" I told Jim Warren, 'Look, be prepared, because I'm going to shock you from time to time'–and I did," Frazetta remembers. " But he didn't care what I did–'Just do it, just bring it in!' But then I did that horizontal painting, 'Sea Witch,' and Jim almost died: 'Frank! What did you do?! How are we going to print this? We'll have to crop it and go close in on it.' I said, 'Don't you touch it.' He printed it horizontal, all on the cover, and the response was enormous, in spite of the fact she was very tiny." The "Sea Witch" is considered by many to be one of the truly classic paintings of contemporary fantastic art, a benchmark against which others are judged. The version printed on the cover of Eerie (and as a poster from Frazetta Prints) is the one most people are familiar with, however it no longer exists in that form. Frank extensively revised the figure, essentially creating a new painting that matches the allure of his earlier seminal work.

Although an illustration might have been mulled over for several weeks and been the subject of stacks of doodles and thumbnail roughs, once Frazetta started painting he worked with an obsessive intensity and rarely spent more than a day on any of his best known works. His speed was legendary - he once completed three covers for Ace's first Burroughs series in two days. Frazetta's son Frank remembers saying to his dad, at the age of 9, just before he went off to bed. " Hey Dad, when are you going to start your next painting?" He replied "Tonight." When Frank Jr. woke up the next morning the "Neanderthal" painting was finished. In a mere 6 hours!