All-Star Original Art

Wally was in his final glory days inking for DC in the seventies including some great work on the revived ALL-STAR COMICS over Ric Estrada and Keith Giffen when all of a sudden his enthusiasm got the better of him and he took on full art chores for the JSA series (aided and abetted by his trusty sidekick at the time, A. L. Sirois). This gave him his long-coveted chance to draw Superman--the Golden Age Superman in fact! RANDOM ACTS OF GEEKERY presents a number of Wood original art pages from issue 65 in which the Man of Steel ends up in a very traditional Wood space suit!

http://waffyjon.blogspot.com/2010/02/cool-stuff-original-comic-art_27.html#more

Valor Original Art

One of my favorite Wood EC covers and surprisingly NOT a sci-fi one.

Cannon Original Art

There's actually quite a bit of original art from Woody's early seventies OVERSEAS WEEKLY strip, CANNON over at the Heritage Auction site. This particular page is interesting in that Wood himself cameos as a cigar-chomping policeman and reference is made to Officer (Ralph) Reese. Is the African-American gentleman based on Wayne Howard? The closeup of the girl's face is quite lovely but seems to definitely show the work of other hands as she does not look like the typical Wood girl at all. Larry Hama perhaps? Bet Alan K can tell us who was around when this strip was done.

More Mad Original Art

Once again, thanks to Bill Wray.

Zboy!

Not sure what this image is from but it has become one of my favorite Wood pieces and comes to us courtesy of artist Bill Wray. Thank you, sir!

Anthro

I liked DC's ANTHRO which began in 1968 but it was an odd mix of drama and comedy, similar in a prehistoric way to its contemporary BAT LASH. The art, however, by Howie Post, was not a hit with me. In 20 years, Post had gone from his delightful Walt Kellyesque art style in JIMINY AND THE MAGIC BOOK to a hard to love, extremely scratchy, scrawl that many readers, myself among them, just couldn't appreciate. ANTHRO had been pretty much a one man show for Post for the first few issues but I can see it now. As the mail came in and the art was getting dissed, DC said, "Who can we get to make his art smoother and more palatable?" The answer, of course, was Wally Wood! Here's the MUCH smoother splash from Woody's inking debut over Post in mid-1969.

The Weapon Out of Time-1951

ATOMIC SURGERY is a blog I don't believe I had run across before but last week they had a little seen 1951 Wally Wood story from Avon's STRANGE WORLDS.

http://atomic-surgery.blogspot.com/2010/02/weapon-out-of-time-1951-by-wally-wood.html

The 10th at Noon

Here's yet another chance to compare Wood original art for a complete story with the printed color version, in this case, "The 10th at Noon," a nuclear nightmare tale from an early issue of EC's WEIRD FANTASY.

http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2010/02/number-687-10th-noon-i-was-one-of-those.html

I'm Back and I'm Mac!

It'll take me a few days to get up to speed and refind and reconnect all my resources...especially since my new super IMac arrived on a day when I had a long overdue tooth extraction! Going to take some Vicodin and dive into my also just-received ALLEY OOP volume 3 from the early 1990's. With any luck, there's still a chance that the PC will be fixed by next weekend and maybe even have all my STUFF! Stay tuned. The best is yet to come!

Groovy Man Hunters

Our old buddy the Groovy Agent shares the colorized version of Wood's Warren story, "The Man Hunters," done, I believe, with Paul Kirchner. AS a bonus, there's also a colorized Reed Crandall story but quote frankly I think Crandall always looked better in black and white. Both are from COMIX INTERNATIONAL.

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2010/02/ec-in-ya-wood-and-crandall-in-color.html

The Apocolyte Walked Among Us

Fellow blogger and Wood fan the Apocolyte has a crowning moment of awesome (as the young folk say) with a dual blog post--on dual blogs!--spotlighting both the original printed version of our hero's classic EC story (written by Al Feldstein) "He Walked Among Us" and the amazing original art pages for the entire story! Looks to me like Joe Orlando may have helped but not sure.

Go here for the original color WEIRD SCIENCE printing:http://apocolytesworldofcomics.blogspot.com/2010/02/going-to-wood-pile-ec-classic-from.html

Go here for the original art: http://blacknwhiteandredallover.blogspot.com/2010/02/post-30-he-walked-among-us-original-art.html

Ghost Artist

Well, it looks like another week before I/m officially back online so I've decided to at least try some minor posts here while we wait.

Today, we link To Bhob Stewart's delightful POTRZEBIE blog where he both reprints and offers the behind-the-scenes story of GHOST ARTIST, an early seventies Charlton tale (also in Craig Yoe's new ART OF DITKO book) co-written by himself with Russ Jones and drawn by Steve Ditko--as well as possibly inspired by a HarryHarrison short story! All of these folks, of course, sometime Wood collaborators.

http://potrzebie.blogspot.com/2010/02/ghost-artist.html

Hiatus

For those of you who come here but don't see my regular blog, I just want to point out that we will be on an enforced hiatus for at least the next week as my hard drive has completely and unrecoverably crashed. I am writing this on my son's laptop which i don't have access to for much of the day.Sadly I was NOT smart enough to completely back up everything so thousands of items were lost. I estimate that perhaps 30 percent can be gotten back from various sources once I'm back up. I WAS at least smart enough to buy a 3 year warranty when I got my PC so they will be replacing the harddrive free. Due to the severity of the hard drive crash, they do NOT recommend trying data recovery. I'm trying to be philosophical. AS much as I lost, in the end it was at least all virtual. no one was hurt and I still have a place to live. Anyone who wishes to help though can donate to my PalPal box over at BOOKSTEVE'S LIBRARY. We WILL be back sometime next week.

Original Sally Forth Cover Art

Found on the Net, here's the original art for the cover of Wood's first oversized reprint of his OVERSEAS WEEKLY strip SALLY FORTH. Looks to me like it was done with Paul Kirchner.