Babe In Blue Jeans" in the 1960's! 

    Taking a peek through the book, it involves Brad King, a newspaper editor in Austin County who gets involved investigating a murder connected to the "Lost Chinamen Gold" - a legendary gold horde that disappeared in the 1890's when the Chinese were mining gold on the Upper Snake River in Idaho. (Hmm, Rimel was a newspaper editor in Asotin County, a Washington State county on the border of Idaho) Of course there are the ubiquitous soft core sleaze scenes sprinkled in and about the goings on of solving the crime - which is plotted slightly better than the usual soft sleaze fare. 

    Like so many great writers, ie. Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Evan Hunter, Donald Westlake,  Lawrence Block etc., the bills had to be paid at some point and the sleaze paid them, though in this case, rather than Science Fantasy, Rimel turned to some good old fashioned Northwest Woods Crime Fantasy to keep the collectors away. 

    The cover artist on this book did quite a few covers for Spotlight Books and some other affiliated imprints. The outrageously oversexed and comic book-ish style is quite recognizeable, but I haven't been able to find any information on who it was. If anyone has info, please share.

 

Comments

  1. Eric GimlinFebruary 1, 2026 at 10:25 PM

    Lovecraft did revisions (likely minor) on Rimel's story "The Disinterment" in the January 1937 Weird Tales, which has one of Brundage's most racy covers. So there's a slight precedent here.

    The art on this one reminds me a little of Stanton, but not a lot.

    ReplyDelete

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