Frank Brunner


Frank Brunner is an American comics artist and illustrator best known for his work at Marvel Comics in the 1970s.

Early life

Brunner attended Manhattan's High School of Art and Design. He was in the same graduating class as Larry Hama and Ralph Reese. He studied at the New York University Film School.

Career

Comics

Brunner entered the comics profession as a horror writer-artist for the black-and-white comics magazines Web of Horror, Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. His first work for Marvel Comics was inking an 11–page Watcher backup story in The Silver Surfer #6. Brunner's best-known color-comics work is his Marvel Comics collaboration with writer Steve Engelhart on the supernatural hero Doctor Strange in Marvel Premiere #9-14 and in Doctor Strange: Master of the Mystic Arts #1–2 and #4–5. The two killed Dr. Strange's mentor, the Ancient One, and Strange became the new Sorcerer Supreme. Englehart and Brunner created a multi-issue storyline in which a sorcerer named Sise-Neg goes back through history, collecting all magical energies, until he reaches the beginning of the universe, becomes all-powerful and creates it anew, leaving Strange to wonder whether this was, paradoxically, the original creation. Stan Lee, seeing the issue after publication, ordered Englehart and Brunner to print a retraction saying this was not God but a god, so as to avoid offending religious readers. The writer and artist concocted a fake letter from a fictitious minister praising the story, and mailed it to Marvel from Texas; Marvel unwittingly printed the letter, and dropped the retraction order. In 2010, Comics Bulletin ranked Englehart and Brunner's run on the "Doctor Strange" feature ninth on its list of the "Top 10 1970s Marvels".
Other Marvel credits include Howard the Duck's first two solo stories in Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 and #5 and the first two issues of the Howard the Duck comic book series, as well as the anthologies Chamber of Chills, Haunt of Horror, and Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction. He drew covers for the supernatural series The Tomb of Dracula and the swamp-monster series Man-Thing.
Also for Marvel, Brunner adapted Robert E. Howard's sword-and-sorcery pulp fiction hero Conan the Barbarian in the 42-page story "The Scarlet Citadel", and drew many covers for the similar series Red Sonja and Savage Sword of Conan. Brunner left Marvel in 1979 and wrote an essay in The Comics Journal stating that he "felt the romance with comics was over".
Brunner and novelist Michael Moorcock collaborated on a comics adaptation of Moorcock's sword-and-sorcery hero Elric in Heavy Metal magazine. It was reprinted in publisher Mike Friedrich's Star Reach Greatest Hits.
Brunner briefly returned to comics in the early-1980s as artist on the First Comics title Warp!, based on the science fiction play that ran briefly on Broadway in the 1970s. He then wrote and drew the graphic novel The Seven Samuroid, a science-fiction takeoff of the movie classic Seven Samurai.

Film and television

Brunner moved to Hollywood and began a career in movie and television animation, working on projects for Hanna-Barbera, Walt Disney Imagineering, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks. He was the head of character design for the Fox animated series X-Men.

Books

Interior art includes:

First Comics

Live-action