Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Tag: Wallace Wood

Gil Kane and Wallace Wood — Toys For The Holidays (Part 2)

Original Art and The Artists

Captain Action #3, May 1969

Can lightning strike twice in the toy biz?  Inventor Stan Weston thought so, and I for one, became proof of concept.

Weston had created the original 12” G.I. Joe “doll” for Hasbro in 1964 and younger baby boomers like myself quickly became obsessed with the figures and all their wonderfully detailed accessories.

Next up: Weston took his invention to Ideal Toys in 1966, and turned it into a superhero concept, capturing the zeitgeist of the era. Captain Action was born, and despite the goofy name, its dozen licensed superhero costumes were a terrific gimmick.

Kids could turn the good captain into a number of well-known characters including Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Captain America and Aquaman.

And the best part? The costumes and accessories worked just fine with existing G.I. Joes, so any crafty kid (we were all crafty, FYI) could create a multiverse Justice League without buying multiple Captain Action figures.

The toy line burned brightly, but briefly, and by 1968/69, the product was heading to the closeout racks. That apparently didn’t concern DC, which licensed the character for yet another brief comic book series.

Fortunately, visual storytelling chores were handled by Gil Kane and Wally Wood, making for some great original art. (Wood drew issue #1 solo, and then inked Gil on issues #2, #3 and #5. Gil scripted, penciled and inked issue #4.)

This cool page features the origin of “Dr. Evil,” main nemesis to the good Captain. Remember when I said the Captain Action name was goofy? I have no words for naming a villain “Dr. Evil.”

Wallace Wood — The Truth Is Out There

Original Art and The Artists

Weird Science Fantasy #26, December 1954

I love stories about UFO sightings. As a kid, that was a (small) section of the library I often haunted.

I don’t believe that aliens are touring our planet, but I’d love to find out I’m mistaken. The problem, of course, is that the science, as we understand it today, makes it pretty unlikely. (A fun book on the subject, The Physics of Star Trek, dives into the detail.)

I like UFO stories so much that this was one of the first actual EC back issues I ever forked over my hard-earned allowance for back in the early 70s. 

I don’t own that issue anymore, I sold it when Russ Cochran’s reprints started covering the EC bases.

But I own this great “one-pager” of Wood original art — something I could never have conceived of as a kid.

And who knows? Maybe one day, extraterrestrials actually will land on the White House South Lawn and tell us: “Einstein, nice man, he just had one part of the formula incorrect.”

Happy 50th EC Comics!

Wallace Wood — EC’s Finest Warms Up

Original Art and The Artists

Weird Science #8, July 1951

Earlier in the year, we celebrated EC Comics “New Trend” 50th anniversary with some great original art examples from the legendary Jack Davis. Today — and Saturday — we will celebrate once again, this time with the astonishing Wallace Wood.

Woody hadn’t quite hit his artistic prime yet when he drew this Weird Science tale, “The Probers.” But he was perhaps at his most prolific, pencilling and inking up to three pages a day(!) for EC and other publishers of the day.

That sheer volume would decrease as Woody’s detail became more and more intricate, and the finishes more and more polished. In a very short time, Wood’s peers would pretty much always refer to him as best in class.

Some of Woody’s great SF art (Non EC) can be found in his 50s comic book stories, as well as his illustrations for Galaxy magazine.

Wallace Wood — Topps In Class

Original Art and The Artists

Topps Nasty Notes, 1967

Wallace Wood brings his penchant for humor to Topps with this great looking 1967 series of novelties appropriately entitled “Nasty Notes.”

Why call them novelties instead of trading cards? Because they are actually two-sided posters that are designed to resemble the folded notes you might pass around in class.

Woody did a generous amount of work for Topps in the 60s as he became increasingly frustrated with the mainstream comics houses. Also, he was friends with one of Topps creative directors, Len Brown.

In fact, as noted previously, Len helped shape the creative direction of Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents, and. in return, Woody named the civilian identity of Dynamo, the lead character, “Len Brown.”

Some of the greatest and best-known talents of the comics contributed to Topps creative “Non-Sports” projects. It’s an all-star list that includes Jack Davis, Bob Powell, Basil Wolverton, Robert Crumb, Jay Lynch and Art Spiegelmanamong others.

(And of course, well-know pulp cover painter Norm Saunders was responsible for the finished work on Mars Attacks, Batman, Civil War, and others.)

