Port Out, Starboard Home: April 2010

Frank Frazetta 1928 - 2010

Gee, I'm bad at updating! Before I do, though, a word about Frank Frazetta, who passed on recently. As a kid I used to buy Conan books just for his covers alone. I was a bit more of a sci-fi geek than fantasy, but there was something about his work that struck a chord, as it did with many kids of my generation. There were few art collection books available then, unlike the way there is today, so I used to cycle the eleven miles to my nearest bookshop with a couple of quid in my pocket earned from shovelling cow/pig-crap at my weekend job on a farm. I would buy books by people like Ray Bradbury, Michael Moorcock, John Wyndham, Bob Shaw, Robert Sheckley etc, but after a friend at school showed me Frazetta's work when he was copying 'Death Dealer' for art class (in those powdery school paints you used to get) I fell in love with the easy use of colour and the bizarre landscapes he used to paint. Impossibly proportioned Rubenesque women and pumped up seemingly steroid enhanced men (a friend once described as looking like a condom full of walnuts). The funny thing is I didn't want to paint like him, or at least his subject matter, big muscular blokes didn't really appeal. I wanted to draw X-wing fighters, The Starship Enterprise, Batman, and bizarrely images of Joan of Arc as well! But I loved his work, and like so many things recently, I've realised his artwork on those 'Sphere' paperbacks decorated my imagination as much as the spaceships of Chris Foss or Tintin or Asterix. Here's to you Frank!
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Peter O'Donnell 1920 - 2010And someone else who's death went almost unnoticed was Peter O'Donnell at 90, who created the wonderful Modesty Blaise in 1963. Modesty was a precursor of Emma Peel of The Avengers, and pretty iconic when it came to the depiction of strong women in comics. She was drawn by a number of artists but apparently every story, whether novel or comic strip was written by O'Donnell.