Fritz Lives

The giant of fantasy illustration is gone. Frank Frazetta, one of the most influential and imitated commercial artists of the 20th century, a singular and unique force in his craft, died Monday.

From comic book stories, to ghosting L’il Abner Sunday strips, to magnificent paintings for paperback book covers, Frazetta set a standard of such high caliber that, although he may have had contemporaries, he had no peers.

Figure drawing. For Frazetta, that was the thing. He loved drawing men and women. The human form, imbued with an innate fierceness, and an undeniable animal sexuality. Sometimes he drew the inhumanly human form!

Let the work speak for itself. First, some pencil drawings. A quick sketch done for a friend, using a pencil stub on cheap paper…

… and a couple of tightly-rendered samples for Flash Gordon.

Next, here are some works in pen and ink. A sketch for a John Carter of Mars book cover…

… and a Johnny Comet Sunday comic strip.

Finally, what Frazetta is known for best. His oil paintings. Two Conan the Barbarian paperback book covers…

…and higher-quality scans of the paintings. You’ll definitely want to click these to enlarge. Note the changes that Frazetta made to the original version of Conan the Buccaneer.

The original for the painting on the left, for Conan the Conquerer, sold last year for $1 million.

Baby for Karen, Wedding for Kathleen


K3 — Kristel Verbeke, Kathleen Aerts, Karen Damen

Having just posted an ABBA video, I can’t resist saying something about K3. Karen Damen gave birth to a son, named Sky, on February 17, and she’s already returned to work. Former K3 member Kathleen Aerts is getting married in June, and her replacement, Josje, seems to be working out well.

It’s been almost two years since I first caught onto K3, and it’s been over a year since Kathleen quit. If anyone doubts these women have given everything to their craft, and if you think Kathleen’s departure from the group didn’t matter to them personally, take a look at these pictures of Kristel and Karen from Kathleen’s farewell performance last year — two uncommonly beautiful women, only 33 and 34 years old, respectively, at the time. Obviously, losing Kathleen meant everything to them.


Here’s the K3 original lineup, with one of the finest Pop songs I have ever heard, Hart Verloren (Lost Heart).

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BABA O’ABBA

A long time ago I posted a video of ABBA’s winning performance at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. I just spotted a super high quality copy that somebody’s posted. This is where the magic pixie dust sound of ABBA began.

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IRONy at the movies

Iron Man 2 is out, and while watching it in IMAX yesterday I couldn’t help but thinking it’s ironic that we’ve gone from this…

…to this, because by the time I was in high school, reading comic books was decidedly not cool. It’s amazing to me that the Marvel Comics I loved as a kid in the 60’s have become the basis for widely popular and hugely successful major movies.
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The second Iron Man movie has been getting mixed reviews. My capsule comment is there’s an incredibly stupid drunk party fight in the middle, but other than that it’s absolutely terrific, if you can stand the usual mayhem of excessive explosions at the end. Here is the Boston Globe’s take on Iron Man 2. I agree with everything they say, but I don’t take as many points off as they do for the movie’s failings.


P.S. There’s a kicker after the end credits that has me a bit worried about the upcoming introduction of Thor, and how well the character will translate to the semi-reality of the big screen.

YouTube on speed

My FiOS 25 Mbps service is so reliable that I don’t bother checking the speed much anymore, but when I do I use Speakeasy. Now YouTube is offering its own interesting speed test. Right-click on a YouTube player to try it, or go to this link.

Lately, I’ve taken to channeling YouTube through the player installed on this site, which provides several advantages for me. The videos I create myself need about 750 Kbps to play smoothly, which is no problem for a broadband connection, but pushes a DSL link hard. I am hoping to add a feature that will automatically detect a slower connection and compensate for it.