Wally Wood

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Former Wood associate Bhob Stewart edited this 336-page biographical anthology, Against the Grain in 2003.
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Former Wood associate Bhob Stewart edited this 336-page biographical anthology, Against the Grain in 2003.

Wallace "Wally" Wood (June 17, 1927 – November 2, 1981) was an American comic book writer, artist and independent publisher best known for his work in EC Comics and Mad. Wood was married three times, and his first marriage was to artist Tatjana Wood, who later did extensive work as a comic book colorist.

In addition to Wood's hundreds of comic book pages, he illustrated for books and magazines while also working in a variety of other areas — advertising; packaging and product illustrations; gag cartoons; record album covers; posters; syndicated comic strips; and trading cards, including work on Topps' landmark Mars Attacks set.

EC publisher William Gaines once stated, "Wally may have been our most troubled artist... I'm not suggesting any connection, but he may have been our most brilliant".[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Born in Menahga, Minnesota, Wood began reading and drawing comics at an early age, strongly influenced by the comic strip artwork of Roy Crane. He graduated from high school in 1944, signed on with the Merchant Marine near the end of World War II, and then enlisted in the U.S. Army's 11th Airborne Paratroopers in 1946. He went from training at Fort Benning, Georgia, to occupied Japan, where he was assigned to the island of Hokkaido. Arriving in New York City after his discharge in summer 1948, he worked as a Bickford's busboy and briefly attending the Cartoonists and Illustrators School.

He began as an assistant to George Wunder, who had taken over the Milton Caniff comic strip Terry and the Pirates. He cited his "first job on my own" as Chief Ob-stacle, a continuing series of strips for a 1949 political newsletter. He entered the comic book field by doing lettering, as he recalled in 1981: "The first professional job was lettering for Fox romance comics in 1948. This lasted about a year. I also started doing backgrounds, then inking. Most of it was the romance stuff. For complete pages, it was $5 a page... Twice a week, I would ink ten pages in one day."[2]

Artist-representative Renaldo Epworth helped Wood land his early comic-book assignments, making it unclear if that connection led to Wood's lettering or to his comics-art debut, the ten-page story "The Tip Off Woman" [sic] in the Fox Comics Western Women Outlaws #4 (cover-dated Jan. 1949, on sale late 1948). Wood's next known comic-book art did not appear until Fox's My Confession #7 (Aug. 1949), at which time he began working almost continuously on the company's similar My Experience, My Secret Life, My Love Story and My True Love: Thrilling Confession Stories. His first signed work is believed to be in My Confession #8 (Oct. 1949), with the name "Woody" half-hidden on a theater marquee. He penciled and inked two stories in that issue: "I Was Unwanted" (nine pages) and "My Tarnished Reputation" (ten pages).

Wood's first recorded works for EC Comics, the company with which he would establish his reputation, were co-penciling and co-inking with Harry Harrison the seven-page "Too Busy For Love" in Modern Love #5; and fully penciling the eight-page lead story, "I Was Just a Playtime Cowgirl", in Saddle Romances #11 (April 1950), inked by Harrison.

[edit] 1950s

Sky Masters comic strip by Jack Kirby (pencils) and Wood (inks)
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Sky Masters comic strip by Jack Kirby (pencils) and Wood (inks)

Working from a Manhattan studio at West 64th Street and Columbus Avenue, Wood began to attract attention in 1950 with his highly detailed and imaginative science-fiction artwork for EC and Avon Comics, some in collaboration with Joe Orlando. During this period, he drew in a wide variety of subjects and genres, including adventure, romance, war and horror; message stories (for EC's Shock SuspenStories); and satirical humor for editor Harvey Kurtzman's Mad comic book. Wood penciled/inked several dozen stories, many considered comic-art classics, in EC's Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, Two-Fisted Tales, and Tales from the Crypt, as well as the lesser-known EC titles Valor, Piracy and Aces High.

Working over scripts and pencil breakdowns by Jules Feiffer, the 25-year-old Wood drew two months of Will Eisner's classic, Sunday-supplement newspaper comic book The Spirit, on the early-'50s story arc "The Spirit in Outer Space". Eisner, Wood recalled, paid him "[a]bout $30 a week [for l]ettering and backgrounds on The Spirit. Sometimes he paid for $40 when I did the drawings, too".[3] Later, Wood expanded into book illustrations, including for the picture-cover editions (though not the dust-jacket editions) of titles in the 1959 Aladdin Books reissues of the 1947 Bobbs Merrill "Childhood of Famous Americans" series.

