Frank Frazetta was born on this date in 1928. His works will be revered as long as there are humans with an ounce of red blood and a quantum of artistic sensibility. Ave, Frazetta!

Today I'm going to take a look at the Frazetta art which features the space-faring hero, Buck Rogers. While I'm sure many hardcore Frazetta fans have seen most of the covers I'll feature in this post, the backstory and legacy of those works seem to be less well-known.

Frazetta began doing Buck Rogers covers for issues of Famous Funnies comics in the early 1950s starting with #209. In my opinion, the first few covers were not primo Frazetta, but by the time he got to #211, Frank was hitting his stride. My personal favorite out of the entire run is #214.

There was also an "orphan" Buck Rogers cover that the editors at Famous Funnies rejected as being too violent. In 1955, Bill Gaines at EC Comics paid Frazetta half-price to publish it as the cover for Weird Science-Fantasy #29, with Frank keeping full ownership of the art. Gaines had Frazetta alter the picture slightly, removing Buck’s helmet and giving him blonde hair, so as not to be too obviously a “stolen” cover. Frank considered it to be his finest pen-and-ink work up to that time. It was sold in May, 2010, for a record-setting $380,000.

Buck Rogers—in disguise—swings for the fences.

Frazetta's Buck Rogers work caught the eye of many people, including Al Capp, the extremely successfull creator of the L'il Abner newspaper strip. He was looking to farm out some of his work on the strip. Frank's Famous Funnies covers induced Capp to contact Frazetta. While not artistically satisfying, Frank's work on L'il Abner paid the bills for several years.

Those same covers also caught the eye of a preteen George Lucas, who remains a Frazetta fan to this day. Lucas has admitted the influence those covers had during the early development of Star Wars. Here's how Frazetta recalled one conversation with Lucas:

"When George Lucas came out to visit he told me that my Famous Funnies covers had been one of his inspirations for Star Wars, which I thought was a pretty sweet thing to say."

While I've never thought that the spaceships of the original Star Wars trilogy showed much Frazetta influence, I was definitely struck by the "retro" look of the starcraft in The Phantom Menace the first time I saw the movie.* Check out the overall sleek look of the Naboo Royal Starship and N-1 Starfighter and then compare them to the starships in Frazetta's Buck Rogers covers, especially #214.

A classic cover. “I said, ‘Pull over and exit the vehicle, humans.’ !”

Frazetta’s Buck Rogers covers put him on the map—as much or moreso than his Thun’da comic—and led to a good-paying job. They were an early landmark in his career, albeit one that isn’t appreciated quite as much as it should be.

Those Famous Funnies covers weren't Frazetta's only forays into space opera/interplanetary adventure art, but that will have to wait for another post. Feel free to check out the gallery below, which features some of the original covers, as well as the art sans text.

*The general look of Star Wars does seem to show some Frazetta inspiration, in my opinion, but not the spaceships.