bursting out of content prohibition

Jesse Marinoff Reyes ( Jesse Marinoff Reyes Design, Maplewood, N.J.)

A Freud bursting with muscular explosiveness. Frazetta wasn’t a “panty waist” (to borrow the vernacular of the day), and wasn’t to far removed from his muscular subjects. In another life he could have been a movie star—or a mighty barbarian!

---Frank Frazetta Self portrait, 1962 — with Augusto Surtida.---

…A mini-portfolio remembering the giant of fantasy and science fiction on what would have been his 84th birthday. Frazetta was a dominant pulp paperback cover artist spanning many related genres (fantasy, science fiction, horror, westerns—not to mention movie posters which trended towards a MAD magazine-esque approach to humor for comedy films) but the veteran comic book artist and illustrator was at or around his peak in the 1960s and 1970s.

Creepy
June 1966 issue, #9
Illustration: Frank Frazetta (1928-2010)

---Frank Frazetta---


…Happy Birthday Frank Frazetta! Frazetta painted 12 of the first 17 covers for Jim Warren’s seminal adult horror comics magazine, Creepy (and a number of others over the years) as well as most of the early covers for Eerie, the debut issue of Vampirella (establishing the character and costume design), and all of the covers for Blazing Combat. Warren recruited most of the former-EC Comics stable to work on his “adult” comics magazines (since the format would be displayed on the magazine racks and not the comics carousel, they avoided the content prohibition that comics were subject to under the rubric of the Comics Code—put in place because of the liberties that EC Comics had taken with sex and violence and horror) to spectacular effect.

---Conan Ace, 1967 (later printing and cover design, ca. early-1970s) Illustration: Frank Frazetta — with Augusto Surtida.---

ADDENDUM:

Art Chantry:my very first exposure to frazetta was buying issue number 3 (or was it 4? it was the werewolf cover) of “CREEPY”. i found it for sale next to the latest issue of MAD in a dark dank scary variety store/soda fountain in spanaway washington. i took that thing home and i still have it. i think i’ve stared at the cover a million times….


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---Creepy, No. 4 Warren Publications, 1965 Design: uncredited (Harry Chester?) Illustration: Frank Frazetta By the 1970s and 1980s, you could get Frazetta's classic monster covers done as posters printed on "canvas-textured" paper stock. I had several of these pinned-up on my wall back then, though they were the paintings only (no mastheads).--- JMR

…THAT one. that was the first time i really SAW frazetta. bought it on the news stand back in 1965. i was about 11 years old. warped me forever.

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