Frank Frazetta, the pompadoured New Yorker artist whose obsessively detailed paintings of shredded axe-wielding barbarians and their Playboyesque women made him the once and forever 

 did his best-known work in the 1960s and '70s, and died in 2010 at age 82. Even if you don't know the name, you've seen Frazetta's art, or people and works influenced by his art—the

 magazine, Reagan-era Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chris Lassen, the list goes on. His style was so recognizable and so beloved by fans, that Frazetta could turn the entire creative process upside down. “Paperback publishers have been known to buy one of his paintings for use as a cover," the 

 wrote in 1977, "then commission a writer to turn out a novel to go with it.”

Frazetta was as protean as he was prolific. He started out ghosting for Al Capp's "Lil' Abner," did 

In 1964, at age 36, established but still primarily a cartoonist, Frazetta did the pen and ink for the anti-smoking PSA you see below, which was written by future Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Archie Goodwin. It ran in a 1969 issue of 

 magazine and was on the back cover of a 1970 issue of 

 and was almost certainly published prior to those dates. The bottom photo, below, shows Frazetta and comics publisher Jim Warren, with the original artwork, in 1964.

"Tuff Sufboard" may have been Frazetta's last published comic-strip-style cartoon. It had no effect whatsoever on Frazetta's own longtime smoking habit.

You did an anti-smoking strip for Warren Comics. Can you tell me how that came about?

You ask me that while I am sitting here puffing on a cigarette [laughter] I don't remember how it came about; it was just a commissioned job.

Did you ever feel strongly that the public shouldn't smoke?

I saw a picture of you once with a big cigar.

I didn't smoke until I was 28. Then I was on and off, and I smoked cigars for a while. I quit many times. Sometimes for two or three years. But then I'd get upset about something, and I'd start smoking again—like everybody else. So right now I'm smoking heavily and it's not good. What can I say?

Yeah, you're right! It's bad shit. Not good. Maybe when I finally move to Florida and watch the pelicans and breathe in some good air, maybe then the cigarettes won't taste too good.

FRANK FRAZETTA'S 1964 "TUFF SURFBOARD" ANTI-SMOKING PSA

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