Wally Wood
Encyclopedia
Wallace Allan Wood was an American
comic book
writer
, artist
and independent publisher, best known for his work in EC Comics
and Mad
. He was one of Mad' s founding cartoonists in 1952. Although much of his early professional artwork is signed Wallace Wood, he became known as Wally Wood, a name he claimed to dislike. Within the comics community, he was also known as Woody, a name he sometimes used as a signature.
In addition to Wood's hundreds of comic book pages, he illustrated for books and magazine
s while also working in a variety of other areas — advertising
; packaging and product illustrations; gag
cartoons; record album covers; posters; syndicated
comic strip
s; 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".
He was the inaugural inductee into the comic book
industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1989, and was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992.
, Minnesota
, and he began reading and drawing comics at an early age. He was strongly influenced by the art styles of Alex Raymond
's Flash Gordon
, Milton Caniff
's Terry and the Pirates
, Hal Foster's Prince Valiant
, Will Eisner
's The Spirit
and especially Roy Crane
's Wash Tubbs
. Recalling his childhood, Wood said that his dream at age six, about finding a magic pencil that could draw anything, foretold his future as an artist.
Wood graduated from high school in 1944, signed on with the United States Merchant Marine
at the beginning of World War II
and 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 Hokkaidō
.
In 1947, at age 20, Wood enrolled in the Minneapolis School of Art but only lasted one term. Arriving in New York City
with his brother Glenn and mother, after his military discharge in July 1948, Wood found employment at Bickford's restaurant as a busboy. During his time off he carried his thick portfolio of drawings all over midtown Manhattan, visiting every publisher he could find. He briefly attended the Hogarth School of Art but dropped out after one semester.
By October, after being rejected by every company he visited, Wood met fellow artist John Severin
in the waiting room of a small publisher. After the two shared their experiences attempting to find work, Severin invited Wood to visit his studio, the Charles William Harvey Studio, where Wood met Charlie Stern, Harvey Kurtzman
(who was working for Timely/Marvel) and Will Elder
. At this studio Wood learned that Will Eisner was looking for a Spirit background artist. He immediately visited Eisner and was hired on the spot.
Over the next year, Wood also became an assistant to George Wunder
, who had taken over the Milton Caniff strip Terry and the Pirates. Wood 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 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".
Artists' 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 January 1949, on sale late 1948). Wood's next known comic-book art did not appear until Fox's My Confession #7 (August 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 (October 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 began at EC co-penciling and co-inking with Harry Harrison
the story "Too Busy For Love" (Modern Love #5), and fully penciling the lead story, "I Was Just a Playtime Cowgirl", in Saddle Romances #11 (April 1950), inked by Harrison.
, some in collaboration with Joe Orlando
. During this period, he drew in a wide variety of subjects and genres, including adventure, romance (which he really didn't care for) war and horror
; message stories (for EC's Shock SuspenStories
); and eventually satirical
humor for writer/editor Harvey Kurtzman
in Mad
including a satire of the lawsuit
Superman
's publisher DC
filed against Captain Marvel
's publisher Fawcett
called "Superduperman!" battling Captain Marbles.
Wood was instrumental in convincing EC publisher William Gaines to start a line of science fiction comics, Weird Science
and Weird Fantasy
(later combined under the single title Weird Science Fantasy). Wood penciled and inked several dozen EC science fiction stories, many considered classics. Wood also had frequent entries in Two-Fisted Tales
and Tales from the Crypt
, as well as the later 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 1952 story arc "The Spirit in Outer Space". Eisner, Wood recalled, paid him "about $30 a week for lettering and backgrounds on The Spirit. Sometimes he paid $40 when I did the drawings, too".
Feiffer, in 2010, recalled Wood's studio, "which was at that time in the very slummy Upper West Side
[of Manhattan] in the [West] 60s, years before it was [the] Lincoln Center [area]. It was a cartoonist and science-fiction writers' ghetto — just a huge room where the walls were knocked down, dark, smelly, roach-infested, and all these cartoonists and writers bent over their tables. One was [science-fiction writer] Harry Harrison
."
Between 1957 and 1967, Wood 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 syndicated comic strip Sky Masters of the Space Force, penciled by Jack Kirby
. 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 Bobbs Merrill's 1947 "Childhood of Famous Americans" series.
(and its 1950s iteration Atlas Comics
), DC
(including House of Mystery
and 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, Len Brown, and possibly Larry Ivie created T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents
for Tower Comics
. He wrote and drew the 1967 syndicated
Christmas comic strip, Bucky's Christmas Caper. In 1970, he was a ghost artist for an episode of Prince Valiant
.
For Marvel during the Silver Age of comic books
, Wood's 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). When Daredevil guest-starred in Fantastic Four #39-40, Wood inked that character, over Jack Kirby
pencils, on the covers and throughout the interior. (In one of his final assignments, Wood returned to a character he helped define, inking Frank Miller
's cover of Daredevil #164 [May 1980].)
Wood also penciled and inked the first four 10-page installments of the company's "Dr. Doom" feature in Astonishing Tales #1-4 (August 1970 - February 1971), and both wrote and drew anthological horror/suspense tales in Tower of Shadows #5-8 (May–November 1970), as well as sporadic other work.
In circles concerned with copyright
and intellectual property
issues, Wood is known as the artist 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." Disney took no legal action against either Krassner or The Realist but did sue a publisher of a "blacklight" version of the poster, who 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
. Discovering (from Roy Thomas
) that Jack Kirby
had returned to DC in 1970, Wood called editor Joe Orlando
in an attempt to get the assignment to ink Kirby's new work, but that role was already filled by Vince Colletta
. Wood continued to produce periodic work for Marvel during the early 1970s, primarily as inker, and then worked on a handful of comics for DC between 1975 and 1977, producing in particular several covers for Plop!
