Fear Has 3 Dimensions-Wayne Howard-1972

Here's Wood wannabe and former sidekick Wayne Howard with one of his many Charlton tales of the seventies, this one behind a nifty cover from another frequent Wood collaborator, Steve Ditko.

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2010/12/boys-from-derby-fear-has-three.html

Mad's Sunday Funnies

In 1961, THE WORST OF MAD # 4 offered more than reprints--there was, included in the magazine, a tear-out Sunday Funnies section offering some of the best ever lampoons of specific strips including BLONDIE, PRINCE VALIANT, FLASH GORDON and, seen here, POGO! Woody did several, including the Civil Rights themed POGO one.

http://hairygreeneyeball2.blogspot.com/2010/12/worst-from-mad-sunday-funnies.html

The Mad Comic Opera

Dr Hermes' Retroscans offers Frank Jacobs MAD COMIC OPERA, one of Woody's best remembered pieces from the magazine! Thanks to Brendan for the tip.

http://dr-hermes.livejournal.com/125847.html

More Potrzebie Woodchips

As of this writing, the links Bhob has to other sites in this piece don't seem to be working but who cares? What's here is good stuff including MARS IS HEAVEN!

http://potrzebie.blogspot.com/search/label/stwallskull

Whig Tory/Sgt Slab

We all have pages of random doodles. Here's one of Wally Wood's. The whiter panels at bottom right seem much older to me and pasted on for some reason.

Nudine? Honey Is That You?

Here we have an official FOO sketch belonging to fan (and blog supporter supreme!) Paul Markezich depicting Nudine of Wood's PIPSQUEAK PAPERS strip in WITZEND. Here we also have 2 sketches that appear to be of a clothed Nudine! Anyone know what these are from? Is this Nudine or simply a WIZARD KING elf girl?

Space Ace by Williamson and Wood

Here's a wonderful collaboration between Wood and artist Al Williamson, two EC sci-fi stalwarts on a non-EC space opera story!

http://pencilink.blogspot.com/2008/04/jet-4-al-williamson-wally-wood-art.html

Early Wood-Frank Buck-1950

Although this early 1950 story retains a decidedly amateurish quality, one can definitely see the quickly developing style that would reach an early peak in just a couple of years at EC. Note the experiments with lighting faces as well as an appearance of Woody's trademark skulls on the next to last page. Did he have help on this early Avon story? Orlando? Harrison?

Woody's Classic Covers # 41

Nude Seen On eBay

Slightly censored but still very sensuous.

Wood Homage by Charles Crumb!

The other day, we ran a link to Wood's "V-Vampires" art at Pappy's. Here's an ultra-rare early homage to that story on the cover of an issue of the Crumb Brothers' homemade FOO comic. This particular cover was drawn by older brother Charles whose comic book obsession is said to have been quite an inspiration to Robert. In the first issue of BLAB, Robert joined many underground artists in crediting MAD as an early influence. Wood would later unknowingly (it's assumed) co-opt FOO as an acronym for his Friends of Odkin fan club. Charles Crumb would suffer all his life from mental illness and committed suicide in 1992. Even then, he attained a kind of posthumous fame from scenes filmed earlier for the film, CRUMB, a popular documentary on Robert and his work.

Mad Preliminary Sketches

From Comic Art Fans.

Ditko/Wood Original Page

Another always welcome collaboration was that between Steve Ditko and Wallace Wood. The two worked together on--amongst others-- CANNON, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, DESTRUCTOR and, seen here, DC's STALKER!

Paul Kirchner Original Art-The Bus

Found on the Net, this is an excellent example of former Woodworker Paul Kirchner's surreal strip THE BUS that ran in NATIONAL LAMPOON in the early seventies.

V-Vampires! Original Art

From Pappy via Heritage Auctions, here's the complete original art for the redrawn 3-D version of Woody's EC Classic V-VAMPIRES!

http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-855-v-vampires-heritage-auctions.html

Misfits Original Art Page

Wood on Flickr

The ever-helpful Ronn S refers us to this link where someone has posted a ginormous amount of Wood art from nearly every phase in his career...along with some Paul Kirchner work from NATIONAL SCREW that they've mis-identified (even though they note that it was signed "Kurt Schnurr" they apparently did NOT make the connection). Thanks, Ronn!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9120653@N06/sets/72157624831539078/

Gookum--Original Art

If you have a spare 50 thou just lying around you mat well want to head over to eBay and pick up the entire original art pages for Kurtzman and Wood's classic MAD story, GOOKUM! Thanks to Loston Wallace for bringing these gorgeous huge scans to our attention!

http://cgi.ebay.com/WALLY-WOOD-MAD-2-CMPLT-6-PG-STORY-ORIG-ART-GOOKUM-/310265379940?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item483d41fc64

Rich Buckler and Woody

Rich Buckler has a weekly spot for his anecdotal memories over at DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND and this week he talks about Woody and Warren as well as quite a bit about non-confomity in general.

