1940'S - Page 2

Frazetta's childhood years were an odd mixture of influences. He loved comic strips by Hal Foster, E.C. Segar, and Milton Caniff but was exposed to and appreciative of opera and the fine arts. He was athletic almost to an extreme yet pursued a career that nurtured his sensitivity.

Much of Frank's early work is signed "Fritz" and anyone who tried to collect the works of Frank Frazetta might have passed them over. Frank used this pen name because it was the nickname he went by where he grew up, and most of his friends knew him only as "Fritz." The neighborhood where he lived grew progressively worse. The Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn was not the place to admit you were and artist. Gang wars and violence were common everyday occurrences and Frank found himself an active participant but never a member of any gang. Fights were an everyday occurrence. Frank more then held his own against any and all challengers. He soon gained a reputation of one to be reckoned with. Perhaps this is where he learned to express the feeling of power and violence found in a lot of his paintings.

Through his teens, he continued drawing and painting, however he began to slack off due to his discovery of girls and baseball. In school he set several high school records, and eventually caught the attention of a scout for the New York Giants professional baseball team. Frank was offered a position on their farm squad with a good prospect of moving up to the major league within a season, but he turned them down. " I was involved with a girl at the time," Frazetta says a little sorrowfully. "And going down to Texas and sweating it out in the minors for a year didn't seem very appealing. You have to remember that at that time athletes weren't making the money they do today. They bussed you back and forth and it was just a big disgusting hassle. I remember that traveling to another state seemed like going to the end of the world, so I told them, maybe next year. Time went by and before I knew it I was too old. It was just my way of letting time make the decision for me. If I have any regrets it's that I didn't turn pro. If I was in my twenties and had it to do over - today, at today's salaries - you better bet I'd do it. "

" When I was about 15," Frank recalls, "someone in my family introduced me to John Giunta. "He was a professional artist who was working for Bernard Bailey's comics publishing company and he really wasn't a very personable guy. He was very aloof and self- conscious and hard for me to talk to, but he was really very talented. He had an exceptional ability, but it was coupled with a total lack of self-confidence and an inability to communicate with people. Being around him really opened up my eyes, though, because he was really that good. He had an interesting style, a good sense of spotting and his blacks worked well. You can see a lot of his influence even today in some of my ink work."

FRANK FRAZETTA BIOGRAPHY
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