One of the most compelling and interesting aspects of this contest for me is when other people post comics or artists I'm not familiar with. This week benday-dot's "Weird Horrors" cover really made me curious. Some of you may already know of the artist, William Ekgren, but I didn't and what I read about him was fascinating. He was born in Oslo, Norway, in 1918 and from what I can tell, is still alive.

Ekgren came to the US in 1946
and now I'll quote from comicvine www.comicvine.com/william-ekgren/4040-70659/
"Ekgren made a living as an art instructor when he was not crewing ships, and in the Spring of 1952, at an outdoor art show in Greenwich Village, his stall was visited by a group of three men and one woman, who were impressed one of his works in particular, and they bought the publication rights to it for $100 dollars. One of those men was Archer St. John, founder of St. John Publications. The woman was Marion McDermott, editor for St. John. Ekgren reported that after they had the painting for a week, they returned it to him so that he could sell it again.

They came back twice more, each time buying the publication rights to one of his paintings, and then returning it to him later. Those three paintings became the covers of one issue of Strange Terrors, and two of Weird Horrors.

The paintings had not been commissioned as comic book works..."

Here are the covers below--I hope you can see them,
but if not, here's a link boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=3835622

Ekgren was a mystery for many years. I know I was fascinated when I saw those covers in the overstreet guide. I think the longest writeup about him was in Crag Yoe's Arf Forum a few years back.