Frank Frazetta, Illustrator, Dies at 82; Helped Define Comic Book Heroes

By BRUCE WEBER and DAVE ITZKOFF
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Published: May 10, 2010

Frank Frazetta, an illustrator of comic books, movie posters and paperback book covers whose visions of musclebound men fighting with swords and axes to defend scantily dressed women helped define fantasy heroes like Conan, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, died on Monday in Fort Myers, Fla. He was 82.

Frazetta Properties. LLC

Mr. Frazetta in 1994.

The cause was complications from a stroke, said Rob Pistella and Stephen Ferzoco, Mr. Frazetta’s business managers.
Mr. Frazetta was a versatile and prolific comic book artist who, in the 1940s and ’50s, drew for comic strips like Al Capp’s “Lil’ Abner” and comic books like “Famous Funnies,” for which he contributed a series of covers depicting the futuristic adventurer Buck Rogers.

A satirical advertisement Mr. Frazetta drew for Mad earned him his first Hollywood job, the movie poster for “What’s New Pussycat?” (1965), a sex farce written by Woody Allen that starred Peter Sellers. In 1983 he collaborated with the director Ralph Bakshi to produce the animated film “Fire and Ice.”

His most prominent work, however, was on the cover of book jackets, where his signature images were of strikingly fierce, hard-bodied heroes and bosomy, callipygian damsels in distress. In 1966, his cover of “Conan the Adventurer,” a collection of four fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, depicted a brawny long-haired warrior standing in repose on top of a pile of skeletons and other detritus, his sword thrust downward into the mound, an apparently naked young woman lying at his feet, hugging his ankle.

The cover created a new look for fantasy adventure novels and established Mr. Frazetta as an artist who could sell books. He illustrated many more Conan books (including “Conan the Conqueror,” “Conan the Usurper” and “Conan the Avenger”) and works by Edgar Rice Burroughs (including “John Carter and the Savage Apes of Mars” and “Tarzan and the Antmen”).

Frazetta Properties. LLC

Frank Frazetta's defining cover for “Conan the Adventurer.”

“Paperback publishers have been known to buy one of his paintings for use as a cover, then commission a writer to turn out a novel to go with it,” The New York Times reported in 1977, the same year that a collection of his drawings, “The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta,” sold more than 300,000 copies.

Frank Frazzetta was born in Brooklyn on Feb. 9, 1928, and as a boy studied painting at a local art school. (Early in his career, he excised one z from his last name because “with one z it just looked better,” Mr. Pistella said. “He said the two z’s and two t’s was too clumsy.”)

Mr. Frazetta began drawing for comic books of all stripes — westerns, mysteries, fantasies — when he was still a teenager. He was also a good enough baseball player to try out for the New York Giants.

The popularity of Mr. Frazetta’s work coincided with the rise of heavy metal in the early 1970s, and his otherworldly imagery showed up on a number of album covers, including Molly Hatchet’s “Flirtin’ With Disaster” and Nazareth’s “Expect No Mercy.” Last year, Kirk Hammett, the lead guitarist for Metallica, bought Mr. Frazetta’s cover artwork for the paperback reissue of Robert E. Howard’s “Conan the Conqueror” for $1 million.

Mr. Frazetta married Eleanor Kelly, known as Ellie, in 1956. She served as his occasional model and as his business partner; in 2000 she started a small museum of her husband’s work on their property in East Stroudsburg, Pa. She died last year.

Mr. Frazetta is survived by three sisters, Carol, Adel and Jeanie; two sons, Alfonso Frank Frazetta, known as Frank Jr., and William Frazetta, both of East Stroudsburg; two daughters, Heidi Grabin, of Englewood, Fla., and Holly Frazetta, of Boca Grande, Fla.; and 11 grandchildren.

After Ellie Frazetta’s death, her children became embroiled in a custodial dispute over their father’s work, and in December, Frank Jr. was arrested on charges of breaking into the family museum and attempting to remove 90 paintings that had been insured for $20 million. In April, the family said the dispute over the paintings had been resolved, and the Monroe County, Pa., district attorney said he would drop the charges.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 11, 2010, on page B15 of the New York edition.


Frank Frazetta dies at 82; renowned fantasy illustrator

His covers for "Conan" paperbacks and others in the 1960s set the standard for sword-and-sorcery-genre artwork.

By Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/
May 11, 2010

Frank Frazetta, the fantasy painter and illustrator whose images of sinewy warriors and lush vixens graced paperback novels, album covers and comic books for decades and became something close to the contemporary visual definition of the sword-and-sorcery genres, died Monday after suffering a stroke the night before. He was 82.

Frazetta had gone out to dinner with his daughters Sunday and then had a stroke at his home in Boca Grande, Fla. He died at Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers, Fla., his manager Rob Pistella told the Associated Press.

"He's going to be remembered as the most renowned fantasy illustrator of the 20th century," Pistella said.

Frazetta's most famous works were in oil, but his canvases were rarely seen in museums; instead his legacy was defined by barbarians and warlocks who reached out to readers from book covers on dime-store spinner racks. But as comic books and fantasy entertainment gained a wider audience in the 1970s and '80s, Frazetta became a brand name and his original artwork became a sensation. Last November, one of his pieces, a berserk battlefield image that graced a "Conan the Conqueror" paperback, sold for $1 million to a private collector.

John Milius, the screenwriter whose credits include "Apocalypse Now," "Clear and Present Danger" and "Red Dawn," was the director and co-writer of "Conan the Barbarian," the 1982 film that was based on the warrior character created by pulp writer Robert E. Howard in 1932. Milius said Monday that it was Frazetta's muscular paintings of Conan that defined the character for him and modern generations of fans.

"Not that I could ever redo Frazetta on film — he created a world and a mood that are impossible to simulate — but my goal in 'Conan the Barbarian' was to tell a story that was shaped by Frazetta and Wagner," Milius said.

Frazetta was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Feb. 9, 1928. By age 8, he was studying at the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Art. One of his key influences was Hal Foster, the great comic-strip artist whose "Tarzan" became a compass point for Frazetta's own jungle scenes.

By 16, Frazetta was working in the booming field of illustration in New York. He toiled under Al Capp on "Li'l Abner" and on his own strip, "Johnny Comet," in the early 1950s. In comic books, he worked on "The Shining Knight" and a western hero called "Ghost Rider," but his fame would come with a paintbrush and in a more sensual sector when, in the 1960s, he began painting covers for paperbacks and magazines.

It was his covers for the "Conan" paperbacks of the 1960s, especially, that created a new overheated vision of fantasy realms. Later in life he told an interviewer that he didn't find his strange beasts, sullen warriors or buxom maidens in the text of the books he fronted with his art.

"I didn't read any of it," Frazetta said. "I drew him my way. It was really rugged. And it caught on. I didn't care about what people thought. People who bought the books never complained about it. They probably didn't read them."

Perhaps, but the readers of those Conan books — as well as the "Tarzan" and "John Carter Warlord of Mars" novels that Frazetta famously painted covers for — said they found the words and pictures melded with a resonant power.

Guillermo del Toro, the Oscar-nominated co-writer of "Pan's Labyrinth," which he also directed along with the "Hellboy" films, said that Frazetta was nothing less than "an Olympian artist that defined fantasy art for the 20th century." The filmmaker, reached Monday in New Zealand where he is working on a two-film adaptation of "The Hobbit," said Frazetta's influence is difficult to explain to people outside the fantasy world, just as Norman Rockwell would be an elusive figure to define for someone unfamiliar with the U.S. heartland.

"He gave the world a new pantheon of heroes," the filmmaker said by e-mail. "He took the mantle from J. Allen St. John and Joseph Clement Coll and added blood, sweat and sexual power to their legacy.... He somehow created a second narrative layer for every book he ever illustrated."

There were also rock album covers: Molly Hatchet, Nazareth, Yngwie Malmsteen and Wolfmother all tapped into the clanging combat and temptress imagery of Frazetta's easel.

His long, restless career took him into Hollywood work, posters, animation, commercial art and almost every corner of American illustration. The artist's final year had been a wrenching one; his wife and partner, Ellie Frazetta, died in July, setting off a dispute among the Frazetta children about the custody of their ailing patriarch and his art collection, which by some estimates was worth $20 million.

The quarrel reached a bizarre zenith in December when his son Alfonso "Frank Jr." Frazetta used a backhoe to knock down a wall of a small castle-like building that housed much of his father's premium artwork. That building was a mini-museum that sat on the elder Frazetta's farm in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, and the bizarre invasion led to a criminal case, although charges were dropped during a recent settlement among the Frazetta siblings.