"I was fortunate early on to have one of my pencil jobs inked by Wally Wood (Creepy Magazine #75)--that was a thrill. It was a dark, emotionless and dreary story about cannibalism--the script was unrelentingly macabre--but I found inventive ways to make it a dynamic reading experience. Wally Wood's inking was flawless."

Check out the rest of the piece at

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2010/11/swash-buckler-saturdays-ninja.html

Yet Another Sally Forth FOO Drawing

Found on the Net, this is a SALLY FORTH pose I hadn't seen before from the drawings done by Paul Kirchner (confirmed here in an early post) with Woody as giveaways to the first batch of folks to join his latter day Friends Of Odkin fan club.

Smiling Woody in the Sixties

Found in an old fanzine. Based on the walls, I'm going to see this was at a Convention.

The OTHER Thing From the Sea-1970

When I saw Terry Beatty's reprinting of Wood's 1950's EERIE COMICS tale, THE THING FROM THE SEA, the other day, I commented that it looked much better in color. One reason for that may be that I had never actually seen that story before. Not exactly anyway. Oh, I thought I had, mind you! I haven't checked but Im pretty sure THE THING FROM THE SEA has been reprinted in black and white by Bill Black's AC Comics as well as in at least a couple of publications from Greg Theakston's Pure Imagination. I skipped them, though, because I hadn't liked the story all that much when I had first seen it...in Skywald's NIGHTMARE # 1 from way back in late 1970. Skywald--to make a long story short--was a relatively short-lived but worthy competitor to Jim Warren's line of EC-inspired horror magazines, CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA. One of the folks behind it was Israel Waldman, the "IW" in the IW/Super Comics line that existed from the late fifties through the mid-sixties and simply republished (with more than slightly questionable legality) old comic books with new covers...all because Waldman had bought the plates for the originals.

Thus when he started his new horror mags, NIGHTMARE and PSYCHO, it should be no surprise that he was still reprinting some old stuff mixed in with the new. The first issue of the line, NIGHTMARE # 1, featured THE THING FROM THE SEA.

Now, to be fair, they didn't credit it as being by Wood. In fact, they didn't credit it at all. Much of the rest of the book was made up of new stories and art by Friedrich, Wolfman, Everett, Shores, Heck and other Marvel expatriates.

The reason they couldn't really say THE THING FROM THE SEA was by Wally Wood is that--in this case--it wasn't! Not completely anyway. Every single page has either been traced by another artist or else very heavily retouched! The young, long haired female character is the most obvious change, now looking slightly older and with a shorter, more modern looking hairstyle.

The machine lettering has been replaced also. The fact that some of the word balloons remain in the same place, leading to such unusual situations as one being left blank at the beginning, make me think that this is, in fact, the Wood original, simply over-tweaked for whatever reasons by someone else. But then some panels show little or no trace of Wood! My first thought for the new artist was Dick Ayers but Terry Beatty--who knows such things better than I--disagreed. My second thought is the recently deceased Mike Esposito and I'm pretty sure that's correct. Esposito is, in fact, credited solo on the contents page for SOMETHING in the issue as well as with longtime partner Ross Andru.

So anyway, for whatever they were trying to do here, it really isn't a terrible job. It's just that when you have the Wood original, why do anything at all but enjoy? Thus my surprise when I saw how much better Woody's version is. Check it out yourself in its entirety at Terry Beatty's blog here: http://terrybeatty.blogspot.com/2010/11/wally-wood-thing-from-sea.html

Bring 'em up side by side and compare!

