The Art of Wally Wood

In the following article, we’ll show you the art of Wally Wood.

This excellent artist is one of the masters of American comics, unique in his kind, who worked for major companies and achieved success in an incredible way.

Check out his story, life experiences, and the most amazing details about Wallace Wood. Keep reading!

Who was Wallace Wood?

Wallace Wood is, unquestionably, one of the masters of American comics. The influence of his vision marked a before and after in the imaginary of science fiction, and his technical versatility and obsession with detail led him to illustrate key works for 20th-century popular culture, both from the pages of the legendary EC comic books and in its heir, the iconic MAD magazine.

He created countless illustrations, designs, cartoons, and comics in the most diverse formats and genres, tormented by his inner demons, facing an industry unable to reward his talent as he deserved.

His life was marked by health problems, broken relationships, the conflict between his creative capacity and the need to pay bills, and attempts to develop his full potential as a creator, which resulted in comics of enormous artistic value but little economic reward.

Although his personal story reads like one of the great tragedies of art, his work continues to shine decades later, inspiring and amazing to this day.

Ladies and gentlemen, the master of brush and India ink, the dean of science fiction art, Mr. Wally Wood

Wallace Wood in 1968, next to a self-portrait

Wallace Allan Wood was born on June 17, 1927, in Menahga, Minnesota, and grew up in various Midwest towns, following the relocations of his father, who was a lumberjack. At six years old, he had a dream in which he possessed a magic pencil that allowed him to draw anything perfectly, even imitating the style of his admired Alex Raymond.

That dream deeply marked young Wally’s mind with his vocation as an artist, even against the wishes of his stubborn father. After a series of odd jobs, Woody (he considerably disliked the nickname Wally) lied about his age and enlisted in the army in 1945, in the last months of World War II.

He first served in the Merchant Marine, and later in 1946, as a paratrooper in the 11th Airborne Division, stationed in Allied-occupied Japan.

Wood during his time as a sailor in the seas of Asia and South America

More of his story

After returning to civilian life, he studied at various drawing schools but never advanced beyond the first semester in his formal education. Then, he settled in New York in 1948, working as a waiter while visiting the offices of all Manhattan publishers with his portfolio until he was finally hired by the legendary Will Eisner as a background artist for his famous series The Spirit.

This first job was quickly followed by another assistant job, this time for George Wunder, who replaced Milton Caniff on Terry and the Pirates, and then by lettering jobs for various romance stories from Victor Fox’s publishing house.

By 1949, Wood already had some small published works under his belt in the most diverse genres, both done on his own and with his study companions.

Harry Harrison (future science fiction author) and Joe Orlando (later editor and vice president of DC Comics). It would be with Harrison that he collaborated on a couple of romantic comics, which would be his first work for EC Comics, the publisher that would mark his career.

One of Wood’s first professional works, a cover for Fox Comics in 1950

When in 1950, Bill Gaines, editor-in-chief of EC Comics, launched his so-called “new trend” of comics, along with his editors, writers, and artists Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman, he left an indelible mark on comic book history with his innovations in horror comics, suspense stories with unexpected twists, and his respect for comics as an artistic medium.

This last point can be seen in the notable artistic quality of his regular contributors, several of them future legends like Jack Davis, Frank Frazetta, or Al Williamson, whom they allowed to draw in their own styles and interpret their scripts as they pleased.

Combined with Gaines’ willingness to pay well and promptly, this freedom fostered an environment of innovation and competition, where contributors put all their effort and dedication into their pages, and regularly studied and envied each other.

In this frenetic environment of youth and creativity, the workaholic and multifaceted Wood quickly became one of its biggest stars, standing out for his meticulous attention to detail, his modern compositions, and his delicate yet bold inking, not to mention his skill in drawing stunning women.

Cover for Shock SuspenStories 6, Dec. 1952.

In what genres did he work?

He worked in practically all genres published by EC, and in all of them, he excelled. His most emblematic work from this period, without a doubt, is his science fiction stories for Weird Science and Weird Fantasy, edited by Feldstein (magazines created, by the way, at Wood’s insistence). The impact of the vision on the aesthetics of the Space Age cannot be overestimated.

Already moving away from the pulp symbolism of Space Opera, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon, Wood renewed the popular imagination, bringing it closer to the technological vanguard of the time. His space suits were practical designs that seemed like they could work in real life, and his spaceships, with sleek and elegant construction on the outside, were full of clocks, dials, cables, and circular structural beams, details that Wood remembered from his time in the army among ships and planes.

This gave a realistic foundation to the stories of scientific speculation with twists by Feldstein, indelibly capturing the imagination of millions of readers. Moreover, his imagination shone in the alien monsters he created, inhabitants of exotic planets with realistic flora and fauna, but clearly belonging to remote galaxies.

