Seminal Fantasy Artist – Oliver Frey – Passes Away At 74

It is with great sadness that we relay the tragic news that legendary fantasy illustrator – Oliver Frey passed away from cancer on 21 August, he was 74.

Originally born in Zurich, Switzerland, Oliver spent most of his life as a resident in the UK, where he became a household name thanks to his varying works on British comic strips and magazines including – White Dwarf, Dan Dare and The Trigan Empire. Oliver studied at the London Film School, whilst he continued freelancing as an illustrator, it was during this time that he met film director – Richard Donner, who commissioned Oliver to create a 1930’s comic-book style opening as a pre-title sequence for the 1978, Christopher Reeve starring “Superman”

For me though, and many other fans, it was his stellar illustrative work on prestigious 80s and 90s British videogame magazines – CRASH and Zzap64 that first endeared us to his awesome artwork. Oliver’s seminal artistic output adorned the various covers and innards of these fantastic ZX Spectrum and C64 based review zines, plus he would also draw portraits of the review staff that denoted their pleasure or dislike of the varying games they would review, giving these classic magazines a wholly unique feel. After the closure of the respective magazines publisher – Newsweek, Oliver continued to work in the gaming art field by utilising his unique style for publications such as – Sega Force and N-Force, amongst many others.

Our thoughts go out to Oliver’s family and friends at this very sad time.