Frank is a robot depicted on the album cover of News of the World. It is shown holding the dead bodies of the four Queen members: Brian May, Freddie Mercury, John Deacon and Roger Taylor (the latter two falling from his hand).
History[]
The original cover of Astounding Science Fiction (October 1953)
The album cover was inspired by the cover of an Astounding Science Fiction issue by sci-fi artist Frank Kelly Freas. It showed a large robot holding the body of a dead man, illustrating Tom Godwin's story of The Gulf Between. Roger Taylor owned a copy of this issue, which sparked Queen to contact Freas, asking if he could do a similar cover for their studio album News of the World. He agreed, replacing the man on the cover with the four band members lying dead in the robot's hand. The inner cover of the album depicted the robot grabbing at fleeing audience members in an auditorium (possibly where the band was playing). Later, the robot was named "Frank".
He also appeared in the animated music video for ''All Dead, All dead'' where we are indirectly shown is internal anatomy, passing through his heart, brain, eyes, mouth, where the tour culminates showing him lying on the ground presumably dead, although at various times in the video it is shown changing his environment probably being an animation error or an indication that he is still alive or perhaps passing his last moments, this being simple speculation.
Pop Culture[]
- In "Killer Queen", an episode of Family Guy, Stewie Griffin is terrified of Frank after being shown the album by Brian. Stewie later uses the album cover to help get rid of Charles Yamamoto, who was trying to kill Chris. This was based on the show's creator, Seth MacFarlane's fear of the cover as a child.
Variant cover for X-Men: Gold #11
- On a variant cover of X-Men: Gold #11, artist Mike del Mundo pays homage to the album cover by illustrating a Sentinel holding the bodies of Old Man Logan, Kitty Pryde and Colossus, with "This is their world" written instead of "News of the World".
- A Funko Pop figure of Frank was released as part of Funko's line of Queen figures. It comes in a display case replicating the album's cover. [1]