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Weekend Reading: Frazetta, Viz, Carl Barks and Facebook
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Marvel Comics,
You know it’s going to be a bad week when one of the most beloved fantasy artists passes away. He was absolutely one of my favorite artists and one of the first artists who, like Jack Kirby, could get me to buy pretty much anything with his name on it.
Tom Spurgeon has an excellent overview of the late artist’s career. “Frazetta’s art on the Warren Magazines Creepy, Eerie and eventually Vampirella combined some of the pulp tendencies for which he was soon to become very well known with a sense of classic horror. They remain some of the company’s most iconic pieces of art.”
Viz Media: I often post job listings here for Viz Media, the longtime manga publisher in San Francisco – longtime as in they’ve been doing it since it wasn’t quite so cool to do it. So I was saddened to hear that they let go more than 50 of their staffers. That’s, I think, the largest layoff of comics professionals that I can remember and certainly the largest in recent years. I hate to see that kind of thing happen, and I wish everyone the best as they figure out what to do next. Heidi MacDonald at Comics Beat recently posted this link from Dan Blank’s website; I’ve practically memorized it.
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Frank Frazetta
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Independent,
Frank Frazetta died this week. I wish there was a nicer way to say it. I never met him - and if I had I’m sure only fanboy drool would’ve burbled out in place of actual words - but I sure have a lot of his stuff around my office.
If you’re not familiar with Frazetta’s output, then you are missing out on the main influence of fantasy art for the last couple of generations. And seriously, if you’re really not familiar with his work, I’m unfriending you right now.
I bought I lot of books I’m never going to read and am not at all interested in - just because they had a Frazetta cover. I wanted to have that cover and couldn’t care less about the pages behind it. Just a couple of weeks ago, I bought a copy of Night Walk by Bob Shaw (”Sightless, marooned on a prison planet, Sam Tallon faces a desperate odyssey - to save the Universe that had disowned him”). Frazetta’s cover painting showed some guy using a spear to jam a giant spider into some sort of gooey liquid. I’ll stare at that cover again and again, and never read page 1. I’m sure there’s a medical term for my condition.
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