Illustrator and comic artist Frank Frazetta is profiled in the documentary film FRAZETTA: PAINTING WITH FIRE. The film explores Frazetta's life, beginning with his boyhood in Brooklyn, where he was born in 1928. Frazetta became an artist for numerous comic books in the 1950s, working for powerhouse publisher DC and assisting Al Capp on the famous "L'il Abner" comic strip. In the 1960s, Frazetta began the work he is most famous for--paperback and magazine illustration, becoming well-known for his paintings of pulp characters like Conan the Barbarian and Vampirella. The bulk of Frazetta's work is in the Conan vein: brawny, enraged warriors and swooning, scantily clad women facing assorted beasties and monsters. FRAZETTA: PAINTING WITH FIRE contrasts the images in Frazetta's work with the artist's own troublesome health, including a stroke so terrible that he was forced to learn to draw and paint with his left hand. In covering Frazetta's life, director Lance Laspina utilizes his training as a visual effects artist, and brings Frazetta's paintings to life in more ways than one with some well-timed CGI effects.
