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WALLY WOOD
(1927 - 1981)
Wallace Allan Wood (June 17, 1927, Menahga, Minnesota – November 2, 1981, Los Angeles, California) was an American comic book writer, artist and independent publisher, best known for his work in EC Comics and Mad. Although much of his early professional artwork is signed Wallace Wood, he became known as Wally Wood, a name he claimed to dislike.[1] Within the comics community, he was also known as Woody, a name he sometimes used as a signature.
He was the first inductee into the comic book industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, in 1989, and was inducted into the subsequent Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame three years later.
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".[2]
MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Wood
Wood quickly became a master at the art of science fiction and horror. Here is an early cover from 1951 for CAPTAIN SCIENCE 4. Already, he is drawing beautiful women in sensual poses, as the woman threatened by the space monster in the background can verify.
1952 COVER
MORE: http://psychosaurus.com/frames/wwgallery.html
Wally Wood grew up wanting to be a cartoonist. Born in 1927, he studied at the feet of the master cartoonists of his day. Every week saw the delivery of another course brightly wrapped around the Sunday newspaper. He did manage to spend some time at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School in New York and as an assistant to George Wunder who was drawing Terry and The Pirates. Early in 1949 he found Renaldo Epworth who brokered comic book stories for some of the low-end publishers. Wood was officially drawing comics!
Hidden behind the verbiage and cramped art in the first panel above is probably the first appearance of Wally Wood's signature in a comic book. The "Woody" sneaked into the marquee is from a Fox romance comic, My Confession, from October of 1949. He was barely 22 and fresh out of the merchant marines when Epworth teamed him up with two separate aspiring young cartoonists, Marty Rose and Harry Harrison, to produce a spate of stories for Fox in 1949 and 1950. Rose went on to oblivion, Harrison to a long career as a science fiction writer, and Wood to a checkered and impressive career as one of the most famous and influential comic book artists in history. It started with a meteoric rise to stardom.
MORE: http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/wood.htm
THE SPARBER GUIDE TO THE TWIN CITIES: WALLY WOOD
WALLY WOOD'S CAREER was dazzling, and, if you know anything at all about comics, you know his name. The artist, born in Menahga, Minnesota, provided some of the defining work for several success generations of the industry. He started with the legendary Will Eisner, providing backgrounds for The Spirit (and eventually would cocreate The Outer Space Spirit, a short-lived, but astounding, attempt to revitalize the character.) He was one of the star artists for EC's notorious line of science fiction- and horror-themed comics, which met their doom when a quack named Frederick Wertham insisted they were one of the causes of juvenile delinquency and pulled the comics' creators before a congressional committee. The resulting Comics Code led to the birth of Mad Magazine, and Wally Wood wound up being one of the magazines most frequent, and beloved, contributors. He also worked with Marvel, and created the iconic costume for Daredevil. In the Sixties, Wood self-published his own comic book, witzend, which, with its radical and uncensored contents and status as an independently published comic book, puts it as being one of the first -- and perhaps the very first -- underground comic. And, to fans of the Sixties counterculture, Wally Wood made be most notorious for an illustration he provided for Paul Krassner's Realist: The Disneyland Memorial Orgy, a massive double-truck spread that showed a vast array of Disney characters engaged in obscene, and often pornographic, activities.
MORE: http://www.costa.lunarpages.com/ec/
THE SPIRIT 1952
THUNDER AGENTS, DYNAMO # 1 PG. 7
Click to see one of Wallace Wood's lovely sci-fi mag illustrations, this one reprinted in Bill Black's GOLDEN AGE GREATS # 12 from 1998: MORE
Courtesy of the ever-popular Thom Buchanan, here's a 1960 tribute to Wood from Walt Kelly's POGO. Thom isn't sure if this was an actual strip or extra art for the book reprint but either way, it's nifty wordplay and a nice tribute. On another ocassion, Kelly named the boat with the ever-changing name (usually from panel to panel even!) after Wood!
MORE: http://wallywoodart.blogspot.com/
Sally Forth, 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 June, 1968, in Military News, a 16-page tabloid from Armed Forces Diamond Sales. The title is a play on words - "to sally forth" means to set out on an adventure.
In 1976, Wood recalled:
- It all started in 1968, when I was asked to do a complete comic section for a proposed tabloid newspaper for servicemen, four pages of full-color, service-oriented humor strips... There was a high-flying lowlife named 'Wild Bill Yonder,' a couple of others that for some reason escape my memory... (such an embarrassment) and one that I felt, and still feel, had a great name for a comic heroine... Sally Forth.
Sally returned July 26, 1971, in Overseas Weekly, a tabloid targeted at U.S. military men serving outside North America. With Wood getting an assist from writer-artists Nick Cuti, Paul Kirchner and Larry Hama, Sally Forth continued in Overseas Weekly until April 22, 1974.
MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Forth_(Wally_Wood)
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MORE: http://www.vanguardproductions.net/wallywood/
New Wally Wood Collection from Vanguard
In last week’s Main Event we detailed how the next Artist’s Edition book from IDW Publishing would spotlight Wally Wood. Now we’re happy to let you know that there’s another book coming that features the renowned master’s work. Vanguard Publishing has announced that they will release Strange Worlds of Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Comics of Wally Wood, part of new line called “Vanguard Wally Wood Classics.”
MORE: http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/public/default.asp?t=1&m=1&c=34&s=261&ai=112267
Used by permission. ©2011 Gemstone Publishing, Inc. and/or Diamond International Galleries except where noted.
All other material ©2010 respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.
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