Frank Thorne passed away this last March the 7th, a passing barely mentioned amidst the daily death tolls of the pandemic. It was a shock to find about it here, in this blog of ours, the sad notice glimpsed on the sidebar from another blog. I wanted to write something about him. Not quite an obituary, as I dread them more and more; nor an eulogy, something more personal than I felt entitled to; and definitely not an essay, as cold and pedantic as it would be unworthy of all the pleasure and enjoyment his ouevre has brought me all through the years. And so I kept it all to myself, the memories of my favourite stories, of those happy moments of my life when I was holding his books on my hands, immersed on those fabulous worlds that he was generous enough to share with us. Because, in the end, that’s all it ammounts to: not the speeches, the great hommages, the knowledgeable essays, but the way one becomes part of the life and memories of another. And Thorne, mainly through his art on the Red Sonja stories, long before I found, and read, and loved LANN, and GHITTA, and THE IRON DEVIL, became part of me. Even before I knew his name was Frank Thorne, before I’d even glimpsed his glorious photographs dressed as the wizard Thenef with his buxom models. His art gave me pleasure. It became part of me.
And so the world moves on, life moves on, slightly different because his art made it so. Different. Somehow, better. There’s no more you can ask for.
So, I said it. It just felt wrong to return to this blog without thanking him for all the happy hours of reading and dreaming, and partaking of his wild wild world. Rest in peace, sage Wizard.
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