Frank Frazetta's The Adventures of the Snowman

With snow coming down today, I felt it was an appropriate time to read this one! The Adventures of the Snowman is one of Frank Frazetta's earliest works. He was 15 when he created this! And he had the insight to have it copyrighted way back in 1944!

Predating Frosty The Snowman by about 6 years, Frazetta's Snowman is a super-powered cold weather crime fighter. Operating out of the North American Rockies, Snowman helps the Royal Canadian Mounties capture a pair of murderous thugs. But his real mission is to stop a trio of Imperial Japanese agents from meeting up with an Axis operative called The Skull! 

There's a very good chance you've seen the artwork of Frank Frazetta and you just don't realize it. He painted the posters of such film classics such as Who's Minding The Mint?, What's New Pussycat? and The Mad Monster Party. Pulp sci-fi readers of 1960s and 70s editions of Conan or John Carter of Mars novels probably had one of his paintings on the cover. Perhaps his most famous work, 'The Death Dealer', was the cover image for the self-titled Molly Hatchet LP. 

But among comics fans such as myself, we know the genius know only by the last name of Frazetta by his covers of such magazine classics like Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. 

If you are expecting such works; you are out of luck. But if you are a fan and you want a look at his earliest work, this is a book for you! 

The 1944 art style here is very cartoony. But you can see Frazetta's genius and talent shining through on every page! This story looks like a collection of stills from a cartoon you might see from MGM or Disney. There's motion and you can hear the swooshes and clangs from the action. There were times I forgot I was reading a book and not plopped down in front of the TV watching an old movie. 

There's also a beautiful mixed medium here. I know Frazetta used pencils. But I'm not sure if he used water color or marker. Did they have magic markers in the 1940s? Whatever it was Frazetta used, I loved it. It added to that fluid motion look of the art.

Now let's talk about the time period in which this book was originally created. The Japanese characters have those exaggerated stereotype features of buck teeth and beady little eyes. Their dialogue is drawn in an oriental-type font and their speech is broken and full of cliches. Remember, this book was created by a 15-year old boy. During the height of the World War II. This story should be looked at a a time-capsule and as a glimpse at a budding art legend. Frazetta never released this story for sale- his son did so in 2015 as a sort of gift to Frazetta fans. 

I'm giving everyone fair warning with this book. It better not come back to me that somebody cancelled the LATE Frank Frazetta over this book! If anything, this work was probably a sort of art therapy for a young man terrified about the prospect of possibly having to come of age in the middle of a massive war. The character of Skull looks eerily a lot like those editorial cartoons of the time of the personification of the global war machine! The young artist was clearly influenced by his surroundings and the propaganda influences of the time.

A must for comic book historians and fans of Frazetta!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.