I recieved a recent email query from the happy owner of a piece of Li'l Abner original Sunday art from 1955 "How do I tell if this is a Frazetta work or not?" Frazetta worked on Li'l Abner from 1953 to about 1961 although he was not the only 'ghost' artist in Capp's employ. Frazetta undoubtedly worked from Capp's pencils so the strips can only nominally be said to be true Frazetta pages.
The best way to identify a Frazetta ghosted page is by examining the *gulp* women in the strip, in particular the rumps (rumps is the only word that fits) of the women. The Frazetta 'rump' is easily recognizable in both his comics and oil paintings. Frazetta preferred a rump that stuck four feet in the air, a train's caboose of a bottom, proudly waving in the breeze. To prove my point what follows *choke* at 'bottom' are two samples of the Frazetta women, one from 1955, the other from 1956 based on the hourglass figure of Marilyn Monroe.
That "undershirt" (colored blue) on Marilyn was added by the newspaper, right? Her closeup in panel 3 is very "Frazettan," butt you're right about the key feature Frazetta women.
ReplyDeleteThe blue undershirt does look out of place but I'm not sure if it was put there by Capp's worried syndicate or added by the staff of the Toronto Star.
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