Comic Book Marketplace

Published throughout the 1990's, I had a real love/hate relationship with COMIC BOOK MARKETPLACE. On the one hand, it was a fanboy's delight with articles about and interviews with Golden and Silver Age collectibles, characters and their creators and a beautiful section of color illustrations every issue. On the other hand, much of every issue was taken up with values and preservation and grading and all the stuff that took the joy of the hobby away from me.

1997's issue 44, however, was the special Wally Wood issue and it really was special. Behind a cover adapted from EC's WEIRD SCIENCE 16, there are no less than five articles on Wood and his work.

THE FORGOTTEN MASTER by Link Yaco is a 7 page biographical sketch dotted with looks at the artist's lesser-known (to the general public anyway) works for GALAXY, SKY MASTERS, WIZARD KING, etc.

WOOD ALL OVER THE PLACE by the great fan historian Lou Mougin discusses woodwork from Charlton, Harvey, Wham-O and Gold Key as well as Woody's cameo in Warren's HORROR OF PARTY BEACH magazine.

There follows a 5 page Wally Wood cover gallery in full color.

A full color ad for Wood's RADIAN is a bonus next.

SECOND TIME AROUND is a one page review of Wood reprints.

HECK...WALLY WOOD MUST HAVE BEEN AN ALIEN! is a nice 8 page appreciation of Wood with some rare pictures and a reprint of Woody's EC ARTIST OF THE ISSUE.

Finally,Vanguard publisher J. David Spurlock (who has since put out a number of nice Wood-related products) offers 5 pages of his personal DIARY OF A WALLY WOOD FAN.

There are other interesting pieces in this issue but quite frankly they're superfluous. For a magazine that starts out in its editorial trying to convince me that I should now refer to myself as a "panepictographist," this issue is a pure delight for Wood fans and probably easy to find at your local comic shop or on EBay.