Conan the Phenomenon

Paul M. Sammon is a writer and filmmaker from Los Angeles. He is the author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner and numerous other titles.Frank Frazetta was an American fantasy and science fiction artist, noted for comic books, paperback book covers, paintings, posters, LP record album covers, and other media. In the early 1950s, he worked for EC Comics, National Comics, Avon Comics, and several other companies. By 1964, one of Frazetta's magazine ads caught the eye of United Artists studios. He was approached to do the movie poster for What's New Pussycat? and earned his yearly salary in one afternoon. Frazetta also started producing paintings for paperback editions of adventure books. His cover for the sword-and-sorcery collection Conan the Adventurer by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp caused a sensation—numerous people bought the book for its cover alone. From this point on, Frazetta's work was in great demand. During this period he also did covers for other paperback editions of classic Edgar Rice Burroughs books, such as those from the Tarzan and Barsoom series. He also did several pen and ink illustrations for many of these books. Frazetta was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1995 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1999. He was the subject of a 2003 documentary, Painting With Fire.