Frazetta's Temptation!

Some of Frazetta's best work was for the Edgar Rice Burroughs Pellucidar series. That lush subterranean wonderworld was an ideal location for Frazetta's inclinations and imagination.


Nowhere is that better captured than in this classic image of a Mahar tempting Dian, seizing control of her mind. It's a gorgeous image of a truly repulsive act, and Frazetta captures the essence of it beautifully.


Here is a color study found here for that scene which makes the event even more evocative.


And here is a a black and white image which displays the same scene. The Mahars were maybe ERB's scariest creations in many ways, and it shows here.

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Frazetta's Tarzan!

This is my favorite image of Tarzan of the Apes and maybe my favorite Frazetta painting (ask me again tomorrow). Not only is it a fantastic painting of ERB's famous Ape Man, but this paperback was one of my first literary experiences with the character.


I explored the details of this image in this post from a few years ago.



Here is a beautiful insight into Frazetta's creative process on this piece. This preliminary artwork (which I found here) shows the master at work creating this evocative look at the King of the Jungle. Note how N'Kima seems less dynamic and how the balance seems less precarious and consequently less dramatic.


Some say the pose is derived from this panel from Hal Foster's venerable comic strip featuring Tarzan. It does seem similar in many respects, but clearly Frazetta (if he was inspired by this pose) takes it to new places in character and atmosphere. Here's a more detailed analysis.


Stephen Fabian must have liked this pose too, as he swipes it here adding in a very Frazetta-esque young lady to slither alongside the noble savage.

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Frazetta's Lampoons!

Here is a simply outstanding cover from a 1971 issue of National Lampoon by the late great Frank Frazetta. The titillating sexism, the brutal violence, and the boneheaded racism often associated with the pulps is fully on display in this in-your-face piece.


And here is the original, with even more vivid sex on display. Aside from putting some fragments of clothing on the girl for the cover they also added a pith helmet to the man to (I guess) sell the notion of "great white hunter" more quickly. It worked.


Here's a 1972 cover by Frazetta, a very dramatic and eye-catching image.


This image is unusually emotional given its satirical intent. The suffering is all too realistic.


This is a very sexy 1973 Frazetta cover for Nat Lamp.


Here is the Ghoul Queen minus cover copy.


And here some preliminary artwork he did for the piece I found here.


This is a fantastic original from Frazetta for a 1971 Dracula spoof inside an issue of Lampoon I found here.



It serves as the bogus cover for a full spoof drawn by Neal Adams. You can check out the full story here.

Enjoy!

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Turok - Son Of Frazetta III

Here have even more Mexican covers by Editorial Novaro featuring the Dell/Gold Key hero Turok Son of Stone and adding some elements lifted from Frank Frazetta paintings. You can see other examples of this practice here and here.


This time the Frazetta source is a painting titled "Green Death" and features the John Jakes hero Brak the Barbarian I believe.


Whatever the reason it was done, it was used as the cover for the Lancer collection titled Wolfshead, featuring various horror and fantasy adventure stories by Robert E. Howard.



This Turok cover has a distinctive background element which is clearly swiped from a Frazetta source.


The title of this painting is "Swamp Demon" for obvious reasons.


It was used for a sequel of John Jakes Lancer series titled Witch of the Dark Gate.


It was ultimately used as a cover and inspiration for the Image Comic one-shot comic Swamp Demon.

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Steve Canyon!

I've long thought these Steve Canyon volumes from Checker Publishing were handsome books, but not quite worth the asking price of around twenty bucks per volume. Well yesterday that problem was solved as the wife and I scouted out a new discount joint named Ollie's Bargain Outlet and lo and behold they have quite a few books there among the giant planters and the reduced vacuum cleaners. My eye was immediately drawn to mass volumes of the Steve Canyon reprints. The place had six of the eight and they were only asking three bucks for each. It was not a deal I could pass up.

Especially since I knew already that my new favorite store Half-Price Books had some of these volumes too, and I only hoped it was the ones I was missing. I was in luck and so for a mere thirty bucks total I brought home all eight of these handsome books, over eight years of the earliest Steve Canyon continuity by the great Milt Caniff.

Beautiful!

When I was a lad, it was Caniff's Steve Canyon I found in my local paper and it was a dense comic read among much lighter material. I had a great Sunday paper experience with Prince Valiant, The Lone Ranger, The Phantom, Tim Tyler's Luck, and other great adventure strips. Steve Canyon always seemed to be the most adult of the bunch.

I have no idea when I'll get around to reading all of these, but I might well read the debut storyline today. And I'll be returning to Ollie's soon. I recommend it to all comics fans.

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First Kingdom!

How is it that First Kingdom by Jack Katz has never been successfully reprinted? One of the comic book industry's rare true "graphic novels", this is a for real saga, expanding over twenty-four issues and countless years. This is the opus that Katz spent much of career creating and getting into print at great cost to himself and ultimately through the largesse of others.


But surely this achievement should be admired, collected and made available to the larger audience it has always deserved. How is it possible when one sees every gram of comics material produced by Marvel and DC material, no matter sometimes how trivial get a fancy reprint, that something this significant and important remains mostly unknown. It's a shame, and hopefully it will be eventually corrected. I'd love to read this saga all the way through in a handsome trade or series of them.
























A company dubbed Century Comics tried to reprint this material, but only two volumes emerged reprinting about half of the story. That's been several years ago now. It's time for some company to step up and give this material the production it deserves.


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