(the one and only Vampirella by Frank Frazetta for Warren mags in 1968, image borrowed from the American Art Archives)
News has been spreading around the web of the passing of the great Frank Frazetta, one of the last of the giants. Born in 1928, Frank was drawing comics from his teens onwards; he created posters for Hollywood, hugely influential cover art for SF&F books (especially Conan and Tarzan), album covers and paintings, a great number of them visualising the fantastic genres for legions of readers, it’s pretty hard to overstate the influence of Frank’s art on generations of readers and other artists. Frank’s death comes just under a year after the death of his wife, model and muse Ellie. Heidi at The Beat notes that Frank’s passing at 82 has been confirmed by his agent, Robert Pistella, before going on to comment “I’m a pulp girl at heart; Frazetta was one of the great image makers of my youth.” I’m with Heidi on that score, I can’t imagine how poorer my fantasy genre reading would have been without Frank’s fabulous imagery, he was one of the defining artists of the fantastic and will be sadly missed.
(some of the heroic fantasy art by Frank which defined how generations of SF&F fans saw their wonderful worlds, image borrowed from the unofficial Frank Frazetta gallery)
Let’s enjoy one more work from Frank, another of the great pulp SF&F heroes he depicted with such panache, Buck Rogers from the fabulous fifties:
May 11th, 2010 at 7:29 am
Ah no. :( What an artist, a legend in his own lifetime.