Frank Thorne is a bit of an iconoclast, and I think he’s largely obscure these days. There was a time he was a superstar, though, as his work on Red Sonja became a minor cultural flashpoint. He didn’t care for superheroes, and as far as I know, he only ever did a couple Spectre stories in that genre. These days, if you didn’t do super-heroes, you’ve vanished into the mist.
Frank got his start at Dell/Gold, doing a few stories for Twilight Zone and Boris Karloff, some movie adaptions (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Moby Dick, X the Man with the X-Ray Eyes), and a few other one offs. His first real series was Mighty Samson in the mid-60s, a book about a one-eye warrior with super-strength in a post-apocalyptic world, written by Otto Binder. That’s a pitch that I think Hanzo and Lil’ Jay might love as much I as do.
At the time, his art looks heavily influenced by Alex Toth. That makes sense, as Toth was quite prolific for Dell when Thorne was coming up. He did seven issues before being replaced by Jack Sparling.
But the early 1970s when he starts with DC is when I think he really takes off, having two of his great runs. First up was in the pages of the American Revolutionary War era series, Tomahawk. The Toth is still there, but he is clearly now heavy influenced by Joe Kubert. I love this art, and if Thorne had done nothing else in his career, he’d still be a favorite of mine.
Tomahawk was a hard sell in the 70s, and eventually it came to an end. Still, we got 22 stories drawn by Frank, and DC still had lot of work for him. There were war stories and horror stories for the various anthology mags, but his next big gig was Korak, Son of Tarzan in 1974. This series is also wonderful, and Thorne is really leaning into the Kubert style.
But the Tarzan liscense moved to Marvel. Frank did a few one-off for the anthology books, did a few Enemy Ace stories, but eventually moved to the fledgeling Atlas Comics.
Atlas didn’t last long as a publisher, but that’s where Thorne discovered Richard Corben, the next big influence on his artwork. In an interview with The Comics Journal, he said that Corben, “changed my life almost as much as Sonja. He was the William Blake of comics. It’s that otherworldly feel”, and “When I saw the first underground comics I realized the potential of the humble medium of comic books. Corben made the scales fall from my eyes.”
And that leads us to his biggest hit, Red Sonja. Conan had become a cash cow for Marvel, and they decided spin off a side-character into her own series. This is where Frank really came into own and drew a classic of the era. The art was a smash, full of creative layouts and great design and characterization – Frank really knocked it out of the park.
I believe that Dynamite keeps these stories in print, but I have to somewhat with Thorne that the computerized coloring does artwork no favors. “The line-work that I labored over those years breaks up and looks like it was spattered with ink. I’m not comfortable with computer coloring; it’s too gaudy and slick. The technicians try to model the form, but it seldom is convincing. Stick with the original series, folks.” He colored a lot of the series himself, so I don’t blame him for being sensitive about it. Here’s a sample so you can judge for yourself. On the bright side, his entire Red Sonja run is available in Art Editions by the same publisher for those with big bucks to spare.
But that was pretty much the end for Thorne and mainstream comics. He did an erotic Sonja knock-off called Ghita of Alizar for Warren Publishing, which has been collected a couple of times. He also did a fantasy mini-series for Comico called Ribit, but I believe pretty much everything else was erotic comics for Eros/Fantagraphics.
Well, that’s pretty much what I’ve got on ol’ Frank. He died last year at the ripe old age of 90, the same day as his wife Marilyn. A lot of his work is being kept in print by Dynamite and Hermes Press. Dark Horse gave the entire run of Mighty Samson the Archive treatment back in 2010 and they seem easily available (all but one of Frank’s stories are contained in vol. 1). It sucks that DC hasn’t collected his Tomahawk run – I really wish they’d put out a series of hardcovers collecting stories by individual artists who either didn’t have long runs on a popular series or did a lot of stories for the anthology books. People like Thorne, Alex Toth, E.R. Cruz, and so many others. Their back library has a massive amount of under-represented talent. It probably wouldn't be very profitable, but it would be great for propigating the art form.
I guess I’ll sign off this post with a convention photo of Frank with Wendy “Elfquest” Pini, who absolutely rocks the Red Sonja cosplay.