, pencils and inks for issues of All Star Comics
in which Wood contributed to the creation of Power Girl
by giving her huge breasts and an opening of her costume in the chest which exposes the majority of her breasts, just covering her nipples. Also Wood inked (over Steve Ditko
) on Paul Levitz
' four-issue miniseries Stalker
. Active with the 1970s Academy of Comic Book Arts
, Wood also contributed to several editions of the annual ACBA Sketchbook. His last known mainstream credit was inking Wonder Woman
#269, cover-dated July, 1980.
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
, Wayne Howard
, Paul Kirchner
, Joe Orlando
, Bill Pearson, Al Sirois, Ralph Reese
, Bhob Stewart
, Tatjana Wood
and Mike Zeck
.
, 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 as indicated in the ads and indicia. Artists Steve Ditko
and Ralph Reese
and writer Ron Whyte
are credited with primary writer-artist 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 of the Cannons. 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".
In 1980 and 1981, Wood did two issues of a completely pornographic comic book, titled Gang Bang. It featured two sexually explicit Sally Forth stories, and sexually explicit versions of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
, titled So White and the Six Dorks; Terry and The Pirates
, titled Perry and the Privates; Prince Valiant
, titled Prince Violate; Superman
and Wonder Woman
, titled Stuporman Meets Blunder Woman; Flash Gordon
, titled Flasher Gordon; and Tarzan
titled Starzan. A third issue, published posthumously, reprinted Wood's 1976-1977 Malice in Wonderland, from National Screw magazine, and other Wood material from Wally Wood's Weird Sex-Fantasy (1977).
Years later, in 1980 or 1981, Wood's ex-assistant Larry Hama
, by then an editor at Marvel Comics
, collected Wood's drawings and had them pasted-up on a single page, which Hama titled "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work!!" (It was subtitled, "Or some interesting ways to get some variety into those boring panels where some dumb writer has a bunch of lame characters sitting around and talking for page after page!") Hama distributed Wood's "elegantly simple primer to basic storytelling" to artists in the Marvel bullpen, who in turn passed them on to their friends and associates. Eventually, "22 Panels" made the rounds of just about every cartoonist or aspiring comic book artist in the industry and achieved its own iconic status.
-style experimental piece called 22 Frames That Always Work. Artist Rafael Kayanan
created a revised version of "22 Panels" that used actual art from published Wood comics to illustrate each frame. In 2011, cartoonist D.J. Coffman had all 22 panels tattooed onto his left arm. in 2006, cartoonist and publisher Cheese Hasselberger created "Cheese's 22 Panels That Never Work," featuring bizarre situations and generally poor storytelling techniques.
, who later did extensive work as a comic-book colorist
. Their marriage ended in the late 1960s. His second marriage, to Marilyn Silver, also ended in divorce.
For much of his adult life, Wood suffered from chronic, unexplainable headaches. 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 in Los Angeles
, California
three years later. Toward the end of his life, an embittered Wood would say, according to one biography, “If I had it all to do over again, I’d cut off my hands.”
In 1972, EC
editor Harvey Kurtzman
, who worked closely with Wood during the 1950s, said:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and independent publisher, best known for his work in EC Comics
EC Comics
Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books specializing in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series...
and Mad
Mad (magazine)
Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...
. He was one of Mad
In addition to Wood's hundreds of comic book pages, he illustrated for books and magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
s while also working in a variety of other areas — advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
; packaging and product illustrations; gag
Joke
A joke is a phrase or a paragraph with a humorous twist. It can be in many different forms, such as a question or short story. To achieve this end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word play and other devices...
cartoons; record album covers; posters; syndicated
Print syndication
Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....
comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
s; and trading cards, including work on Topps
Topps
The Topps Company, Inc., manufactures chewing gum, candy and collectibles. Based in New York, New York, Topps is best known as a leading producer of baseball cards, football cards, basketball cards, hockey cards and other sports and non-sports themed trading cards.-Company history:Topps itself was...
' landmark Mars Attacks
Mars Attacks
Mars Attacks is a science fiction trading card series released in 1962. The cards feature artwork by science-fiction artist Wallace Wood and tell the story of the invasion of Earth by cruel, hideous Martians. The cards depicted futuristic battle scenes and bizarre methods of Martian attack, torture...
set.
EC publisher William Gaines
William Gaines
William Maxwell Gaines , better known as Bill Gaines, was an American publisher and co-editor of EC Comics. Following a shift in EC's direction in 1950, Gaines presided over what became an artistically influential and historically important line of mature-audience comics...
once stated, "Wally may have been our most troubled artist... I'm not suggesting any connection, but he may have been our most brilliant".
He was the inaugural inductee into the comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1989, and was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992.
Early life and career
Wally Wood was born in MenahgaMenahga, Minnesota
Menahga is a city in Wadena County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 1,306 at the 2010 census.Menahga means "blueberry bush" in the Chippewa language.-Geography:...
, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
, and he began reading and drawing comics at an early age. He was strongly influenced by the art styles of Alex Raymond
Alex Raymond
Alexander Gillespie "Alex" Raymond was an American cartoonist, best known for creating Flash Gordon for King Features in 1934...
's Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon is the hero of a science fiction adventure comic strip originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by and created to compete with the already established Buck Rogers adventure strip. Also inspired by these series were comics such as Dash...
, Milton Caniff
Milton Caniff
Milton Arthur Paul Caniff was an American cartoonist famous for the Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon comic strips.-Biography:...
's Terry and the Pirates
Terry and the Pirates (comic strip)
Terry and the Pirates was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Milton Caniff. Captain Joseph Patterson, editor for the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate, had admired Caniff’s work on the children's adventure strip Dickie Dare and hired him to create the new adventure strip,...
, Hal Foster's Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur, or simply Prince Valiant, is a long-run comic strip created by Hal Foster in 1937. It is an epic adventure that has told a continuous story during its entire history, and the full stretch of that story now totals more than 3700 Sunday strips...
, Will Eisner
Will Eisner
William Erwin "Will" Eisner was an American comics writer, artist and entrepreneur. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit; for his use of comics as an...
