Frank Frazetta, the fantasy painter and illustrator whose images of sinewy warriors and lush vixens graced paperback novels, album covers and comic books for decades and became something close to the contemporary visual definition of the sword-and-sorcery genres, died Monday after suffering a stroke the night before. He was 82.
Frazetta was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Feb. 9, 1928. By age 8, he was studying at the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Art. One of his key influences was Hal Foster, the great comic-strip artist whose “Tarzan” became a compass point for Frazetta’s own jungle scenes.
By 16, Frazetta was working in the booming field of illustration in New York. He toiled under Al Capp on “Li’l Abner” and on his own strip, “Johnny Comet,” in the early 1950s. In comic books, he worked on “The Shining Knight” and a western hero called “Ghost Rider,” but his fame would come with a paintbrush and in a more sensual sector when, in the 1960s, he began painting covers for paperbacks and magazines.
Mr. Frazetta began drawing for comic books of all stripes – westerns, mysteries, fantasies – when he was still a teenager. He was also a good enough baseball player to try out for the New York Giants.