My favorite Topps / Wood project of the era: Krazy Little Comics, 16 different parodies of classic superheroes in the style of EC’s classic Mad Comics . Written by Roy Thomas, with art by Wood and Gil Kane, too. These predate Not Brand Ecch! #1 

David Mazzucchelli — Devil Noir

Original Art and The Artists

Daredevil #217, April 1984

55 years ago, Wallace Wood emphasized the “devil” in Daredevil with a dramatic costume change for the character in issue #7. The series, which had floundered early on, started to gain some traction with Woody’s work just a few issues prior. Issue #7, featuring Daredevil hopelessly outmatched by the Sub-Mariner, is considered a silver-age classic.

Our next three posts celebrate this anniversary with a look at the “modern” man without fear.

I love classic film noir. Dark streets, shady characters, two-faced femme fatales, dimly lit apartments, et al. All great. 

At one point, there was not a sign of comic art in my office — just classic noir posters.

So it’s no surprise that that some of my favorite takes on Daredevil are those same noir tropes applied to comics by outstanding storytellers like David Mazzucchelli.

And great pages like this one, featuring Daredevil in every panel, playing the (blind, but super-powered) detective. Mazzucchelli’s use of cinematic camera angles and shadows and light creates a deeply moody page, especially when seen in its original form.

Mazzucchelli keeps nearly all of his original art, and he both penciled and inked this page, so it’s a fantastic rarity as well. Only a handful of Daredevil pages that he is fully responsible for have appeared for sale on the secondary market.

Daredevil #217 features a dramatic cover by the amazing Barry Windsor-Smith.
Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli would collaborate on one of the best loved comic book story arcs of all time: “Born Again.” At IDW, we were fortunate enough to put together an Artist’s Edition of the series with beautiful scans provided from Mazzucchelli himself.

Wallace Wood — Indie Hero

Original Art and The Artists

Heroes, Inc. #1, 1969

Welcome back to a month long celebration of the “Independents” — Independent creators and projects that continue to impact the comic book medium.

I recently noticed a fellow professional declare Wallace Wood the greatest comic book illustrator of all time.

Unlike most commentary on social media these days, as far as I can tell, no one jumped up and bashed him. Sure you can disagree, or have another personal favorite (Kirby, Williamson, et al) but you end up in the weeds of arguing whether Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb was the greatest baseball player ever.

If Wood isn’t the “best,” he’s still in the top few.

Wood was also a pioneer in the independent comics world, trying new things at a time when he was frustrated with the mainstream commercial publishers.

In fact, shortly after the cancellation of T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents, Wood created an interesting series of “adult” oriented characters, primarily for the armed forces. 

Heroes Inc. features the only color version of any of these characters, and introduces the Misfits, self-explanatory name and all.

This comic was “rare” for a while in the 70s, but then someone discovered a warehouse find.

And then another.

Pretty soon, there were likely more than 100,000 copies floating around. It appears that 250K were printed and most were never actually distributed.

I sure hope Woody didn’t get stuck with any of that printing bill.

The Misfits made only two appearances, seven years apart. The second issue of Heroes Inc. made its debut as a “prozine” in 1976.

Frank Miller — Wood’s World

Original Art and The Artists

Dark Horse Presents #100-1, August 1995 and Tales To Offend #1, July 1997

This is a great Frank Miller splash page from a 1995 Lance Blastoff story.

Wait — Who?

If you blinked, you likely missed Blastoff, Miller’s affectionate homage to Wallace (Wally) Wood’s classic EC SF stories. (With a bit of Al Williamson thrown in for good measure.)

The character originally appeared in only two short stories, both in Dark Horse Presents, both in black and white, in the mid 90s.

Ultimately, those stories, along with a few others, were repackaged in a fun one-shot comic book, Tales To Offend. For this reprint, the stories were newly colored.

And in a moment of inspired genius, Miller (or Dark Horse itself) hired Marie Severin — who colored most of the original EC stories — to color the Blastoff stories.

Nothing deep about these Blastoff stories — just some diversionary fun from the noir Sin City stories of the era. (Although the humor here is a definitely the dark kind.) 

Dinosaurs. Rockets. Spacegirls. 40 years after EC’s heyday, it was nice to have them back again, even if just for a brief moment.

A sampling of Wood’s greatest EC SF covers.

Gene Colan — Agent Of Sleep

Original Art and The Artists

Captain America #120, December 1969

Concluding our look at SHIELD on the eve of its 55th anniversary.

Gene Colan was a polarizing storyteller when it came to artistic style.

Fans either really loved his work (count me in that group) or didn’t like it at all. I could never figure that out. Of course his work didn’t look anything like the rest of Marvel Bullpen, but that was cool; his dynamic storytelling and extraordinary use of light and shadows was astonishing. To me, at least.

Colan’s run on Captain America came after both Kirby and Steranko, and that was a definite change of pace. But Gene’s reality-defying physics felt like a perfect fit for Cap, Marvel’s own reality-defying super powered acrobat.