's The Spirit
The Spirit
The Spirit is a crime-fighting fictional character created by writer-artist Will Eisner. He first appeared June 2, 1940 in "The Spirit Section", the colloquial name given to a 16-page Sunday supplement, distributed to 20 newspapers by the Register and Tribune Syndicate and reaching five million...
and especially Roy Crane
Roy Crane
Royston Campbell Crane , who signed his work Roy Crane, was an influential American cartoonist who created the comic strip characters Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer. He pioneered the adventure comic strip, establishing the conventions and artistic approach of that genre. Comics historian...
's Wash Tubbs
Wash Tubbs
Wash Tubbs was a comic strip created by Roy Crane that ran from April 14, 1924 to January 10, 1988.Initially titled Washington Tubbs II, it originally was a gag-a-day strip which focused on the mundane misadventures of the title character, a bespectacled bumbler who ran a store. However, Crane soon...
. Recalling his childhood, Wood said that his dream at age six, about finding a magic pencil that could draw anything, foretold his future as an artist.
Wood graduated from high school in 1944, signed on with the United States Merchant Marine
United States Merchant Marine
The United States Merchant Marine refers to the fleet of U.S. civilian-owned merchant vessels, operated by either the government or the private sector, that engage in commerce or transportation of goods and services in and out of the navigable waters of the United States. The Merchant Marine is...
at the beginning of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and enlisted in the U.S. Army's 11th Airborne Paratroopers in 1946. He went from training at Fort Benning
Fort Benning
Fort Benning is a United States Army post located southeast of the city of Columbus in Muscogee and Chattahoochee counties in Georgia and Russell County, Alabama...
, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, to occupied Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, where he was assigned to the island of Hokkaidō
Hokkaido
, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan's second largest island; it is also the largest and northernmost of Japan's 47 prefectural-level subdivisions. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu, although the two islands are connected by the underwater railway Seikan Tunnel...
.
In 1947, at age 20, Wood enrolled in the Minneapolis School of Art but only lasted one term. Arriving in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
with his brother Glenn and mother, after his military discharge in July 1948, Wood found employment at Bickford's restaurant as a busboy. During his time off he carried his thick portfolio of drawings all over midtown Manhattan, visiting every publisher he could find. He briefly attended the Hogarth School of Art but dropped out after one semester.
By October, after being rejected by every company he visited, Wood met fellow artist John Severin
John Severin
John Powers Severin is an American comic book artist noted for his distinctive work with EC Comics, primarily on the war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat; for Marvel Comics, primarily on its war and Western comics; and for the satiric magazine Cracked...
in the waiting room of a small publisher. After the two shared their experiences attempting to find work, Severin invited Wood to visit his studio, the Charles William Harvey Studio, where Wood met Charlie Stern, Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic books and magazines. Kurtzman often signed his name H. Kurtz, followed by a stick figure Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924, Brooklyn, New York – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic...
(who was working for Timely/Marvel) and Will Elder
Will Elder
William Elder was an American illustrator and comic book artist who worked in numerous areas of commercial art, but is best known for a zany cartoon style that helped launch Harvey Kurtzman's Mad comic book in 1952....
. At this studio Wood learned that Will Eisner was looking for a Spirit background artist. He immediately visited Eisner and was hired on the spot.
Over the next year, Wood also became an assistant to George Wunder
George Wunder
George S. Wunder was a cartoonist best known for his 26 years illustrating the Terry and the Pirates comic strip....
, who had taken over the Milton Caniff strip Terry and the Pirates. Wood 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 lettering
Letterer
A letterer is a member of a team of comic book creators responsible for drawing the comic book's text. The letterer's use of typefaces, calligraphy, letter size, and layout all contribute to the impact of the comic. The letterer crafts the comic's "display lettering": the story title lettering and...
, as he recalled in 1981: "The first professional job was lettering for Fox
Fox Feature Syndicate
Fox Feature Syndicate was a comic book publisher from early in the period known to fans and historians as the Golden Age of Comic Books. Founded by entrepreneur Victor S...
romance comics in 1948. This lasted about a year. I also started doing backgrounds, then inking
Inker
The inker is one of the two line artists in a traditional comic book or graphic novel. After a pencilled drawing is given to the inker, the inker uses black ink to produce refined outlines over the pencil lines...
. 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".
Artists' 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
Western comics
Western comics is a comics genre usually depicting the American Old West frontier and typically set during the late nineteenth century...
Women Outlaws #4 (cover-dated January 1949, on sale late 1948). Wood's next known comic-book art did not appear until Fox's My Confession #7 (August 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 (October 1949), with the name "Woody" half-hidden on a theater marquee
Marquee (sign)
A marquee is most commonly a structure placed over the entrance to a hotel or theatre. It has signage stating either the name of the establishment or, in the case of theatres, the play or movie and the artist appearing at that venue...
. He penciled and inked two stories in that issue: "I Was Unwanted" (nine pages) and "My Tarnished Reputation" (ten pages).
Wood began at EC co-penciling and co-inking with Harry Harrison
Harry Harrison
Harry Harrison is an American science fiction author best known for his character the Stainless Steel Rat and the novel Make Room! Make Room! , the basis for the film Soylent Green...
the story "Too Busy For Love" (Modern Love #5), and fully penciling the lead story, "I Was Just a Playtime Cowgirl", in Saddle Romances #11 (April 1950), inked by Harrison.
1950s
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 ComicsAvon (publishers)
Avon Publications was an American paperback book and comic book publisher. As of 2010, it is an imprint of HarperCollins, publishing primarily romance novels.-History:...
, some in collaboration with Joe Orlando
Joe Orlando
Joseph Orlando was a prolific illustrator, writer, editor and cartoonist during a lengthy career spanning six decades...
. During this period, he drew in a wide variety of subjects and genres, including adventure, romance (which he really didn't care for) war and horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
; message stories (for EC's Shock SuspenStories
Shock SuspenStories
Shock SuspenStories was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. The bi-monthly comic, published by Bill Gaines and edited by Al Feldstein, began with issue 1 in February/March 1952. Over a four-year span, it ran for 18 issues, ending with the December/January 1955 issue.- Artists and writers...
