WOOD, Wally

   Working name of US illustrator Wallace A. Wood (1927-1981). His first work was in newspaper COMIC strips in the late 1940s; he soon moved to comic books, joining EC COMICS in 1951 and working on their sf titles Weird Science and Weird Fantasy. His sf-comics and war-comics work wonhigh praise, as did his slightly later work on EC's very successful MAD Magazine, founded 1952, for which he drew the famous sequence"Superduperman". One of the most influential comics artists of the century, WW has been claimed as the best of all artists ever to work in sf in comic-book form. When EC folded its comic books in 1955 and began to concentrate on MAD, he remained as one of the senior artists.WW had already done some sf-magazine illustration (in 1953, for Planet Stories) when, in 1957, he branched out more fully into this field, mostly black-and-white interiors, especially for Gal and its sister magazines If and Worlds of Tomorrow; he also painted 6 covers for Gal. His interior illustrations were some of the finest ever printed; the chiaroscuro in his black-and-white work gave it an unmatched feeling of depth.However, WAW's first love remained comics, though he had resented the restrictions, from 1954, imposed by the Comics Code Authority. From 1966 (8 issues) and againin 1976 he published an underground magazine, Witzend, featuring stronger material, sometimes erotic. In the mid-1960s, a boom-time for comics, WAW gave up most of his sf-magazine illustration and did some good work for Warren Publications on their horror comics Creepy and Eeerie; in the 1970she worked on Vampirella. Also important was the SUPERHERO strip Dynamo which appeared in Tower Comics's THUNDER Agents (1965-9). Some of WAW's erotic work for National Screw is collected in the book Cons de Fee ("Fairy Tails" would be a loose translation of this obscene French pun)(1977 France). He continued in comics until his suicide in 1981.

   PN/JG