Castlevania cover (1986) 🔗

Frank Frazetta's The Norseman is one of the most frequently copied influences among games illustrators, and his appearance on the original Castlevania cover is already fairly well known. There's a few changes to his gait and left arm, and of course Simon Belmont is holding a very different weapon, but the influence is unmistakable. What's not talked about often (yet) is that Dracula's floating head apparently also taps another secret text of video game artists, namely John Buscema's How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, although it seems to be an amalgam of different images. While the grin and overall head shape comes from that grinning dude, the dark lord's hairline and ears more closely resemble Namor, who's sketched in the same book a couple pages earlier.