In 1972 I was living on Grassy Key on the Florida Keys, right next door to the TV star Flipper's training site. The Keys are bifurcated by the Overseas Highway, which was the only way in or out by land, from Key Largo (of Bogart movie fame) to Key West (Ernest Hemingway fame). At the time, the primary way to supply commercial goods was by truck and that could make items, including food and especially meat, hard to come by. When it came to groceries, one had to know the days that these goods would be delivered to the Winn-Dixie supermarket or you could be SOL. As you can imagine, there was plenty of fish to be had as an option.
I managed to keep tabs on my comics obsession with a subscription to the late, great Alan Light's THE COMIC BUYER'S GUIDE. I can't remember or not if comics were available anywhere on the Keys, but they may have had a spinner rack or two in a drug store or someplace else.
In one issue of CBG, I spied an ad that caught my attention. A fantasy and comic art company in Denver, CO by the name of Middle Earth was selling what was promoted as being the first authorized portfolio of Frank Frazetta's work. At only $3.50 postpaid, it seemed too good to pass up for me, since I had become a huge Frazetta fan from the moment I saw one of his Lancer Conan paperbacks. The most amazing thing about this was that it somehow survived a trip back to California (where I moved too many times to count), and then up to Washington State almost 20 years later. And here it is, scanned and presented on WOM!
There are seven black and white pen and ink drawings in the portfolio, each measuring 11"x15" and printed on sepia-toned paper. There was no fancy enclosure like we would see with later portfolios -- it was just the plates shipped in a brown envelope between two heavy pieces of cardboard.
What makes this special is that the images had never before been published, which later increased their value as a collector's item. For instance, just last month, one of these sold for $450.00 at auction.
Oddly enough, this portfolio holds more of a symbolic memory of my sojourn in the Keys than anything else. It was a fun time, working my ass off for my uncle who owned a nursery and landscaping business, hanging out in Key West, eating loads of fantastic seafood, and the fishing -- the fishing!
Wonderful art from the definitive fantasy artist of any age. ERB and REH would not enjoy the success today if Frazetta's covers had not enticed us all to search them out back in the day. ERB's works were already dated and sadly many were moribund, but Frazetta gave them a fresh visual punch. Other artists have attempted to do the same since. REH's works were more powerful but Frazetta reimagined the character of Conan in such a way as to lift him out of his quasi-historical context and make him something completely new. What we see on the comics pages and even in the films is at least as much owing to Frazetta as Howard.
ReplyDeleteWell said. Without Frazetta's evocative paintings and illustrations, we might have missed out on a lot of imaginative literature that could have just as easily languished. His influence has permeated artists and illustrators on the landscape of the fantastic that would have otherwise been a lot more barren.
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