Creepy #32: "Rock God" (Frank Frazetta and Neal Adams)

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Another boy wonder, Frank Frazetta entered comics while in his teens. After working as an assistant to John Giunta, he joined the Bernard Baily shop in 1945. The next year he was appearing in such Ned Pine titles as Startling Comics and Thrilling Comics. He was doing mostly light stuff at this point, teenage characters, funny animals, and a hillbilly strip called Looie Lazybones. By the time he went to work for Vincent Sullivan's Magazine Enterprises in 1949, Frazetta had perfected his straight illustration style, which owed a good deal to his idol Hal Foster. For ME he drew Dan Brand in the Durango Kid and produced some striking covers for Ghost Rider. His most ambitious work for ME was the first issue of Thun'da. Next at DC Frazetta drew some episodes of Tomahawk and The Shining Knight. Over at Famous Funnies, he did a series of memorable covers featuring Buck Rogers and also drew some true stories for Heroic Comics. Frazetta did a few jobs for EC before taking on the newspaper racing-car strip Johnny Comet in the early 1950s. He also began a several-year run ghosting Li'l Abner for Al Capp, who was later outraged that many fans could tell Frazetta's work from his.

By the 1960s he had pretty much left comic books, except for the black-and-white Creepy. He painted covers for Vampirella and for the Ace reprints of the Conan novels. He went on to become a highly successful and much collected painter and illustrator and even set up his own museum.

Cover: Frank Frazetta
Script: (Redacted) (based on the Frazetta cover painting).
Pencils and inks: Neal Adams.

Note: "Rock God" won the 1970 Best Illustrated Story Award. Cover story.

Reprinted:

• in Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor Quarterly (Dark Horse, 1996 series) #1.

Vampirella #19: "The Soft, Sweet Lips of Hell!"

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The Bettie Page of the vampire world, Vampirella was introduced by Warren Publishing in 1969. The Vampirella magazine, like Warren's Creepy and Eerie, was black-and-white, aimed at a somewhat older audience, and sold for fifty cents. A Frank Frazetta color cover introduced Vampi to readers, showing her in her terse crimson costume, posing with one spike-heeled foot resting on a human skull. Sci-fi maven Forrest J. Ackerman, who was editing Famous Monsters for Warren, came up with the name, and in the early issues Vampi was played for laughs. When Tom Sutton became the artist with the eighth issue things got serious. Scripts by Archie Goodwin helped convert Vampirella into a viable vampire. A typical good/bad girl, she sometimes gave in to the urge to sink her teeth into somebody's throat, but she also built a career as a sexy ghostbuster, aided by her mentor Pendragon. Vampi usually appeared in the opening story with the rest of the issue given over to assorted horror tales. The magazine ended in 1983.

Since then the virtuous vampire has been brought back to life several times and is now published by Dynamite Entertainment.


Credits

Script: Denny O'Neil
Pencils and inks: Neal Adams, Steve Englehart