Frank Stack

Frank Huntington Stack (Houston, 1937 - Columbia, Missouri, 2026) was an American cartoonist, printmaker and painter associated with underground comics. He is considered by many to have produced one of the first underground graphic novels, The Adventures of Jesus. He published under the pen name Foolbert Sturgeon to avoid persecution for his work while living in the Bible Belt.

Stack graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BFA in 1959, where he joined the staff of the humor magazine The Texas Ranger and later edited it. His Jesus strips first appeared there and in other counterculture publications, and in 1964 a dozen of them were collected in a photocopied zine. Through the late 1960s and early 1970s he produced several issues of Jesus Comics and solo titles such as Feelgood Funnies, and he later contributed to Harvey Pekar's American Splendor.

As a printmaker he worked mainly in etchings and lithographs, and that background shows in the sketchy line of his comics. He also painted in oils and watercolors, mostly landscapes and figures. He taught art at the University of Missouri from 1963 to 2001 and also taught at Appalachian State and Virginia Tech. His legacy is shared between underground comics and printmaking.