There has never been an artist like Frank Frazetta. His paintings capture a raw artistic passion that is difficult to even describe. Looking at his work, one can appreciate the incredible draftsmanship, at the same time being blown-away by the emotional immediacy of the experience. We’ve read that he was happier playing baseball than slinging a paintbrush, which is perhaps why it works so well. He was able to put himself in that mystical, magical, playful, meditative space of not completely giving a fuck—enabling him to seemingly effortlessly project pure impulse onto the canvas, informed by incredible drawing skill married to an extensive internal visual library.

The first time Mr Lagoon remembers seeing Frazetta’s work was at a little bookstore in Blacksburg, VA—Books, Strings and Things—he wasn’t even 10 years old, and he was obviously hooked. His parents wondered what drew his attention to this crazy-looking art book called The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta”—his mother may have even been a little concerned about how the little Lagoonster’s eyes lit up at the combination of primitive barbarism and sensuously curvy jungle queens depicted within the pages. Luckily, Mother Lagoon has always been a rare breed of supportive parent—never judging the artistic directions her children might take, while always enabling the younger generation to reach new creative heights. Needless to say, this was among the first books to enter the Brew Lagoon, and has been there ever since. The above picture of it is the original, from that fateful day.

The funny thing about obsessively following artists’ works is the tendency to re-purchase much of the same material, in different formats, different sizes, photographed at different resolutions and presented through ever evolving print technologies. We not only have purchased the full series of these original “Fantastic Art of..” books—we’ve added multiple copies, when we’ve come across the books in better quality (or even when we’ve come across the rare hardcover editions—which may be library bindings).

When Vanguard announced they were producing the largest-format Frazetta book, at the clearest resolution possible, photographed from the original art, we didn’t originally jump at it. We literally already had every legally-produced Frazetta collection ever published (to our knowledge), and Mrs Lagoon has been known to show a little frustration at how the collection seems to be growing into every nook and cranny of every bookshelf in the house—leaving little room for the framed art that wants some room to breathe on the walls. So, we passed on purchasing the book, at first. A few weeks back, we started reading online reviews and watching Youtube reviews—one by the publisher, J. David Spurlock.

Our minds were blown by the presentation. It was described as an attempt to revisit that original Bantam Books—at a large format, with photographs taken of the original art. Now, we’ve visited the Frazetta Museum before, and Mr Lagoon literally cried when staring at the original Cat Girl painting—perhaps the most glorious piece of original art produced in the modern age. We’ve had posters, prints, magazine covers—all kinds of reproductions of the piece, but we could tell from Spurlock’s video that this particular presentation of the piece seemed like the most impressive reproduction yet, with tiny light reflections off of the built-up layers of oil paints. We were sold.

In the end, we paid about twice as much for the deluxe edition as we would have, had we just pulled the trigger when it was released. Thankfully, there are booksellers like Stuart Ng and Bud Plant who keep stuff like this around. We were about to checkout from Bud’s web page, on a copy of the second edition at publication cost, when we decided to do a quick check with Stuart on a first edition. Yes, it’s the same material. Yes, it was expensive. Mr Lagoon hemmed and hawed, while Mrs Lagoon said, “There’s no way you’ll be happy with a second edition, when you KNOW there’s a first edition for only twice as much—get it and shut up about it!”. And thus, the choice was made.

The book is indeed glorious. The reproductions are incredible, and the large format is mind-bending. It’s not a slavish reproduction of the original book, and has numerous versions of a number of the paintings. Frazetta often revisited and revised his paintings, and there aren’t many publications that take such an academic approach to chronicling those changes. The different versions of Cat Girl are so very interesting, and we can’t stop staring at them. The deluxe edition even has previously-unpublished steps leading the to final Luana movie poster (another one of our faves). The book is worth every penny, even at twice the price we paid.

There was only one thing that we found disappointing. Even though this book has possibly the greatest reproduction of Cat Girl ever, the painting is stretched across a two-page spread, and the main figure is so close to the binding that it’s almost cut off by it. We know that printing is expensive, but man, that piece deserves a full foldout! It’s just too glorious to be obscured by the format of the book!

If you love Frazetta; f you love Fantasy art; if you just love art—you owe it to yourself to get this book!

Frazetta Resources:
The Frazetta Art Museum
The Frazetta Girls
Bud Plant Illustrated
Stuart Ng Books