); and eventually satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
humor for writer/editor Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic books and magazines. Kurtzman often signed his name H. Kurtz, followed by a stick figure Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924, Brooklyn, New York – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic...
in Mad
Mad (magazine)
Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...
including a satire of the lawsuit
National Comics Publications v. Fawcett Publications
National Comics Publications v. Fawcett Publications, 191 F.2d 594 , was a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a twelve-year legal battle between National Comics and the Fawcett Comics division of Fawcett Publications, concerning Fawcett's Captain Marvel...
Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
's publisher DC
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
filed against Captain Marvel
Captain Marvel (DC Comics)
Captain Marvel is a fictional comic book superhero, originally published by Fawcett Comics and later by DC Comics. Created in 1939 by artist C. C. Beck and writer Bill Parker, the character first appeared in Whiz Comics #2...
's publisher Fawcett
Fawcett Comics
Fawcett Comics, a division of Fawcett Publications, was one of several successful comic book publishers during the Golden Age of Comic Books in the 1940s...
called "Superduperman!" battling Captain Marbles.
Wood was instrumental in convincing EC publisher William Gaines to start a line of science fiction comics, Weird Science
Weird Science (comic)
Weird Science was a science fiction anthology comic book that was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. Over a four-year span, the comic ran for 22 issues, ending with the November–December, 1953 issue...
and Weird Fantasy
Weird Fantasy
Weird Fantasy is a science fiction anthology comic that was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. The companion comic for Weird Fantasy was Weird Science...
(later combined under the single title Weird Science Fantasy). Wood penciled and inked several dozen EC science fiction stories, many considered classics. Wood also had frequent entries in Two-Fisted Tales
Two-Fisted Tales
Two-Fisted Tales was a bimonthly, anthology war comic published by EC Comics in the early 1950s. The title originated in 1950 when Harvey Kurtzman suggested to William Gaines that they publish an adventure comic. Kurtzman became the editor of Two-Fisted Tales, and with the advent of the Korean War,...
and Tales from the Crypt
Tales from the Crypt (comic)
Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear and The Vault of Horror are three bi-monthly horror comic anthology series published by EC Comics in the early 1950s...
, as well as the later EC titles Valor, Piracy and Aces High.
Working over scripts and pencil breakdowns by Jules Feiffer
Jules Feiffer
Jules Ralph Feiffer is an American syndicated cartoonist, most notable for his long-run comic strip titled Feiffer. He has created more than 35 books, plays and screenplays...
, the 25-year-old Wood drew two months of Will Eisner
Will Eisner
William Erwin "Will" Eisner was an American comics writer, artist and entrepreneur. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit; for his use of comics as an...
's classic, Sunday-supplement newspaper comic book The Spirit, on the 1952 story arc "The Spirit in Outer Space". Eisner, Wood recalled, paid him "about $30 a week for lettering and backgrounds on The Spirit. Sometimes he paid $40 when I did the drawings, too".
Upper West Side
The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 125th Street...
[of Manhattan] in the [West] 60s, years before it was [the] Lincoln Center [area]. It was a cartoonist and science-fiction writers' ghetto — just a huge room where the walls were knocked down, dark, smelly, roach-infested, and all these cartoonists and writers bent over their tables. One was [science-fiction writer] Harry Harrison
Harry Harrison
Harry Harrison is an American science fiction author best known for his character the Stainless Steel Rat and the novel Make Room! Make Room! , the basis for the film Soylent Green...
."
Between 1957 and 1967, Wood produced both covers and interiors for more than 60 issues of the science-fiction digest Galaxy Science Fiction
Galaxy Science Fiction
Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by an Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break in to the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L...
, illustrating such authors as Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
, Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
, Jack Finney
Jack Finney
Jack Finney was an American author. His best-known works are science fiction and thrillers, including The Body Snatchers and Time and Again. The former was the basis for the 1956 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its remakes.-Biography:Finney was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and given the...
, C.M. Kornbluth
Cyril M. Kornbluth
Cyril M. Kornbluth was an American science fiction author and a notable member of the Futurians. He used a variety of pen-names, including Cecil Corwin, S. D. Gottesman, Edward J. Bellin, Kenneth Falconer, Walter C. Davies, Simon Eisner and Jordan Park...
, Frederik Pohl
Frederik Pohl
Frederik George Pohl, Jr. is an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years — from his first published work, "Elegy to a Dead Planet: Luna" , to his most recent novel, All the Lives He Led .He won the National Book Award in 1980 for his novel Jem...
, Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg is an American author, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple nominee of the Hugo Award and a winner of the Nebula Award.-Early years:...
, Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical.Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and...
, Clifford D. Simak
Clifford D. Simak
Clifford Donald Simak was an American science fiction writer. He was honored by fans with three Hugo awards and by colleagues with one Nebula award and was named the third Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1977.-Biography:Clifford Donald Simak was born in...
and Jack Vance
Jack Vance
John Holbrook Vance is an American mystery, fantasy and science fiction author. Most of his work has been published under the name Jack Vance. Vance has published 11 mysteries as John Holbrook Vance and 3 as Ellery Queen...
. He painted six covers for Galaxy Science Fiction Novels between 1952 and 1958. His gag cartoons appeared in the men's magazines
Men's adventure
Men's adventure is a genre of magazines that had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. Catering to a male audience, these magazines featured glamour photography and lurid tales of adventure that typically featured wartime feats of daring, exotic travel or conflict with wild animals.These magazines are...
Dude, Gent and Nugget. He inked
Inker
The inker is one of the two line artists in a traditional comic book or graphic novel. After a pencilled drawing is given to the inker, the inker uses black ink to produce refined outlines over the pencil lines...
the first eight months of the 1958-1961 syndicated comic strip Sky Masters of the Space Force, penciled by Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....
. 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 Bobbs Merrill's 1947 "Childhood of Famous Americans" series.
