Kelly Freas - Sci Fi artist extraordinaire

I had the pleasure of meeting Kelly Freas at Dragon Con in 2001 while promoting THWAK #1. I had seen his name on the guest list and knew that I had to meet him. He was set up a floor above me in a spacious booth with a large array of his fantasy art adorning every square foot of his wall space. The body of his work was huge, as could be seen from the numerous books, calendars, posters and postcards that were available for sale.

Luckily I was able to have about a half an hr to talk with him during which we discussed his coming to MAD after Norman Mingo, his appearance on the backcover of a Journal of MADness issue (check out the JOM pin I'm sporting in the picture!) and one of his favorite paintings of his wife that he had recently done. Incidentally his wife and daughter were both helping at the booth , or should I say running it as she was his manager.

I had specifically brought the above MAD for him to sign and it turned out that this cover had some memories of when he lived in Mexico and how he almost got arrested because the cover depicted gambling. The Comics Journal is issue #225 and depicts 2 iconic characters that kelly painted (for a full interview with Kelly check out the THWAK Bonfire of Insanity Collection book available from this site). Kelly was drawing either himself as Alfred or just a regular Alfred and to this day I am still upset at myself for not having an Alfred E. Neuman face drawn that day but it was out of my price range.

The last time I was involved with this amazing artist was in 2004 with CRACKED when he painted the cover to our final issue #365 (check out earlier post) which he signed and his framed on my wall in my studio along with all the other covers.

What a great humble gentleman and super talented artist and painter he was. He will be missed!

CRACKED Cover Reference #3

Here's the final installment of these CRACKED magazine cover reference posts. In the last official "Kulpa/Mega Media" issue and the last "Real" CRACKED magazine as a visual satirical humor magazine. This was without a doubt a huge honor for CRACKED as this cover was painted by non other than the legendary Sci Fi artist Kelly Freas, who had been MAD magazine's cover artist for many years during Norman Mingo's hiatus. Kelly also drew the covers to the 1st half dozen CRAZY magazines by Marvel which came out in the early '70's. With Marie Severin serving as Art Director and a brief appearance by Mort Drucker in issue #3, CRAZY had a certain MAD feel early on, changing quite dramatically with a new cover mascot "Obnoxio" towards the end of its run. My connection to this magazine comes in the great Kent Gamble who did all the CRAZY parodies from issue #20 throughout the end of the run with issue #94, with his cover contributions to The Journal of MADness, THWAK, and CRACKED, as well as some interiors his art continues to inspire me. Check out the THWAK Bonfire of Insanity Collection trade paperback. (Incidentally only a handful of this cover are left - a brand new painting will adorn the cover when the book hits Amazon later).

One can see some elements from both the EXTRA and TIME magazine covers. I thought that Kelly really captured the "goofiness" of both men. Overall a nice cover, and most probably the lat piece of published art that Kelly produced before his death early the following year on Jan 2nd 2005. For a full interview with Kelly Freas and how he came to work at MAD - check out the aforementioned THWAK trade paperback book available on this site.