Thursday, August 18, 2011

Space Search Seven

Seen here is the original splash for Woody's popular but somewhat controversial Warren story, THE MANHUNTERS. The controversy lies in the fact that someone at Warren (either credited writer Gerry Boudreau or, as Wood apparently believed, editor Bill Dubay) took his original and completely rewrote every scrap of the artist's dialogue, in essence making a different story than the one originally intended.

7 comments:

  1. Fascinating? I'd love to see the original script for this? What is this published in? is there a collection of his Warren stuff? Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. No full collection although Warren themselves did an EERIE issue full of his reprinted stories way back when. I'm not sure where I found this page now but Woody himself, in his fan club newsletter, once published the original of a different Warren story that they had butchered.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the info! As always, you're the man! I found the Eerie mag for $25 at StuartNGBooks so ordered that along with a couple of his newsletters, so maybe I will be able to compare the two once I track down the right newsletter. I'm going to the B-more comic convention tomorrow to search out Wood stuff. Stan Lee will be there -

    ReplyDelete
  4. Am I mistaken, or has the Manhunters story never been printed anywhere as Wood intended it? I know that The End was included in full in the original form in one of the Woodwork gazette issues. Warren printed that latter story as Final Cut in 1984 #1, and other parts of the story in 1984 #2.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Pretty sure you're correct, Mark. Wish I could recall where I saw this splash even. Note the Warren copyright.

    ReplyDelete
  6. oh well! I bet someone has it in his papers somewhere, waiting to be discovered!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thought others here would be interested in learning that scans for the entire 8-page "Manhunters" Warren story in its original version can be found at these links, courtesy of the original art collection of Jim Halperin:

    http://www.jhalpe.com/items/index/page:7/search:wally%20wood

    and

    http://www.jhalpe.com/items/index/page:8/search:wally%20wood

    Originally titled "Space Search Seven," this was printed in color in Eerie #60 with altered dialogue and captions as "The Manhunters" (and reprinted in black & white in the posthumous all-Wood reprint tribute issue #131). I don't have #60, but in the reprint, this story is credited to Gerry Boudreau.

    ReplyDelete