Silver Age/Bronze Age
Wood additionally did art and stories for comic-book companies large and small — from MarvelMarvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
(and its 1950s iteration Atlas Comics
Atlas Comics (1950s)
Atlas Comics is the term used to describe the 1950s comic book publishing company that would evolve into Marvel Comics. Magazine and paperback novel publisher Martin Goodman, whose business strategy involved having a multitude of corporate entities, used Atlas as the umbrella name for his comic...
), DC
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
(including House of Mystery
House of Mystery
The House of Mystery is the name of several horror-mystery-suspense anthology comic book series. It had a companion series, House of Secrets.-Genesis:...
and Kirby's Challengers of the Unknown
Challengers of the Unknown
The Challengers of the Unknown is a group of fictional characters in comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Jack Kirby, or co-created with Dave Wood , this quartet of adventurers explored science fictional and apparent paranormal occurrences and faced fantastic menaces.Scripts for the first...
), and Warren
Warren Publishing
Warren Publishing was an American magazine company founded by James Warren, who published his first magazines in 1957 and continued in the business for decades...
(Creepy
Creepy
Creepy was an American horror-comics magazine launched by Warren Publishing in 1964. Like Mad, it was a black-and-white newsstand publication in a magazine format and thus did not require the approval or seal of the Comics Code Authority. The anthology magazine was initially published quarterly but...
and Eerie
Eerie
Eerie was an American magazine of horror comics introduced in 1966 by Warren Publishing. Like Mad, it was a black-and-white newsstand publication in a magazine format and thus did not require the approval or seal of the Comics Code Authority. Each issue's stories were introduced by the host...
), to such smaller firms as Avon (Strange Worlds), Charlton
Charlton Comics
Charlton Comics was an American comic book publishing company that existed from 1946 to 1985, having begun under a different name in 1944. It was based in Derby, Connecticut...
(War and Attack, Jungle Jim), Fox (Martin Kane, Private Eye
Martin Kane, Private Eye
Martin Kane, Private Eye was an early radio series and television crime series sponsored by United States Tobacco Company.- Radio:Martin Kane, Private Eye began as a 1949-52 radio series starring William Gargan in the title rôle as New York City private detective Martin Kane...
), Gold Key
Gold Key Comics
Gold Key Comics was an imprint of Western Publishing created for comic books distributed to newsstands. Also known as Whitman Comics, Gold Key operated from 1962 to 1984.-History:...
(M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War
M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War
M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War was a short-lived science fiction/war comic book series published by Gold Key Comics for 10 issues from July 1965 to August 1969. The first two issues were titled Total War. The artist on the first 3 issues was Wally Wood, who probably had a hand in creating the series...
, Fantastic Voyage), Harvey
Harvey Comics
Harvey Comics was an American comic book publisher, founded in New York City by Alfred Harvey in 1941, after buying out the small publisher Brookwood Publications. His brothers Robert B...
(Unearthly Spectaculars), King Comics
King Comics
King Comics, a short-lived comic book imprint of King Features Syndicate, was an attempt by King Features to publish comics of its own characters, rather than through other publishers. The line ran for approximately a year-and-a-half, with its series cover-dated from August 1966 to December 1967...
(Jungle Jim
Jungle Jim
Jungle Jim is the fictional hero of a series of jungle adventures in various media. The series began in 1934 as an American newspaper comic strip chronicling the adventures of Asia-based hunter Jim Bradley, who was nicknamed Jungle Jim...
), Atlas/Seaboard
Atlas/Seaboard Comics
Atlas/Seaboard is the term comic-book historians and collectors use to refer to the 1970s line of comics published as Atlas Comics by the American company Seaboard Periodicals, to differentiate from the 1950s' Atlas Comics, a predecessor of Marvel Comics...
(The Destructor), Youthful Comics (Capt. Science) and the toy
Toy
A toy is any object that can be used for play. Toys are associated commonly with children and pets. Playing with toys is often thought to be an enjoyable means of training the young for life in human society. Different materials are used to make toys enjoyable and cuddly to both young and old...
company Wham-O
Wham-O
Wham-O Inc. is a toy company currently located in California, USA. They are known for marketing many popular toys in the past 50 years, including the Hula Hoop, the Frisbee, Slip 'N Slide, Super Ball, Trac-Ball, Silly String, Hacky Sack and the Boogie board....
(Wham-O Giant Comics). In 1965, Wood, Len Brown, and possibly Larry Ivie created T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents is a fictional team of superheroes that appeared in comic books originally published by Tower Comics in the 1960s. They were an arm of the United Nations and were notable for their depiction of the heroes as everyday people whose heroic careers were merely their day jobs...
for Tower Comics
Tower Comics
Tower Comics was an American comic book publishing company best known for Wally Wood's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, a strange combination of secret agents and superheroes; and Samm Schwartz's Tippy Teen, an Archie Andrews clone...
. He wrote and drew the 1967 syndicated
Print syndication
Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....
Christmas comic strip, Bucky's Christmas Caper. In 1970, he was a ghost artist for an episode of Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur, or simply Prince Valiant, is a long-run comic strip created by Hal Foster in 1937. It is an epic adventure that has told a continuous story during its entire history, and the full stretch of that story now totals more than 3700 Sunday strips...
.
Silver Age of Comic Books
The Silver Age of Comic Books was a period of artistic advancement and commercial success in mainstream American comic books, predominantly those in the superhero genre. Following the Golden Age of Comic Books and an interregnum in the early to mid-1950s, the Silver Age is considered to cover the...
, Wood's work as penciler-inker of Daredevil
Daredevil (Marvel Comics)
Daredevil is a fictional character, a superhero in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Bill Everett, with an unspecified amount of input from Jack Kirby, and first appeared in Daredevil #1 .Living in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood...
#5-8 and inker (over Bob Powell
Bob Powell (comics)
Bob Powell né Stanislav Robert Pawlowski was an American comic book artist known for his work during the 1930-40s Golden Age of comic books, including on the features "Sheena, Queen of the Jungle" and "Mr. Mystic". He received a belated credit in 1999 for co-writing the debut of the popular...
