Posted in: Comics, Dynamite | Tagged: dynamite, fire and ice, frank frazetta, Gerry Conway, roy thomas

Frank Frazetta Had No Input On Fire And Ice, Says Gerry Conway

Yesterday, Bleeding Cool reported on Dynamite Entertainment reviving the 1983 animated movie Fire And Ice for a new comic book series, and like everyone else called it Frank Frazetta's Fire And Ice in the headline. Directed by Ralph Bakshi it is billed as a collaboration between Bakshi and Frank Frazetta, based on characters co-created by the pair, from a screenplay written by Conan comics writers Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas.

The press release stated of Baksi and Frazetta, "he two developed the concept together and the film's art style was based on Frazetta's work, brought to life through Bakshi's animation. They then called in comics scribes and Conan the Barbarian veterans Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway to handle the script." But Gerry Conway has a different timeline and credit share in mind, and posted to Twitter, stating;

Love it. But I hope Dynamite recognizes the only contribution Frank actually made to "Frank Frazetta's Fire and Ice" was the poster. Roy Thomas and I created *everything* else (such as it is), using Frank's paintings ("The Death Dealer" in particular) as vague inspiration. So, in the series credits, @DynamiteComics, it would be appropriate to have a line that reads "Based on the screenplay by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway" Oh, and for what it's worth, according to Writer's Guild rules, we probably should also get a "Characters created by" credit.

Not trying to be a dick, really, but in no way did Bakshi and Frazetta "co-create" any character or storyline in "Fire and Ice." Frank came to one meeting early on, basically a meet-and-greet. Roy and I developed *everything*, including characters, names, storyline, etc. Even the title "Fire and Ice" was ours. The whole concept was ours. FTR, we wrote a two-hour script which Ralph filmed for rotoscope. We knew that at the time two-hours was too long for an animated movie, but Ralph wouldn't let us make appropriate cuts. Instead he shot the two-hour version and then cut out a half hour of material that included all the character development, world-building, etc. He even managed to cut out all reference to the masked character's name. Still, it's a lovely film, if light on sense.

Anyway, I'm proud of the film, but tired of people referring to it as "Frank Frazetta's Fire and Ice"— yes, he's the reason it got made, Bakshi used his reputation to fundraise and market it, and Frazetta's poster is iconic. But Frank had no input into the story whatsoever.

Let's see how the published version looks, shall we? Dynamite hasn't even announced a creative team, Conway and Thomas are still available…

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