The Thing From the Sea

Here is one by Woody that has seen many a reprinting in various books and magazines but generally in black and white. Here artist Terry Beatty reprints it in color and I, for one, like it even better!

http://terrybeatty.blogspot.com/2010/11/wally-wood-thing-from-sea.html

DD & Stiltman

Over at Joe Bloke's place on GRANTBRIDGE STREET, we find one of Woody's classic DAREDEVIL stories from the mid-sixties. Just beautiful, dorky comics fun!

http://grantbridgestreet.blogspot.com/2010/11/daredevil-in-stiltman-cometh-by-stan.html

Woodwork-The Catalog

I posted this on Facebook earlier and linked to it from ITCH. It's been very popular and suddenly it occurred to me it should be here, also. Duh!

Joe Orlando's X-Ray Glasses

Did you ever notice that this ad for the ever-popular X-Ray Glasses that were long a mainstay of comics and magazine advertising in the sixties was drawn (and signed with his initials) by former Woodworker Joe Orlando? The ad was seen in Warren magazines from 1965. This was the period when Woody was working with Russ Jones at Warren on projects like HORROR AT PARTY BEACH and the comic strip adaptation of THE MUMMY. A comic strip adaptation of HORROR OF DRACULA also appeared and was done by Jones and Orlando. So even though Wood and Orlando didn't technically reunite at Warren...it was close!

The New T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents

Since the demise of Tower Comics in the late sixties, many of us have longed for the triumphant return of Woody's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS. With DC's new version, which I was able to read yesterday, I have to say I think its time we stop wanting new stories of Dynamo, NoMan and friends and just recognize that we'll always have the originals to enjoy.

In spite of their legal folderol, Deluxe Comics brought us some okay stories with art by Perez, Ordway and others of their caliber. JC Comics were more traditional but on a lower budget. Archie took a shot with the Agents as did Solson and a few odd companies both in the US and the UK. OMNI COMIX, almost out of the blue, gave us a long, dense, gritty T.H.U.N.D.E.R. story nicely drawn by Paul Gulacy but it went nowhere and was never continued. The problem with all of these revivals was that they weren't the originals.

Perhaps at this point I was pre-disposed not to like DC's just-released version but the fact is, it is an overwritten, oddly colored, ambitious but complicated story with mostly unlikable characters. We never really do get to meet the new heroes in any kind of lasting way or even see much of them before they...well...no spoilers. There are some funny lines from a long progression of talking heads but by the end I was thoroughly confused as to exactly what was going on...and this was the first issue, remember! Shouldn't this be where they introduce and set up concepts and characters?

The concept is credited to Michael Uslan whose comics work I have long greatly admired but the writing is by someone I have never heard of, the just okay pencilling and inking by two single named persons neither of whom has ever even been a blip on my radar. Since the art is the one thing the originals were known by, I do find myself surprised that DC would not give this title some of the best.

I realize it's unfair to compare a modern comic book, done in a modern style by modern writers and artists and for modern readers, to 45 year old comics that today's fans barely know if at all. That said, though, with this project, it's hard NOT to compare. In fact, the title splash actually notes that Frank Quitely's cover is "after Wally Wood"...although, if I remember correctly, Wood's was actually after a Larry Ivie cover sketch from Ivie's early involvement with Tower. Darwyn Cooke's variant cover (seen above) featuring the classic versions of the characters--none of whom appear in this issue at all mind you--is the best part of the whole package.

Fans of the original talk of the amazing art from Wally Wood, Dan Adkins, Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko and Gil Kane. People forget that there were also a whole lot of filler stories with lesser (albeit nostalgically charming) art by Mike Sekowsky, Chic Stone, Ogden Whitney and Manny Stallman. Although lightly written at their best, and with some convoluted continuity, the original T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS had a cold war ambiance and an artistic charm that just does not translate into other times, more realistic scripting, darker and grittier art. The originals are and always will be there for us but I doubt this series will last particularly long. I may glance at a second issue if I see it but I'm certainly not going out of my way to look for it after this inauspicious start.

Flash Gordon by Ralph Reese

Seems like all of the old EC artists loved FLASH GORDON. Frazetta drew characters that looked like Flash or his movie version as played by Buster Crabbe. Woody himself drew Flash parodies throughout his career and one memorable story for King in the sixties. Heck, Al Williamson has a whole book devoted to his various FLASH GORDON interpretations! Should be no surprise then that Ralph Reese, one of the most notable Woodworkers and a fine comics artist in his own right, actually had a memorable run on that venerable strip. Sadly, Reese's run, written by Bruce Jones, remains little seen due to dwindling syndication of continuity strips since the sixties. Above are some non-sequential examples from the eighties and early nineties.