) of issues #9-11 established the title character's distinctive red costume (in issue #7; see cover at left). When Daredevil guest-starred in Fantastic Four #39-40, Wood inked that character, over Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....
pencils, on the covers and throughout the interior. (In one of his final assignments, Wood returned to a character he helped define, inking Frank Miller
Frank Miller (comics)
Frank Miller is an American comic book artist, writer and film director best known for his dark, film noir-style comic book stories and graphic novels Ronin, Daredevil: Born Again, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City and 300...
's cover of Daredevil #164 [May 1980].)
Wood also penciled and inked the first four 10-page installments of the company's "Dr. Doom" feature in Astonishing Tales #1-4 (August 1970 - February 1971), and both wrote and drew anthological horror/suspense tales in Tower of Shadows #5-8 (May–November 1970), as well as sporadic other work.
In circles concerned with copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
and intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
issues, Wood is known as the artist of the unsigned satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster, which first appeared in Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner is an author, journalist, stand-up comedian, and the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958...
's magazine The Realist
The Realist
The Realist was a pioneering magazine of "social-political-religious criticism and satire," intended as a hybrid of a grown-ups version of Mad and Lyle Stuart's anti-censorship monthly The Independent. Edited and published by Paul Krassner, and often regarded as a milestone in the American...
. 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
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
, etc." Disney took no legal action against either Krassner or The Realist but did sue a publisher of a "blacklight" version of the poster, who 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
Topps
The Topps Company, Inc., manufactures chewing gum, candy and collectibles. Based in New York, New York, Topps is best known as a leading producer of baseball cards, football cards, basketball cards, hockey cards and other sports and non-sports themed trading cards.-Company history:Topps itself was...
' famed 1962 Mars Attacks
Mars Attacks
Mars Attacks is a science fiction trading card series released in 1962. The cards feature artwork by science-fiction artist Wallace Wood and tell the story of the invasion of Earth by cruel, hideous Martians. The cards depicted futuristic battle scenes and bizarre methods of Martian attack, torture...
cards prior to the final art by Bob Powell and Norman Saunders
Norman Saunders
Norman Blaine Saunders was a prolific commercial artist who produced paintings for pulp magazines, paperbacks, men's adventure magazines, comic books and trading cards...
. Discovering (from Roy Thomas
Roy Thomas
Roy William Thomas, Jr. is an American comic book writer and editor, and Stan Lee's first successor as editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. He is possibly best known for introducing the pulp magazine hero Conan the Barbarian to American comics, with a series that added to the storyline of Robert E...
) that Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....
had returned to DC in 1970, Wood called editor Joe Orlando
Joe Orlando
Joseph Orlando was a prolific illustrator, writer, editor and cartoonist during a lengthy career spanning six decades...
in an attempt to get the assignment to ink Kirby's new work, but that role was already filled by Vince Colletta
Vince Colletta
Vincent Joseph Colletta was an American comic book artist and art director best known as one of industry legend Jack Kirby's frequent inkers during the 1950s-1960s period called the Silver Age of comic books...
. Wood continued to produce periodic work for Marvel during the early 1970s, primarily as inker, and then worked on a handful of comics for DC between 1975 and 1977, producing in particular several covers for Plop!
Plop!
Plop!, "The New Magazine of Weird Humor!", was a comic book anthology published by DC Comics in the mid 1970s. It falls into the horror / humor genre. There were 24 issues in all and the series ran from Sept./Oct. 1973 to Nov./Dec. 1976.-Contents:...
, pencils and inks for issues of All Star Comics
All Star Comics
All Star Comics is a 1940s comic book series from All-American Publications, one of the early companies that merged with National Periodical Publications to form the modern-day DC Comics. With the exception of the first two issues, All Star Comics primarily told stories about the adventures of the...
in which Wood contributed to the creation of Power Girl
Power Girl
Power Girl is a DC Comics superheroine, making her first appearance in All Star Comics #58 ....
by giving her huge breasts and an opening of her costume in the chest which exposes the majority of her breasts, just covering her nipples. Also Wood inked (over Steve Ditko
Steve Ditko
Stephen J. "Steve" Ditko is an American comic book artist and writer best known as the artist co-creator, with Stan Lee, of the Marvel Comics heroes Spider-Man and Doctor Strange....
) on Paul Levitz
Paul Levitz
Paul Levitz is an American comic book writer, editor and executive. The president of DC Comics from 2002–2009, he has worked for the company for over 35 years in a wide variety of roles...
' four-issue miniseries Stalker
Stalker (comics)
Stalker is a fictional antihero and swords and sorcery character published by DC Comics. The character debuted in Stalker #1 , and was created by Paul Levitz and Steve Ditko.-Publication history:...
. Active with the 1970s Academy of Comic Book Arts
Academy of Comic Book Arts
The Academy of Comic Book Arts is an American professional organization of the 1970s that was designed to be the comic book industry analog of such groups as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1970 and hosting its first awards ceremony in 1971 for work published in 1970,...
, Wood also contributed to several editions of the annual ACBA Sketchbook. His last known mainstream credit was inking Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman is a DC Comics superheroine created by William Moulton Marston. She first appeared in All Star Comics #8 . The Wonder Woman title has been published by DC Comics almost continuously except for a brief hiatus in 1986....
#269, cover-dated July, 1980.
Over several decades, numerous artists worked at the Wood Studio. Associates and assistants included Dan Adkins
Dan Adkins
Dan Adkins is an American illustrator who worked mainly for comic books and science-fiction magazines.-Early life and career:...
, Richard Bassford
Richard Bassford
Richard Bassford is an American illustrator who has worked in both advertising and comic books.- Biography :Raised in the New York City borough of Queens from age three, he lived successively in the neighborhoods of Maspeth, Corona and Whitestone until his marriage in 1961, when he moved to Flushing...
, Tony Coleman, Nick Cuti
Nick Cuti
Nicola Cuti , known as Nick Cuti, is an artist and comic book writer-editor, notable for his creation of E-Man and Moonchild...
