Frank Frazetta

Frank Frazetta (born February 9, 1928, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died May 10, 2010, Fort Myers, Florida) was an American artist regarded as one of the most gifted in the fantasy and science-fiction genres. His distinct style, epitomized by muscular men and voluptuous women commonly rendered with a dark palette, was an obvious influence on many of his contemporaries.

Born Frank Frazzetta (he later changed his last name because he thought it looked clumsy with two z’s and two t’s), Frazetta demonstrated a talent for drawing at an early age. He began taking lessons at the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts when he was eight years old. His tutor, artist Michele Falanga, was so taken with Frazetta’s talent that he considered sending the boy to Italy to further his art education. However, Falanga died in 1942 before those plans could be realized, and Frazetta continued studying at the academy for several years thereafter.

While still in his teens, Frazetta joined the Bernard Baily Studio, which produced comic books for various publishers. He found a mentor in artist John Giunta, who helped Frazetta hone his technique. Under Giunta’s guidance, Frazetta published his first comic-book story, featuring a character of his own creation, Snowman, in Tally-Ho Comics, a single-issue publication released in December 1944.

Frazetta quickly found work with other publishers, including Standard Comics, where he took over Looie Lazybones, a strip that played on “hillbilly” stereotypes much like Al Capp’s popular Li’l Abner. He found another mentor in Standard’s art director Ralph Mayo, who loaned him a book on human anatomy that Frazetta studiously hand-copied in a single day. He was soon illustrating a variety of genre stories for Famous Funnies, including its popular Buck Rogers strip, and Heroic Comics. Frazetta also made illustrations for publishers EC Comics and Avon Comics.

In 1954 Frazetta was hired by Al Capp as a full-time “ghost” artist on Li’l Abner. He understood the rigors of the job, having illustrated the comic strip Johnny Comet (1952–53) and having tried, unsuccessfully, to sell several comic strips of his own creation. Frazetta’s stint on Li’l Abner paid well, and he contributed to the strip until 1961, when he resigned after Capp reduced his salary and demanded that Frazetta move from New York to Capp’s Boston studio. During this period, Frazetta married Eleanor (Ellie) Kelly in 1956, and they had four children.

Frazetta briefly struggled to find well-paying work following Li’l Abner. He was unsuccessful in selling his own comic strip, Sweet Adeline, and was turned away by the comic-book industry, which found his style old-fashioned. Adept at depicting the female form, Frazetta made quick money by working on illustrations for men’s magazines and adult-oriented paperback novels. He also worked briefly on Little Annie Fanny, a strip created by humorist Harvey Kurtzman for Playboy magazine.

Frazetta’s work became more widely known in 1962 when artist Roy Krenkel, with whom Frazetta had worked at EC, helped him land a position with Ace Books painting covers for reprints of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novels. At Ace, Frazetta perfected his signature muscular style of fantasy painting, and he was hired to do similar work with Lancer Books and other publishers. In 1964 Frazetta started painting covers for various magazine-format comic books published by Warren Publishing, including Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, and Blazing Combat. That same year Frazetta painted a portrait of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr for a shampoo ad parody in Mad magazine, which led to Frazetta’s first motion-picture poster, for What’s New Pussycat? (1965). Other movie posters followed, and he also painted album covers for rock bands, including Molly Hatchet and Herman’s Hermits.

In 1966 Lancer Books commissioned Frazetta to paint the covers for a series of short-story collections based on Robert E. Howard’s character Conan the Barbarian. For the first time in his career, Frazetta demanded that the original art be returned to him, and the publisher agreed. The result was a series of provocative paintings that firmly established the brooding, menacing look of the Conan character and made Frazetta one of the most-in-demand fantasy artists of the period.

Frazetta produced covers for various magazines, including National Lampoon, and published monographs and collections of his paintings. In 1982 animator Ralph Bakshi approached him about creating an animated film based on Frazetta’s paintings. The film, Fire and Ice, was poorly received upon its release in 1983.

In the early 1980s Frazetta established a gallery, Frazetta’s Fantasy Corner, in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, where he sold signed prints and other works. Shortly thereafter he began experiencing health issues that were eventually attributed to hyperthyroidism. When a series of strokes made his right hand unusable, Frazetta trained himself to paint with his left hand.

The Frazetta Art Museum was established in 2001 near his Pennsylvania home and was managed by his wife, Ellie Frazetta. The museum closed shortly after her death in 2009, and Frank Frazetta moved to Fort Myers, Florida, where he died from complications of a stroke the next year. The Frazetta Museum reopened in 2013, headed by Frazetta’s son Frank Frazetta, Jr.

Frazetta’s work remains highly collectible, and his paintings have sold for significant amounts. Kirk Hammett, lead guitarist of Metallica, has acquired several original Frazetta paintings, most notably Berserker (1968; created for the cover of Conan the Conqueror) for $1 million. In 2019 Egyptian Queen (1969; created for the cover of Eerie) sold at auction for $5.4 million, a record amount for a piece of comic-book art.