Wood had done a lot of work for Warren Publsihing over the years even going so far as to be photographed and inserted into Warren's photo adaptation of the Grade Z monster film, THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH early on. In later years, however, that relationship became strained as Wood had supposedly been promised his own sci-fi mag (WARP) only to have the company publish the dreadful and pointlessly dirty 1984 in its stead. In that mag, Bill Dubay once again rewrote a Woody story, this time making a nice fantasy story (the original of which Wood would self-publish in his WOODWORK GAZETTE) into a smarmy, sophomoric joke. Nonetheless, Warren's EERIE paid tribute to the artist on his passing with a full issue of reprints that included this obituary. Some nice quotes and stories here from Wood's contemporaries and co-workers.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Wood Obit From Eerie
Wood had done a lot of work for Warren Publsihing over the years even going so far as to be photographed and inserted into Warren's photo adaptation of the Grade Z monster film, THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH early on. In later years, however, that relationship became strained as Wood had supposedly been promised his own sci-fi mag (WARP) only to have the company publish the dreadful and pointlessly dirty 1984 in its stead. In that mag, Bill Dubay once again rewrote a Woody story, this time making a nice fantasy story (the original of which Wood would self-publish in his WOODWORK GAZETTE) into a smarmy, sophomoric joke. Nonetheless, Warren's EERIE paid tribute to the artist on his passing with a full issue of reprints that included this obituary. Some nice quotes and stories here from Wood's contemporaries and co-workers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I remember at first when I heard about 1984 (later 1994) that it was going to be a sci-fi comic. I guessed that made sense, since CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA were all horror, but all 3 had regularly featured sci-fi anyway. Then I saw all the nudity. I dind't mind.
ReplyDeleteWhat I DID mind was horrible art and horrible writing. Some years back I looked over the issues I had, and while there was some decent stuff in there (Wood, Corben, Gonzalez, Hsu, Thorne), the rest seemed bottom-of-the-barrel. How did some of these guys ever get hired, I might have wondered?
By the 2nd half of the run, just about the only thing of real interest left was GHITA OF ALIZARR by Frank Thorne. This is often dismissed (by Marvel fans, NO DOUBT) as just a "rip-off" of RED SONJA., but that's nonsense.
One thing I will say, when I was finally able to read GHITA in its entirety, in a reprint collection, I suddenly realized that, not unlike Jack Kirby, when it came to long-form writing, Thorne's pacing was less like an episodic TV series and more like a FEATURE FILM which had had the poor fortune to be cut up into small segments. Taken as a whole, the thing was MAGNIFICENT! And it totally blows anything Marvel has ever done with RED SONJA out of the water, including the episodes Thorne illustrated (which were already light-years beyond everything else they ever, ever did).
Frank is STILL doing cartoons for PLAYBOY. What a guy!