I grew up with the famous black and white magazines from the 70’s, such as the Warren titles, Savage Sword of Conan, Epic and Heavy Metal, and a many others. They usually had the reputation of being more of the R rated variety of comic book in terms of content and they did contain more sex and violence. But also showcased comic book artists in uncolored form (though many of the magazines would feature a color section). Warren magazines seemed to be the leader of the pack and had some of the best artists and writers working for them to produce some timeless stories. Frazetta of course is one of the more, if not the most, legendary of the artists who graced the pages and covers of Warren Magazines. Warren and the Lancer and Ace paperback book covers were his transition from comic book panel art to almost exclusive cover art. These covers here show him working still with some lines and color in a watercolor type medium rather than the pure oil paintings he became renowned for.

They are nice and spooky works and deal with the classic Universal Pictures monster themes such as Frankenstein and the Wolfman. This was a great period for Frazetta really but little of his work is known from this period except for people who grew up during that time. I used to actually own these two books. One thing that is more astonishing is the cover price on CREEPY # 10, it’s a mere .35 cents. Once you could get a Frazetta covered book with well drawn comic book on the inside for less than half a buck! Can’t even a can of Coke for that now (except here in China were a Coke is about .25 still, but getting paid in RMB sucks).

I have a complete black and white werewolf story drawn by Frazetta somewhere and when I can find it I will post it in its entirely here. Be looking for the complete Poe’s Black Cat by Bernie Wrightson here soon as well as posts on Blazing Combat and Vampirella. If you’re a big fan of black and white comics I refer you to All in Black and White for 75 Cents, a blog dedicated solely to old b/w comics with lots of well selected graphics.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Comic Books . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.