, Leo and Diane Dillon
Leo and Diane Dillon
Leo and Diane Dillon are an American husband and wife team of illustrators. Among their awards are two consecutive Caldecott Medals for the children's books Why Mosquitoes Buzz In People's Ears and Ashanti To Zulu: African Traditions....
, Larry Hama
Larry Hama
Larry Hama is an American comic book writer, artist, actor and musician who has worked in the fields of entertainment and publishing since the 1960s....
, Russ Jones
Russ Jones
Russ Jones is a Canadian novelist, illustrator, and magazine editor, active in the publishing and entertainment industries over a half-century, best known as the creator of the magazine Creepy for Warren Publishing...
, Wayne Howard
Wayne Howard
Wayne Wright Howard was an African-American comic book artist best known for his 1970s work at Charlton Comics, where he became American comic books' first known cover-credited series creator, with the horror anthology Midnight Tales blurbing "Created by Wayne Howard" on each issue — "a...
, Paul Kirchner
Paul Kirchner
Paul Kirchner is an American writer and illustrator who has worked in diverse areas, from comic strips and toy design to advertising and editorial art....
, Joe Orlando
Joe Orlando
Joseph Orlando was a prolific illustrator, writer, editor and cartoonist during a lengthy career spanning six decades...
, Bill Pearson, Al Sirois, Ralph Reese
Ralph Reese
Ralph Reese is an American artist who has illustrated for books, magazines, trading cards, comic books and comic strips, including a year drawing the Flash Gordon strip for King Features...
, Bhob Stewart
Bhob Stewart
Bhob Stewart is an American writer, editor, artist and film maker who has written for a variety of publications over a span of five decades. His articles and reviews have appeared in TV Guide, Publishers Weekly and other publications, along with online contributions to Allmovie, the Collecting...
, Tatjana Wood
Tatjana Wood
Tatjana Wood is an American artist and comic book colorist.- Biography :Tatjana's father was Jewish, and her mother was Christian. During World War II, she and her brother, Karl Joachim Weintraub, were sent to an international Quaker boarding school in Holland...
and Mike Zeck
Mike Zeck
Mike Zeck is an American comic book illustrator.-Biography:Zeck was born in Greenville, Pennsylvania to Michael and Kathryn Jean Zeck...
.
Wood as publisher
In 1966, Wood launched the independent magazine witzendWitzend
witzend, published on an irregular schedule spanning decades, was an underground comic showcasing contributions by comic book professionals, leading illustrators and new artists. witzend was launched in 1966 by the writer-artist Wallace Wood, who handed the reins to Bill Pearson from 1968–1985...
, one of the first alternative comics
Alternative comics
Alternative comics defines a range of American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alternative to "mainstream" superhero comics which in the past have dominated the US comic book industry...
, a decade before Mike Friedrich
Mike Friedrich
Mike Friedrich is an American comic book writer and publisher best known for his work at Marvel and DC Comics, and for publishing the anthology series Star*Reach, one of the first independent comics...
's Star Reach
Star Reach
Star Reach was an influential, American science fiction and fantasy comics anthology published from 1974 to 1979 by Mike Friedrich...
or Flo Steinberg
Flo Steinberg
Florence "Flo" Steinberg is an American publisher of one of the first independent comic books, the underground/alternative comics hybrid Big Apple Comix, in 1975...
's Big Apple Comix
Big Apple Comix
Big Apple Comix is an early independent comic book published by Flo Steinberg in 1975. An historically important link between underground comix and what would later be called alternative comics, this 36-page, 6 3/4" x 9 3/4" hybrid with glossy color covers and black-and-white interiors contains 11...
(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
Sally Forth (Wally Wood)
Sally Forth was a comic strip created by Wally Wood for a military male readership.Wood's sexy action-adventure character, who is often seen nude, began as a recruit in a commando outfit. She first appeared in June 1968, in Military News, a 16-page tabloid from Armed Forces Diamond Sales...
, 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
Eros Comix
Eros Comix is an adult-oriented imprint of Fantagraphics Books, established in 1990 to publish pornographic comic books. Eros Comix sells anime videos, DVDs, adult comic books, and books of erotic art and photography...
, an imprint of Fantagraphics Books
Fantagraphics Books
Fantagraphics Books is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, magazines, graphic novels, and the adult-oriented Eros Comix imprint...
, 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
Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon
Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon is a two-issue comic book series that represents one of the earliest independent comics. The first issue was self-published by prominent writer-artist Wally Wood in 1969, with a second issue published by CPL Gang Publications in 1976.This comic-book series is unrelated...
, intended for his "Sally Forth" military readership as indicated in the ads and indicia. Artists Steve Ditko
Steve Ditko
Stephen J. "Steve" Ditko is an American comic book artist and writer best known as the artist co-creator, with Stan Lee, of the Marvel Comics heroes Spider-Man and Doctor Strange....
and Ralph Reese
Ralph Reese
Ralph Reese is an American artist who has illustrated for books, magazines, trading cards, comic books and comic strips, including a year drawing the Flash Gordon strip for King Features...
and writer Ron Whyte
Ron Whyte
Ronald Melville Whyte was an American playwright, critic, and disability rights activist.Whyte was born November 18, 1941 in Black Eagle, Montana to Eva Ranieri, a homemaker and Henry Melville Whyte, a railroad machinist. The family moved to Great Falls, Montana and later to St...
are credited with primary writer-artist 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
Larry Hama
Larry Hama is an American comic book writer, artist, actor and musician who has worked in the fields of entertainment and publishing since the 1960s....
, one of Wood's assistants, said, "I did script about three Sally Forth stories and a few of the Cannons. 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".
In 1980 and 1981, Wood did two issues of a completely pornographic comic book, titled Gang Bang. It featured two sexually explicit Sally Forth stories, and sexually explicit versions of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
, titled So White and the Six Dorks; Terry and The Pirates
Terry and the Pirates (comic strip)
Terry and the Pirates was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Milton Caniff. Captain Joseph Patterson, editor for the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate, had admired Caniff’s work on the children's adventure strip Dickie Dare and hired him to create the new adventure strip,...