Between 1957 and 1967, he produced both covers and interiors for more than 60 issues of the science-fiction digest Galaxy Science Fiction, illustrating such authors as Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Jack Finney, C.M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, Robert Sheckley, Clifford D. Simak and Jack Vance. He painted six covers for Galaxy Science Fiction Novels between 1952 and 1958. His gag cartoons appeared in the men's magazines Dude, Gent and Nugget. He inked the first eight months of the 1958-1961 newspaper comic strip Sky Masters of the Space Force, penciled by fellow comics legend Jack Kirby.

Books illustrated by Wood
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Books illustrated by Wood

[edit] The Silver Age

Wood additionally did art and stories for comic-book companies large and small — from Marvel (and its 1950s iteration Atlas Comics), DC (House of Mystery, Plop!, Stalker, JSA, Kirby's Challengers of the Unknown), and Warren (Creepy and Eerie), to such smaller firms as Avon (Strange Worlds), Charlton (War and Attack, Jungle Jim), Fox (Martin Kane, Private Eye), Gold Key (M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War, Fantastic Voyage), Harvey (Unearthly Spectaculars), King Comics (Jungle Jim), Atlas/Seaboard (The Destructor), Youthful Comics (Capt. Science) and the toy company Wham-O (Wham-O Giant Comics). In 1965, Wood and Len Brown created T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for Tower Comics. (Some sources also credit Larry Ivie.)

For Marvel during the Silver Age of comic books, his work as penciler-inker of Daredevil #5-8 and inker (over Bob Powell) of issues #9-11 established the title character's distinctive red costume (in issue #7; see cover at left). Wood also penciled and inked the first four 10-page installments of the company's "Dr. Doom" feature in Astonishing Tales #1-4 (Aug. 1970 - Feb. 1971), and both wrote and drew anthological horror/suspense tales in Tower of Shadows #5-8 (May-Nov. 1970).

Daredevil #7 (April, 1964): Wood's best-known work for Marvel, debuting Daredevil's modern red costume
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Daredevil #7 (April, 1964): Wood's best-known work for Marvel, debuting Daredevil's modern red costume

Additionally, he inked The Avengers #20-22 and the "Iron Man" feature in Tales of Suspense #71, both over penciler Don Heck, as well as the "Human Torch" feature in Strange Tales #134, over Powell, in 1965; Captain America #127, over Gene Colan, in 1970; Kull the Conquerer #1, over Ross Andru, and "Red Wolf" in Marvel Spotlight #1, over Syd Shores, in 1971; and The Cat #1, over Marie Severin, in 1972. He inked Kirby on the covers of Avengers #20-21 and The X-Men #14, and — in one of his final assignments — he returned to a character he helped define, inking Frank Miller's cover of Daredevil #164 (May 1980). The Grand Comics Database (see "References", below) also cites "additional inks...uncredited" on the Kirby layouts and George Tuska pencil and ink work of the "Captain America" feature in Tales of Suspense #71.

In circles concerned with copyright and intellectual property issues, Wood is known as the creator of the unsigned satirical Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster, which first appeared in Paul Krassner's magazine The Realist. The poster depicts a number of copyrighted Disney characters in various unsavory activities (including sex acts and drug use), with huge dollar signs radiating from Cinderella's Castle. Wood himself, as late as 1981, when asked who did that drawing, said only,"I'd rather not say anything about that! It was the most pirated drawing in history! Everyone was printing copies of that. I understand some people got busted for selling it. I always thought Disney stuff was pretty sexy ... Snow White, etc."[4] Disney took no legal action against either Krassner or The Realist, but did sue a publisher of a "blacklight" version of the poster, who had used the image without Krassner's permission. The case was settled out of court.

During the 1960s, Wood did many trading cards and humor products for Topps Chewing Gum, including concept roughs for Topps' famed 1962 Mars Attacks cards prior to the final art by Bob Powell and Norman Saunders. Active with the 1970s Academy of Comic Book Arts, Wood contributed to several editions of the annual ACBA Sketchbook.

Over several decades, numerous artists worked at the Wood Studio. Associates and assistants included Dan Adkins, Richard Bassford, Tony Coleman, Nick Cuti, Leo and Diane Dillon, Larry Hama, Russ Jones, Paul Kirchner, Joe Orlando, Bill Pearson, Al Sirois, Ralph Reese, Bhob Stewart, Tatjana Wood (whom he married), and Mike Zeck.

