Frank Frazetta, Illustrator: R.I.P.

Frank Frazetta, illustrator of comic books, movie posters and paperback book covers whose visions of musclebound men fighting with swords and axes to defend scantily dressed women helped define fantasy heroes like Conan, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, died Monday in Fort Myers, Fla. He was 82.

Mystery, adventure, and fantasy readers will remember his book covers, where his signature images were of  fierce, hard-bodied heroes and bosomy damsels in distress. “Paperback publishers have been known to buy one of his paintings for use as a cover, then commission a writer to turn out a novel to go with it,” The New York Times reported in 1977, the same year that a collection of his drawings, The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta, sold more than 300,000 copies.

Read the NYT Obit HERE.