Thursday, March 31, 2011

Wood Goes Boing-Boing


Has anyone ever named Woody's little wagon kid who appeared in Hitchcock-like cameos in all of Wood's magazine MAD work? Check out the estimable site BOING-BOING which covers and links to Bhob Stewart's posting of Wood's MAD logo effort.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Friday, March 25, 2011

*** New! Strange Worlds Cover***

J David Spurlock just today premiered on Facebook this spanking new cover design for his upcoming and highly anticipated collection of Wood sci-fi stories. Comments?

Thursday, March 24, 2011

New Meat-Reese and Hama-1975


Here's a rarely seen combo from former Woodworkers Ralph Reese and Larry Hama from the NATIONAL LAMPOON-style magazine, APPLE PIE in 1975. Written by Mary Skrenes (OMEGA THE UNKNOWN) it's reminiscent of the Reese/Neal Adams piece in Flo Steinberg's BIG APPLE COMICS. The more nitpicky amongst you will note that the last two pages are numbered out of order. In actuality, they seem to have been printed out of order in the original magazine whereas I have corrected that.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Richard Dragon Art

RANDOM ACTS OF GEEKERY has one of its regular collections of original art pages posted and includes this nice page by Ric Estrada inked by Wally Wood from DC's RICHARD DRAGON, KUNG-FU FIGHTER. I read somewhere that Mr. Estrada was not happy with Wood's inks here or on ALL-STAR COMICS but personally I always thought they meshed well.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

So White


One of my favorite blogs is RIP JAGGER'S DOJO which here dances delicately around a feature about one of Woody's late-in-life pornographic comics stories. This link is itself SFW but links again to the actual story discussed, SO WHITE AND THE SIX DORKS, elsewhere and that story most definitely should be labelled NSFW.

As Rip points out, this was probably the best drawn and most Wood-like of all of the hardcore GANG BANG parodies.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

1969 Wood Mad Ad


Yesterday we ran Woody's last contribution to MAD and his first since the early sixties outside of reprints. Here, however, from 1969, is a fun ad for one of the magazine's infrequent hardcover book collections, this one apparently combining material from the Kurtzman comics as well as from the Feldstein mags, something rarely done. But there--in color even--is Woody's SUPERDUPERMAN.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Altar Ego-1971


Here's Woody's slightly mysterious 2 page return to the scene of some of his greatest triumphs--MAD. Nearly eight years after he left under somewhat mysterious circumstances (some say he turned in a job that Gaines found unacceptable, some say the drinking was the issue...), there suddenly appeared this unheralded one-off reappearance illustrating a two page religious gag by one Marilyn Ippolito (?). In a later interview wit Editor Al Feldstein, he seemed surprised that Wood had returned at all and was not aware of the details of that situation. As always, we invite Wood insiders who might know more about this piece from Woody' camp to let us in on your expertise. Thanks.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Topps Travel Posters



If you're reading this blog and NOT visiting Bhob Stewart's POTRZEBIE blog on a regular basis shame on you. It isn't always about Wood over there but it does always have fun and fascinating facts from one who was actually there when cool stuff happened! Here, Bhob offers some annotated samples from 1967's Travel Posters for Topps.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Squa Tront Tribute Cover


Jerry Weist, the original publisher of the ultimate EC fanzine, SQUA TRONT, passed away in January of this year. Here we see the cover of the first issue of his long-running 'zine, from 1967. Clearly a Wally Wood tribute, I have sadly never had a copy of this first issue and was unable to determine the artist. Rick Showalter perhaps? I'm sure one of our knowledgable readers will know.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Honey West by Ronn Sutton and Elaine Lee


Artist Ronn Sutton has done and continues to do a lot for the Wally Wood blog and Wood fandom in general. I'd appreciate it if you'd consider taking a look at HIS latest project, HONEY WEST!

Press release follows:

This storyline runs through Honey West issues #3, 4 & 5, after which time artist Ronn Sutton will be penciling and inking some other Honey West projects in 2011. "I'm currently wrapping up the artwork on my third issue" comments Sutton. "I've spent a lot of time drawing these issues, so to speed things up a little I've brought in a model with a belly dancing and burlesque background to help me create all the major Honey West poses in issue #5".
The character Honey West was created in the late 1950s by Gloria and Forest Fickling for a series of detective novels that they would write until 1971. In 1965, Anne Francis starred in a Honey West tv series after the character first made a brief appearance on the Burke's Law tv show.
"I'm having a lot of fun working on these issues" Sutton said. "In the original novels Honey West was a much sexier character than she was portrayed on television. So I'm trying to re-instate that. The story takes place in 1965 and I've worked hard to visually recreate that era: the hairstyles, clothes, furniture, etc. The mid-60s was also probably the last hurrah for that very girly-girl sex kitten image. That's what I'm trying to bring to my version of Honey. She's very alluring, well-built and she's always on the verge of spilling out of her clothes".
Sutton knows a fair bit about drawing sexy women after having drawn issues of Claypool Comics' Elvira, Mistress of the Dark for nine years. Prior to that he had worked on a number of other female protagonists such as Draculina, the vampress Luxura, a Vampira movie comic, and She-Dragon (for the Savage Dragon animated tv series).
"I'm attempting to portray a very specific look, something that was fleeting and now is long gone. But you see a certain sexiness in the way women dressed then, the way they walked, a particular sort of sexy sophistication that disappeared when Go-Go, hippie and unisex styles invaded".
Honey West is published by Moonstone Books. Each issue is 32 color pages for $3.99. The comic ships with three variant covers including one photo cover of Honey West actress Anne Francis who passed away on January 2nd 2011. Script by Elaine Lee, pencil & ink art by Ronn Sutton, colors by Ken Wolak.


Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Wood Planet of the Apes?

Undoubtedly Wallace Wood did quite a bit of art for Topps during his time there but did he do this wrapper for PLANET OF THE APES cards? Dated 1967 (the film was released in 1968) the inking on the Zaius head makes me think it could be by Wood. Opinions?