Frazetta Book Cover Art
by J. David Spurlock
Vanguard Publishing, April 2022
'Frazetta Book Cover Art' (167 pp.) was published by Vanguard Productions, a firm dedicated to classic illustration and graphic art, with an emphasis on comics and cartooning. 'Frazetta Book Cover Art' is one of a number of Vanguard books about Frazetta's art. These books come in hardcover deluxe editions with slipcases and additional content, along with less expensive hardcover editions (which is what I purchased).
All the Vanguard catalogue consists of well-made books, with sturdy binding and higher-quality paper stock.
'Frazetta Book Cover Art' opens with a 10 page chapter, written by Spurlock, that outlines Frazetta's career in commercial art. The following five chapters provide a chronologically-organized portfolio of the artist's covers for paperbacks, as well as a small number of hardbound books issued by the Science Fiction Book Club / Doubleday, starting in the early 1960s and going into the early 1990s.
The covers are given an entire page each, and are accompanied by remarks and observations on the pieces by Frazetta, and other artists and persons involved in the fantasy and science-fiction publishing enterprise. As best as I can tell from looking at the Frazetta entry in the ISFDB, every paperback that was published with a cover by Frazetta, is represented in the book. If you are a Baby Boomer like me, perusing the book and seeing those paperback covers is going to take you back in time to an era of fun and excitement. It's hard to imagine anyone but Frazetta having the ability to imbue reprintings of Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs stories and novels, first written in the 1910s to the 1940s, with a modern, dynamic, eye-catching sensibility. Trying to read those Burroughs titles nowadays, when I'm much older, is something of a chore, but there's no mistaking the way the Frazetta covers dramatized the contents of book like 'Thuvia, Maid of Mars.'Some of the paperbacks presented in the book nowadays are rarities that command premium prices, so it's best to settle for vicarious thrills at seeing the cover for 'The Flesh Eaters'.
Who will want a copy of 'Frazetta Book Cover Art' ? Baby Boomers with a fondness for the paperbacks of their youth, as well as Justin Marriott's Paperback Fanatics, will certainly find the book rewarding. And while the book isn't an overview of Frazetta's artistic techniques, I believe it will be useful to those artists who are interested in commercial art and the design and composition of book covers.