[edit] Wood as publisher

In 1966, Wood launched the independent magazine witzend, one of the first alternative comics, a decade before Mike Friedrich's Star Reach or Flo Steinberg's Big Apple Comix (for which Wood drew the cover and contributed a story). Wood offered his fellow professionals the opportunity to contribute illustrations and graphic stories that detoured from the usual conventions of the comics industry. After the fourth issue, Wood turned witzend over to Bill Pearson, who continued as editor and publisher through the 1970s and into the 1980s.

Wood additionally collected his feature "Sally Forth", published in the U.S. servicemen's periodicals Military News and Overseas Weekly from 1968-1974, in a series of four oversize (10"x12") magazines. Pearson, from 1993-95, reformatted the strips into a series of comics published by Eros Comix, an imprint of Fantagraphics Books, which in 1998 collected the entire run into a single 160-page volume.

In 1969, Wood created another seminal independent comic, Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon, intended for his "Sally Forth" military readership. Artists Steve Ditko and Ralph Reese and writer Ron Whyte are credited with primary writer-aritst Wood on three features: "Cannon", "The Misfits" and "Dragonella". A second magazine-format issue was published in 1976 by Wood and CPL Gang Publications. Larry Hama, one of Wood's assistants, said, "I did script about three 'Sally Forth' stories and a few [sic] of the 'Cannon's. I wrote the main 'Sally Forth' story in the first reprint book (which is actually dedicated to me, mostly because I lent Woody the money to publish it!)".[5]

[edit] Final years

In the 1970s, following bouts with alcoholism, Wood suffered from kidney failure. A stroke in 1978 caused a loss of vision in one eye. Faced with declining health and career prospects, he committed suicide by gunshot three years later.

The Marvel Comics Art of Wally Wood (1982) collects his 1970s Dr. Doom and fantasy stories.
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The Marvel Comics Art of Wally Wood (1982) collects his 1970s Dr. Doom and fantasy stories.

EC editor Harvey Kurtzman, who had worked closely with Wood during the 1950s, once commented, "Wally had a tension in him, an intensity that he locked away in an internal steam boiler. I think it ate away his insides, and the work really used him up. I think he delivered some of the finest work that was ever drawn, and I think it's to his credit that he put so much intensity into his work at great sacrifice to himself."[citation needed]

[edit] Awards

[edit] Legacy

Wood's art was hugely influential from the early 1950s and into the 21st century. Traces of his style are evident in the work of numerous cartoonists and illustrators, including Bassford, Reese, Larry Hama, Kyle Baker, Hilary Barta, Sid Check, Rand Holmes, Wayne Howard, Howard Nostrand, Mark Schultz, William Stout, Tom Sutton, Bruce Timm, Bill Wray and Bernie Wrightson.

[edit] Audio

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Evanier, Mark, Mad Art (Watson Guptil Publications, 2002), p. 47; ISBN 082303080
  2. ^ Wally Wood interview, originally published in The Buyer's Guide #403 (Aug. 1, 1981), reprinted in Comic Book Artist #14 (July 2001); p. 18 of the latter.
  3. ^ Ibid., p. 19
  4. ^ Ibid., p. 20
  5. ^ JoeGuide.com: "Larry Hama: Writer & Artist", no date

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Contributors to Mad
"The Usual Gang of Idiots"
Editors
Jerry DeFuccio | Al Feldstein | John Ficarra | Harvey Kurtzman | Nick Meglin
Writers
Anthony Barbieri | Dick DeBartolo | Desmond Devlin | Stan Hart | Frank Jacobs | Tom Koch | Arnie Kogen | Barry Leibmann | Jay Lynch | Andrew J. Schwartzberg | Larry Siegel | Lou Silverstone | Mike Snider
Writer-Artists
Sergio Aragonés | Dave Berg | John Caldwell | Don Edwing | Al Jaffee | Don Martin | Paul Peter Porges | Antonio Prohías
Artists
Tom Bunk | Bob Clarke | Paul Coker, Jr. | Jack Davis | Mort Drucker | Will Elder | Drew Friedman | Bernard Krigstein | Peter Kuper | Hermann Mejia | Norman Mingo | Tom Richmond | Jack Rickard | John Severin | Angelo Torres | Rick Tulka | Sam Viviano | Basil Wolverton | Monte Wolverton | Wally Wood | George Woodbridge | Bill Wray
Photographers
Irving Schild
Related articles
Mad Magazine | William M. Gaines
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