Frank Frazetta, who has died of complications following a stroke, aged 82, was a creator of fantasy illustrations, his muscular, bloodied heroes and shapely heroines inspiring and influencing later generations of artists. His covers lured readers into the worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Venus and Mars and below the Earth's surface to Pellucidar with Burroughs's most famous creation, Tarzan. His book covers were key to the revival of interest in the works of Robert E Howard, whose mythic warrior Conan was depicted by Frazetta in the 1960s. Arnold Schwarzenegger played the character twice in the 1980s.
Very few of Frazetta's original paintings were sold in his lifetime and intense bidding surrounded those that came on to the market. In 2008, his cover for Burroughs's Escape On Venus sold at auction for $251,000. A year later, the Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett purchased the artwork for the 1967 cover to Howard's Conan the Conqueror for $1m.
Brooding, thunderous skies and screaming hordes of demons were just one side of Frazetta's work. His movie posters – among them the comedy What's New Pussycat? (1965) and the musical The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) – exhibited his more humorous side, developed during almost two decades of drawing comic strips, including a period on Al Capp's lighthearted Li'l Abner, which was syndicated to 400 newspapers.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Alfred and Mary Frazzetta, (he later dropped one z), at the age of eight he was enrolled at the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts and studied under the Italian artist Michael Falanga. He excelled at sport and was offered a contract with the New York Giants. His passion for art won out over baseball, but Falanga's death in 1944 and the closure of the school a year later, despite students clubbing together to pay the rent, made finding a job essential.
He began his professional career at 16, assisting the comic artist John Giunta and also drawing a few solo strips, which he signed Fritz (a nickname from schooldays). After five years drawing mostly funny animal strips and illustrations for titles aimed at young children, he began working on adventure strips for Magazine Enterprises and National Publications. These stories revealed the influence of Hal Foster, creator of the Prince Valiant and Tarzan newspaper strips, none more so than the 1952 comic book Thun'da, King of the Congo, in which a man crashlands his plane in a land of cavemen and prehistoric beasts.
Declining an offer to work with Walt Disney studios, Frazetta drew the short-lived Johnny Comet newspaper strip, followed by a few months pencilling Flash Gordon. In 1952 he met Eleanor Kelly. They married in 1956.
Frazetta began developing his talents as a cover artist, illustrating true crime, horror and science fiction titles for EC Comics and Buck Rogers covers for Famous Funnies. He assisted Capp with the Li'l Abner syndicated strip until 1961, then spent a few years drawing for men's magazines and cheap paperback outfits before painting covers for Ace Books' Burroughs reprints and the publisher Jim Warren's horror comics. In 1964, a back-cover illustration of Ringo Starr for Mad Magazine (a spoof advert for Blecch shampoo) brought him to the attention of the film industry. The poster for What's New Pussycat? earned him $4,000 – about a year's salary – for an afternoon's work.
Conan aside, Frazetta's most iconic image was The Death Dealer, a glowing-eyed warrior in a horned helmet and armour astride a magnificent horse, painted in 1973, which has been reused as an album cover (Molly Hatchet's self-titled debut in 1978) and inspired a series of novels, comic books and merchandise. The image has also been widely adopted by the US army and a lifesize statue was erected at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2008.
As well as being issued as limited edition prints, Frazetta's work has been published in books, including Testament: The Life and Art of Frank Frazetta (2001). He also co-produced and designed the animated film Fire and Ice (1983), directed by Ralph Bakshi. He was profiled in a 2003 documentary, Frazetta: Playing With Fire.
Many of Frazetta's paintings were displayed at the Frazetta Museum, maintained by Eleanor in the grounds of the family estate in Marshalls Creek, Pennsylvania. Recently, the museum was the focus of bad blood between Frazetta and his eldest son, Alfonso Frank Frazetta, who was charged in December 2009 with breaking into the museum and removing 90 paintings insured for $20m and owned by Frazetta Properties, maintained by the artist's three other children, William, Heidi and Holly. The charges were dropped, and the siblings also settled a copyright infringement case against their brother shortly before their father's death.
Eleanor died last year. Frazetta is survived by his children, 11 grandchildren and three sisters.