, titled Perry and the Privates; Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur, or simply Prince Valiant, is a long-run comic strip created by Hal Foster in 1937. It is an epic adventure that has told a continuous story during its entire history, and the full stretch of that story now totals more than 3700 Sunday strips...
, titled Prince Violate; Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
and Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman is a DC Comics superheroine created by William Moulton Marston. She first appeared in All Star Comics #8 . The Wonder Woman title has been published by DC Comics almost continuously except for a brief hiatus in 1986....
, titled Stuporman Meets Blunder Woman; Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon is the hero of a science fiction adventure comic strip originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by and created to compete with the already established Buck Rogers adventure strip. Also inspired by these series were comics such as Dash...
, titled Flasher Gordon; and Tarzan
Tarzan
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...
titled Starzan. A third issue, published posthumously, reprinted Wood's 1976-1977 Malice in Wonderland, from National Screw magazine, and other Wood material from Wally Wood's Weird Sex-Fantasy (1977).
"22 Panels That Always Work"
Wood struggled to be as efficient as possible in his often low-paying work-for-hire. Over time he created a series of layout techniques sketched on pieces of paper which he taped up near his drawing table. These 22 "visual notes," collected on three pages, reminded Wood (and select assistants he showed the pages to) of various layouts and compositional techniques to keep his pages dynamic and interesting. (In the same vein, Wood also taped up another note to himself: "Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up.")Years later, in 1980 or 1981, Wood's ex-assistant Larry Hama
Larry Hama
Larry Hama is an American comic book writer, artist, actor and musician who has worked in the fields of entertainment and publishing since the 1960s....
, by then an editor at Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
, collected Wood's drawings and had them pasted-up on a single page, which Hama titled "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work!!" (It was subtitled, "Or some interesting ways to get some variety into those boring panels where some dumb writer has a bunch of lame characters sitting around and talking for page after page!") Hama distributed Wood's "elegantly simple primer to basic storytelling" to artists in the Marvel bullpen, who in turn passed them on to their friends and associates. Eventually, "22 Panels" made the rounds of just about every cartoonist or aspiring comic book artist in the industry and achieved its own iconic status.
Homages and tributes to "22 Panels"
In 2006, writer/artist Joel Johnson bought the original paste-up at auction and made it available for wide distribution on the Internet. In 2010 Anne Lukeman of Kill Vampire Lincoln Productions produced a short film adapting the "22 Panels That Always Work" into a film noirFilm noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
-style experimental piece called 22 Frames That Always Work. Artist Rafael Kayanan
Rafael Kayanan
Rafael Kayanan is a Filipino-born naturalised American comic book artist and Filipino Martial Arts master in the Sayoc Kali system.-Biography:...
created a revised version of "22 Panels" that used actual art from published Wood comics to illustrate each frame. In 2011, cartoonist D.J. Coffman had all 22 panels tattooed onto his left arm. in 2006, cartoonist and publisher Cheese Hasselberger created "Cheese's 22 Panels That Never Work," featuring bizarre situations and generally poor storytelling techniques.
Personal life and final years
Wood was married three times. His first marriage was to artist Tatjana WoodTatjana Wood
Tatjana Wood is an American artist and comic book colorist.- Biography :Tatjana's father was Jewish, and her mother was Christian. During World War II, she and her brother, Karl Joachim Weintraub, were sent to an international Quaker boarding school in Holland...
, who later did extensive work as a comic-book colorist
Colorist
In comics, a colorist is responsible for adding color to black-and-white line art. For most of the 20th century this was done using brushes and dyes which were then used as guides to produce the printing plates...
. Their marriage ended in the late 1960s. His second marriage, to Marilyn Silver, also ended in divorce.
For much of his adult life, Wood suffered from chronic, unexplainable headaches. In the 1970s, following bouts with alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, Wood suffered from kidney failure. A stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
in 1978 caused a loss of vision
Visual perception
Visual perception is the ability to interpret information and surroundings from the effects of visible light reaching the eye. The resulting perception is also known as eyesight, sight, or vision...
in one eye. Faced with declining health and career prospects, he committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by gunshot in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
three years later. Toward the end of his life, an embittered Wood would say, according to one biography, “If I had it all to do over again, I’d cut off my hands.”
In 1972, EC
EC Comics
Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books specializing in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series...
editor Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic books and magazines. Kurtzman often signed his name H. Kurtz, followed by a stick figure Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924, Brooklyn, New York – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic...
, who worked closely with Wood during the 1950s, said:
Awards
- National Cartoonists SocietyNational Cartoonists SocietyThe National Cartoonists Society is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the troops...
Comic Book Division awards, 1957, 1959, and 1965. - Alley AwardAlley AwardThe Alley Award was an American series of comic book fan awards, first presented in 1962 for comics published in 1961. Officially organized under the aegis of the Academy of Comic Book Arts and Sciences, under executive secretary Jerry Bails, and later Paul Gambaccini and David Kaler, the award...
, Best Pencil Artist, 1965 - Alley Award, Best Inking Work, 1966
- Best Foreign Cartoonist Award, Angoulême International Comics FestivalAngoulême International Comics FestivalThe Angoulême International Comics Festival is the largest comics festival in Europe. It has occurred every year since 1974 in Angoulême, France, in the month of January.The four-day festival is notable for awarding several prestigious prizes in cartooning...
, 1978 - The Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, 1989
- The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame, 1992
Audio
- Merry Marvel Marching Society recording includes voice of Wally Wood
External links
- Complete list of Wood's articles for MAD Magazine
- The Wally Wood Letters and photo album. WebCitation archive.
- Stiles, Steve "Wallace Wood: The Tragedy of a Master S.F. Cartoonist", SteveStiles.com, n.d. WebCitation archive.
- "Comic Book Creators Trading Cards #3: Wally Wood" IsThisTomorrow.com, n.d. WebCitation archive.
- Wally Wood (1927 - 1981) American Art Archives. WebCitation archive.
- "Wood", BPIB.com (fan site), n.d. WebCitation archive. Includes "Online checklist: Catalogues, Programs, Sketchbooks, Etc."