Inking Gene Colan was one of the most challenging assignments in comics, but the legendary Joe Sinnott delivers here.

Nick Fury, of course, is the most important supporting character in the Marvel Universe. After Kirby and Steranko’s run was completed, the character couldn’t sustain his own title, but SHIELD was an important part of the entire Marvel Universe, primarily with Captain America in the latter part of the Silver Age.

And of course that dynamic repeats — brilliantly — in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

And for the record, even though it appears Fury’s up to absolutely no good by hypnotizing Steve Rogers in this scene, he actually did have a higher purpose in mind.

Ultimately it didn’t work. The man is Captain America, after all.

Inking Gene Colan was one of the most challenging assignments in comics, but these two issues stand out: Issue #127, inks by Wally Wood, and #135, inked by Tom Palmer. The Palmer splash is a wonderful harbinger of monstrous things to come on the Wolfman/Colan/Palmer Tomb of Dracula series, while the Wood issue is simply spectacular looking from start to finish.
Meta Fury: Fury is retooled as a black character in the Ultimate Marvel line in the early 2000s, and writer Mark Millar ultimately utilizes the likeness of Samuel Jackson for the role — neglecting to tell him that. But Jackson held no grudge — ultimately playing the character in 11 films and counting.
Fury and Cap share a special bond early on, as discussed here.

Wallace Wood — All Star

Original Art and The Artists

All Star Comics #59, 1976

All Star Comics, featuring The Justice Society, returned for the first time in 25 years, and the legendary Wallace Wood returned to superheroes for the early issues as well.

“Return” for Woody is a bit of an overstatement, since outside of his own creation, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Wood’s work in superheroes was limited. Ironically his most lauded superhero work in the DC universe is Superduperman, an EC Mad Comics parody from 1953.

In All Star, editor Joe Orlando (and Wood’s former protégé at EC) provided Woody the chance to play with many of DC’s classic characters, including Superman, and he was given a chance to help set the look and feel of at least one enduring new one, Power Girl, the “Supergirl” of Earth Two. On this great battle page, we have Hawkman, The Star-Spangled Kid, and Doctor Mid-Nite in all out action.

As demonstrated by the art itself, Wood is responsible for the pencils and inks on this “second” issue, with Rick Estrada providing rough breakdowns and receiving credit as “designer” on this issue.

Woody left the title after less than a year’s worth of issues, but the work he left was behind was definitely “all star” material.

Fun fact: Hawkman was the only original member of the JSA to appear in every issue of the original All Star comics as part of the team.

Fun fact: Despite the fact that All Star had originally continued as All Star Western in 1951, DC re-started the series using the Golden Age numbering.  Today it would be  #1 issue with more than a few variant covers…

Fun fact: “Super Squad” is just… ugh.

The first original Golden Age cover appearances of Star-Spangled Kid, Spectre and Hawkman.
All Star Comics returns with art by the legendary Wallace Wood. Bam!
The new Justice Society launches on CW in a few weeks with the premiere of Stargirl on May 11.

Steve Ditko and Wallace Wood — Time Of Death

Original Art and The Artists

T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents #7, August 1966

Death in superhero comic books had always been a gimmick. “Robin Dies at Dawn” likely meant he would be back by dinnertime. (In fairness, it’s a pretty good story.)

Imaginary stories, hoaxes, dreams, mad science, robots, time travel, alien resurrection, etc. all kept our featured players in good health. There was not much chance a title character was going to exit from his book permanently.

So back in the 60s, legitimately killing a character was in fact, a groundbreaking novelty. And this T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents story is one of the first. Ditko, Wood and company had spent 6 issues developing the character of Menthor (John Janus), and they shot him to death on this page in Issue #7.

This historic page captures that collaborative methodology of Woody and the Tower artistic team on T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents. Dan Adkins scripted and provided layouts, Ditko penciled the story, and Wood inked it, with assists by Adkins.

The original T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents lasted only last 20 issues, and perhaps, had it survived, John would have been resurrected at some point. But it certainly did not appear that way.

Unlike, say, modern times where killing a lead character is a gimmick once again.

Superman. Dead. Then alive.

Batman. Dead? Nope, he’s back.

Captain America? Reborn. Bucky? Not dead, just hiding in Russia for a few decades.

Etc.

A few months after the death of Menthor, teenaged writerJim Shooter kills off (spoiler alert) Ferro Lad in the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Menthor’s powers derived from a “cybernetic” helmet, so t was no surprise that another character would don the helmet and ultimately become a new Menthor when T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents was resurrected by other publishers. John Janus? Still dead, I believe.