Wally Wood drew four short Doctor Doom stories in Astonishing Tales. This page, from the fourth and final story is, like all of them, a Wood classic.
And yes, that’s the Red Skull lurking in the last panel. After all, what use is a super-villain story without another, even more twisted super-villain as the antagonist?
This would turn out to be Wood’s final output for Marvel Comics.
Took me a long time to pull the trigger on the “right” deal for one of these, and I’m glad to have finally acquired one.
Bob Brown’s Superboy stories were the Superboy stories I read as a kid.
Wally Wood inks? A very happy bonus.
Even though the stories rarely matched the intensity of the typically featured Neal Adams covers, I’d likely buy a collection of this material on the spot if it ever becomes available. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. (It’s shocking how much DC silver age superhero material remains to be printed. But that’s a story for another day.)
Wallace Wood revisits his Mad comics chops with this terrific parody of Lord of the Rings.
Terrific, but little seen, because it appears in a later issue of Plop, when sales were low, and… it’s only been collected one other time — in digest format — a few years later.
With the exception of (perhaps) the title splash this is the best page in the issue, mashing up gags about hobbits, the seven dwarves and Prince Valiant — all in the distinctive Woody style. (And yes, one word balloon is definitely not PC in the original, but it was nearly 50 years ago, and appears to have been modified.)
Welcome to Day Nine of the 12 DC Days of DeCember.
The 80s digest reprint did a much better job of promoting of what you received when you plopped down (ouch) your dollar.The classic Harvard Lampoon satire of LOTR has gone though multiple printings since it first appeared in 1969, and unlike most parodies, has stayed in print since first publication.
Wayne Howard studied as an assistant under Wally Wood and then went full-on Wood with his creator driven book Midnight Tales which lasted 18 issues in the early mid -70s.
(The Iron Man is the final story in the final issue of the series. No relation to Tony Stark.)
And, of all of Woody’s assistants, Howard made no bones about his referential approach to Wood’s style.
The comic was a unique creation at Charlton (or anywhere, actually) and featured nearly exclusive Howard-drawn stories. Charlton promoted Howard’s concept on the cover — and in the fan press and at conventions.
A young African American in an industry still mostly dominated by (older) white men, Howard himself was a unique member of the comics creative community. He was known to be somewhat shy, and he was also known for conservative views, again a striking contrast to many of his industry peers.
When Howard left comics, he rarely spoke about his work; He passed away at the much too early age of 58 in 2007.
Happy (almost) Independence Day! Welcome to our second annual month-long celebration of the “Independents” — Independent creators and projects that continue to impact the comic book medium. This is our third (and final installment) in a week-long series focused on Wallace Wood.
Shattuck is the rarest, the oddest, and the shortest-lived of the Wood Studio strip ventures.
Many collectors had never seen any until Fanatagraphics issued a complete collection a few years ago.
“Shattuck is more a collector’s curiosity than a bona fide graphic novel, pulling together the episodes of a short lived Western newspaper strip produced in 1972 for the Overseas Weekly. Wood’s studio had the contract to produce the strip, and as with others for the same market, one of the artists recalled the brief as being to get the women’s clothes off as rapidly as possible. It can’t be said that Wood underestimated his audience…
“Many hands worked on the project… Wood himself might be involved in any episode plotting, laying out, adding inks or correcting, while his chief studio assistant Nicola Cuti also produced plots and layouts using a swipe file. Most of the actual illustration was the first published work of Howard Chaykin, then Dave Cockrum, both usually inked by Jack Abel. Both Wood and Abel have utterly distinctive inking styles, so there’s no difficulty in recognizing which worked on which strip.
This particular example appears to be mostly Cockrum, possibly with some Abel inks and definitely some Wood fixes in places. It’s “Where’s Woody” instead of “Where’s Waldo” — you have to look carefully to find it.
Happy (almost) Independence Day! Welcome to our second annual month-long celebration of the “Independents” — Independent creators and projects that continue to impact the comic book medium. This is our second part of a week-long series focused on Wallace Wood.
I own possibly the rarest of all Wallace Wood Sally Forth strips: A “PG-13” version (no nudity) and, more importantly, a full showcase of Wood’ talents; Odd creatures, robots, satire, action, and of course, sexy women. (An art dealer who wanted to acquire it from me told me that his married Wood fans could hang it up and not feel “embarrassed.”)
Forth, Wood’s sexy action-adventure character, who is mostly depicted nude in the series, first appeared during June 1968, in Military News, a 16-page tabloid from Armed Forces Diamond Sales. The title is wordplay — “to sally forth,” means to leave or attack from a military encampment.
Sally returned July 26, 1971, in the Overseas Weekly, and ran until 1974.
The character is absolutely no relation to the Sally Forth comic strip created by cartoonist Greg Howard.
But is pretty humorous when people mix the characters up.
No, not THAT Sally Forth
The Complete Sally Forth (Wood) — long out of print and VERY expensive — along with earlier comic book reprints featuring covers by Adam Hughes and John Workman.
Happy (almost) Independence Day! Welcome to our second annual month-long celebration of the “Independents” — Independent creators and projects that continue to impact the comic book medium.