Besides his son Frank, Frazetta is survived by another son, William; two daughters, Heidi Frazetta Grabin and Holly Frazetta; and 11 grandchildren.

geoff.boucher@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times


Frank Frazetta, master of fantasy art, dead at 82

By HOWARD FRANK
Pocono Record Writer
http://www.poconorecord.com/
May 11, 2010

He lived among dragons, battlefields and medieval landscapes. And in the end, he was master of them all.

Frank Frazetta Sr., one of the most renowned fantasy illustrators of the 20th century, died Monday at a hospital near his home in Boca Grande, Fla. He was 82.

Frazetta suffered a stroke at home Sunday after having lunch with his daughter and grandchildren. He was flown to Lee Memorial Hospital, where he died.

Frank Frazetta Sr. in the mid-1960s. The famed fantasy artist died at a hospital near his home in Boca Grande, Fla., on Monday afternoon, May 10, 2010, one day after suffering a stroke. Photo courtesy of the Frazetta family.

He owned a home in Marshalls Creek, where his family operated a museum that displayed his works. He became a local icon, as fans of his art traveled to see the originals and meet the master.

Frazetta, whose dazzling images influenced a generation, was regarded as one of the world's premier fantasy and comic book artists. His art was known for muscular heroes, voluptuous women and ferocious beasts.

A plain-spoken, down-to-earth man with a heavy accent that betrayed his native Brooklyn, Frazetta had movie-star looks. His trademark flowing hair and pompadour styling added to the allure of a man who could create such wildly unique visions.

Frazetta's work dates back to the 1940s, when his vivid characters decorated Buck Rogers comic book covers for Famous Funnies. That work brought him to the attention of Al Capp, and Frazetta began drawing for the syndicated comic strip "Lil' Abner." He also did illustrations for "Little Annie Fannie" for Playboy magazine.

In the '60s, Frazetta began illustrating paperback covers. Some of his best known work was for the Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian books. His 1976 "Dark Kingdom" painting featuring the Death Dealer became the cover art for rockers Molly Hatchet's first album. In all, he provided cover art and illustrations for more than 150 books, calendars and album covers.
Frazetta's artwork has appeared in countless magazines, including Newsweek, Esquire and National Lampoon.

One of Frazetta's most popular images, the Death Dealer, became the adopted symbol of the U.S. Army's III Corps heavy maneuver force in 1985. A life-sized statue of the painting was commissioned by the Army and unveiled at the force's headquarters at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. It depicts an armored 6-foot-6-inch warrior wielding a menacing hatchet sitting astride an imposing Shire draft horse.

Success almost from the start

Frazetta was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1928, and went to the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts. But when the school closed in 1945, Frazetta was forced to find work to earn a living.

He began drawing for comic books at age 16, during the medium's golden age. His first work was in animal comics, and then for others, including "The Shining Knight" and "Ghost Rider," as well as his own strip, "Johnny Comet."

In his late teens, Frazetta had dreams of playing major league baseball and was pursued by several professional teams. But after a tryout with the New York Giants, he decided to stick with art.

Frazetta married Eleanor Kelly in 1956. She managed his business interests throughout their 53-year marriage. "Ellie" died after a battle with cancer in 2009.

After her death, infighting among Frazetta's two daughters and two sons led to a series of lawsuits and legal proceedings. But just weeks before his death and during a two-day marathon mediation in federal court in Scranton, an agreement was reached among family members to settle all legal actions.

Frazetta's art was recognized with four Chesley Awards and a 1966 Hugo Award. He received the Spectrum Grand Master of Fantastic Art Award in 1995.

Frazetta's oldest son, Alfonso Frank Frazetta of Marshalls Creek, owns East Stroudsburg retailer Golf World. His youngest son, Bill Frazetta of East Stroudsburg, owns Frazetta's Fantasy Costumes, housed in the same East Stroudsburg building as the golf shop.

"His legacy is going to go on," Bill Frazetta said.

Funeral services will be private.


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Frazetta's place in fantasy art history secure

Links
Frank Frazetta Museum: Official Site
Frazetta Art Gallery
Complete Coverage: Frank Frazetta