Frank Frazetta Art Gallery

A page from Snowman, one of Frazetta's many home-made comic books, circa 1937

Giunta liked Frazetta's home-made "Snowman" comic and persuaded Bailey to publish a revised version in Tally Ho #1 in 1944. "I did the drawing and Giunta inked it, slicking it up to look like their other comics, " Frank says. He next worked briefly for Fiction House Comics, cleaning up panels and erasing underlying pencil art for Graham Ingels, Bob Lubbers, and George Evans. " They canned me after six months," Frazetta says. " They told me I had potential, but there wasn't a lot for me to do. So I went over to Standard and, lo and behold, there was Graham Ingels, who had just quit Fiction House and was working as their new art director. He had always encouraged me so he went out on a limb and gave me a feature, 'Judy of the Jungle.' I did a terrible job. Graham felt that it would be a great shot in the arm and really get my career going, but the owners said, 'The kid's not ready.' Which was probably true."

Frank was a quick study with an obvious, if unrefined, talent and Standard employed him as an apprentice. He drew backgrounds, ruled borders, and cleaned up other artists' pencils. Graham Ingels would become famous several years later for the horror strips he signed "Ghastly" for EC Comics, but chronic alcoholism cost him his art director position with Standard. He was replaced by Ralph Mayo. "When Ralph took over he pulled me aside and said, "Frank, you stuff is great, but you need to learn some anatomy." When I was in school with Falanga the emphasis was on feeling, not on the

"Looie Lazybones" was featured within the pages of THRILLING COMICS latched on to the Li 'l Abner popularity and lasted eight issues. This feature caught the attention of Al Capp enough to contact Frazetta and eventually offer him a job ghosting the Li 'l Abner Strip.

nuts and bolts, so I really didn't understand what he meant by 'anatomy.' So Ralph handed me an anatomy book and when I went home that night I had decided to learn anatomy. I started with page one and copied the entire book–everything, in one night, from the skeleton up. I came back the next day like a dumb kid and said, "Thank you very much, I just learned my anatomy." Of course Ralph fell over and roared with laughter. "Frankie, you silly bastard! I've been studying for ten years and I still don't know anatomy, and you went home and learned it last night?!" But the thing was I had learned an awful lot. I had the ability to absorb things and he saw an improvement in my work right away. It amazed him and that meant a lot to me. From that point on I developed pretty rapidly: I started to do things with figures that made sense. I worked for Mayo and Standard for a few years, doing things like "Looie Laziebones" and all the funny animal stuff.