Celebrating both Comic strips AND independent artists and their creations, we present Wallace Wood… and Cannon, an action strip series that is somehow both ludicrously serious and deadly satirical at the same time.
Cannon, first appearing in Wood’s own Heroes Inc. comic book (1969), ran from 1970 to 1973 in Overseas Weekly, a newspaper produced for American servicemen.
The single best overview of the strip I have ever read comes from writer Rocko Jerome via the website Sequart. Excerpts below:
“There’s no greater proof of (Wood’s) mastery than Cannon, which feels like the perfect and most truly, thoroughly “Wallace Wood” product imaginable. In lesser hands, the material could’ve sank into seedy Tijuana Bible territory, but the work is so beautifully rendered and put together that it’s impossible to assail the craft involved. There are those who will call these drawings on paper misogynistic and gratuitously violent, and it’s hard to argue that it is not, but the tightly rendered imagination on display will tell you what you need to know. Wood could make ugly things beautiful and beautiful things gorgeous…
“The jokey animated television series Archer feels like a dumbed down, considerably less risky version of Cannon, which is several decades its senior. Cannon simply doesn’t let up on the throttle, its gloriously illustrated Id running roughshod over its pages.”
Read the entire review — it’s worth every minute of your time.
Jack Kirby’s 1958 Sky Masters newspaper comic strip — about the nascent space race — had turned into a giant hit for Jack, and partner Dave Wood.
What if…
Kirby had been able to easily solve any financial dispute with DC editor Jack Schiff about the strip’s royalty terms. (The News syndicate had originally approached Schiff about the creation of the strip, and Schiff appears to be the intermediary between the syndicate and writer Dave Wood.)
What if…
Despite any financial acrimony over the strip, Schiff didn’t fire Kirby from Challengers of the Unknown… and all of DC comics.
You can see where this is going —
Jack continues to draw Sky Masters, fits in some DC comics work whenever possible, and never finds any time to return to Atlas/Marvel.
And “The Marvel Age of Comics” takes a completely different turn, if it even manages to leave the launching pad.
For those interested in the nitty gritty of dispute, Wikipedia has done a good job of assembling an overview (and sources) here.
Writer Jon B. Cooke provides an even more detailed summary, from the Jack Kirby Collector.
Fun fact: For many years, like most fans, I thought the “Wood” on Kirby/Wood signature referred to Wallace Wood as inker. It actually referred to Dave Wood and his brother Dick who co-wrote the strip. This, despite the fact that that Woody actually did ink the strip for about the first year, including the example above.(Dick Ayers eventually came on the strip as inker, and ultimately Jack inked it himself, likely with help of wife Roz.)
Continuing our month long celebration of the great adventure comic strips: Week 1: Superheroes Week 2: Detectives Week 3: SF Week 4: Comic Book Giants
Ric Estrada channels legendary artist Alex Toth in this short story about the Boer War.
Estrada had previously worked with, and channeled Toth on a short-lived Hot Wheels series from DC in 1970. In fact, his style was so similar, that an original page from one of those stories was misidentified as Toth at least twice.
So no surprise that this story also feels like a “Toth.” The lettering (un-credited) definitely adds to the style.
Estrada, of course, was a talent in his own right (and under-appreciated by many) and an excellent storyteller. He didn’t enjoy drawing super hero stories, and that may have impacted his “brand.”
When he did draw capes and tights, his storytelling was typically creative and dynamic. His layouts are a terrific fit with Wood Inks on All-Star Squadron. His layout choices appear more inventive and less stiff than Woody’s.
What? Heresy you say? Read those AS issues again and compare pages — Wood’s layouts vs. Estrada’s.
I’ll wait.
(Author’s note — Wood is one of the all time greats, and one of my absolute personal favorites. In this specific case, I’m just calling it the way I see it.)
The published title page for the story, and an unpublished pin-up tribute to Toth.
The Human Torch and Thing buddy comedies of the early 60s come to an end in this cool penultimate page by Bob Powell and Wallace Wood.
Torch solo stories started in Strange Tales #101 (hey, it worked in the Golden Age) and within a few years, the Thing was added to the strip as well. An ever-changing group of creators, and frankly, some second-rate stories and villains, didn’t apparently do much for sales, and our Fantastic two get bumped by Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. in the very next issue.
Meanwhile, this amusing story features time travel, The Watcher, Merlin the Magician, and Kang the Conqueror, who is apparently about to play an important role in the MCU. (It’s only his third appearance as “Kang” at this point, following two run-ins with the Avengers.)
Because I love time travel stories I can forgive all of it — except maybe Powell and Wood’s execution of the Thing. They are not alone though in rocky renditions of Ben Grimm. Flipping through these old Strange Tales stories, very few artists other than Jack Kirby seemed to figure out how to successfully make anatomic sense of a character made from rocks.
It’s clobberin’ time, indeed.
The Silver Age gets retro-golden very quickly in these early Torch Strange Tales stories. (Although, for the record, that’s an imposter pretending to be Captain America. But you wouldn’t know it until you bought the issue, or stood around reading it at Dave’s Luncheonette until he kicked you out.)
