I don’t often buy Western paperbacks, but when I came upon the Signet Brand Western edition of Ray Hogan’s The Hell Raiser (1980) at our local Value Village, I knew right away that there was an amusing blog post in it. So I bought it. But since I don’t own the Signet edition of Flashman at the Charge with the Frazetta cover, we’ll have to make do with a scan borrowed from Davy Crocket’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure, and the Wild West:
Is it mere coincidence that Signet published both Flashman at the Charge and The Hell Raiser? Or was the (uncredited) artist instructed by the publisher to do a Western version of a painting, Frazetta’s painting, that had sold a lot of books for Signet in the past? The answer, my friends, is blowin’ in the wind… the answer… is blowin’… in the wind…
Flashman at the Charge is one of the many paintings that Frazetta “improved” after he got it back from the publisher:
Nice hair.
Ragged Claws Network 
I’m not sure it’s very realistic but it’s very efficient as illustration. I did not know the original painting, so thanks.
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But that’s the thing, Li-An: the unknown Hell Raiser artist TRIED to produce a more realistic version of Frazetta’s painting but only succeeded in making it look as though the horse’s rear quarters are sinking in muck and the horse is struggling to transport the rider to sold ground.
Fact is, Frazetta’s work isn’t about realism. It’s Romanticism, pure and simple. That is, it’s Romanticism reduced to a few key elements arranged for maximum visual impact.
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