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Frank Frazetta

Frank Frazetta

Frank Frazetta was born February 9, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of eight, at the insistence of his school teachers, Frazetta's parents enrolled him in the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts.

Frazetta attended the Academy for eight years, studying under Italian artist Michael Falanga. In 1944, at just 16 years old, Frazetta started drawing comic books, mostly funny animal series. Pictured below is an early example of Frazetta's funny animal work, with the artist's distinctive line work very much in evidence:

Over the course of his career, Frazetta has worked for every major comic book publishing company. In the early 1950s, Frazetta's work for EC included covers for Weird Science Fantasy #29 (June 1950) and Weird Fantasy #21 (Sept 1950), both seen below.

DC published a number of western books in the 1950s, among them a title starring a now-forgotten cowboy named Jimmy Wakely.

Among Frazetta's first work for DC was the March 1950 issue of Jimmy Wakely (#4), a short story penciled and inked by Frazetta titled “The Town Jesse James Couldn’t Rob!”

The cover of the issue is shown right, and pages featuring Frazetta's artwork are presented below. The full force of the artist's talents has yet to manifest, but his gift for depicting animals as creatures of magnificent musculature and power is clearly present, even at this early stage of his career. Here's “The Town Jesse James Couldn’t Rob!”

In March 1950, Frazetta penciled a nd inked Shining Knight for DC’s “Adventure Comics.” The series, which depicted an actual knight stuck in modern times, seemed tailor-made for Frazetta. Pictured below are several pages from different stories in the series.

Here's a Frazetta public service ad that originally ran in Black Diamond Western #1, 1952:

Frazetta provided this cover for WHITE INDIAN #11, 1953. Pictured below the cover is a page of original art from the interior of the book. (Note the early version of the famous Frazetta signature on the splash page!)

SOME EARLY FRAZETTA COVERS

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FRANK FRAZETTA
Part Two!