First page of a Wood story for Weird Fantasy #9, October 1951, in which his particular conception of space travel, both inside and outside the ship, is on full display.

This incredible artist’s gift for space comics was so recognized that in 1952, at just 25 years old, his former boss Will Eisner called him to draw, along with Jules Feiffer, an entire saga of The Spirit in which the masked hero travels to the Moon, which is considered the last high point of the series.

Two pages of Spirit from 1952 by Wood.

When his attention was not divided into 8 different speedometers per panel, his dedication to detail showed more subtly in the so-called “civilian works,” scripts of various genres that mostly took place on the streets of large and small American cities.

He endowed these more mundane stories with a superlative atmosphere and suspense, with dynamic compositions, and excellent balance of blacks, not to mention impeccable backgrounds and costumes, down to the last wrinkle.

It was these skills that motivated Gaines to assign Wood his “sermons” in Shock SuspenStories. These moral parables, in which Gaines and Feldstein attacked intolerance, hypocrisy, abuse of power, and the mob mentality of McCarthyist post-war American society, are recognized to this day as a fundamental part of EC Comics’ legacy.

Above all, Wood’s skilled and brave brush played a vital role in their realistic climate.

Final page of In Gratitude… from Shock SuspenStories #11, October 1953. Wood’s ability to bring humanity and drama to an epic but static scene gives vital strength to the denunciation of racism in the speech.

That adoration for detail made him a favorite contributor of Harvey Kurtzman, the editor of EC’s war magazines, Two-Fisted Tales, and Frontline Combat. Wood’s meticulous attention made him particularly suitable for drawing the kind of heavily documented stories that Kurtzman produced and strictly planned, to the point of diagramming the entire page himself.

Although Wally felt unsatisfied with having to strictly follow Kurtzman’s layouts, the truth is that his war stories are elevated among his contemporary work by Kurtzman’s vision of compositions and the humanism of his scripts, which, combined with his detailism and obsessive dedication, achieve a phenomenal impact.

Page from A Baby!, Frontline Combat #10, February 1953. The rawness with which EC’s war comics showed the absurd violence of war continues to shock to this day, and are unthinkable in the context of the ultra-patriotic 50s.

His Work in MAD

It would be Kurtzman’s respect that led him to be a founding part of an institution of American humor, MAD magazine. He was present throughout its first version in comic book format and was the artist of perhaps one of the most important comics of this stage, Superduperman! The blatant, direct parody of Superman and Captain Marvel, two of the most popular comic book characters in history.

This was a true subversive hit among young readers, shaping the format of the magazine, and inventing a whole new genre of comedy in the process. This parody was followed by cynical, sardonic, and hilarious imitations, from newspaper strips like Prince Valiant to movies like On The Waterfront.

MAD’s acidic and irreverent style quickly turned it into a success, generating dozens of copies, marking a generation, and inspiring future key figures of the Underground movement, such as Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman.

Wood’s loose stroke, capable of jumping from perfect imitation to absolute caricaturization as the joke required, confirmed him as a public favorite, and he continued to contribute regularly after MAD changed from comic book format to magazine with issue 24 in 1955.

Page from Superduperman!, Mad #4, May 1953. Alan Moore has cited this comic as one of his favorites, and even stated that it was a key influence in creating Watchmen

The format change turned out to be a stroke of luck in the face of an imminent catastrophe. 1955 would be the year in which the American comic book industry, pursued by moral guardians and singled out as a cause of juvenile delinquency by studies of little scientific basis, finally imploded under the pressure of critics with the creation of the Comics Code Authority, a strict censorship code.

This led to the almost immediate disappearance of dozens of comic books from newsstands, with the consequent closure of publishers and loss of hundreds of jobs in the world of comics. In the comic world that followed, Gaines tried to fight back and continued publishing the best comics he could, but in 1956 he closed his entire publishing operation, with the exception of MAD, which, in its new format, was immune to the anti-comics persecution and had become a true popular phenomenon.

Although Wood continued contributing to MAD, his other options as a freelance cartoonist had drastically reduced.

An example of a typical Wood page for Mad #47, June 1959

In this difficult stage, Wood diversified, offering his talents in other capacities. On one hand, his fame in the field of science fiction made it not difficult for him to gain interest from the few remaining pulp magazines, and his cover illustrations and stories earned him two Hugo Award nominations for science fiction.

He did several jobs for advertisements and illustrated stickers and gum cards for Topps for several years, including the original designs for the Mars Attacks! card series, which later inspired Tim Burton’s famous film.

Galaxy Magazine, April 1959, art by Wood

His work as an inker

Within the comic world, he began to offer himself as an inker, most notably over the pencils of the legendary Jack Kirby, during his last Challengers of the Unknown comics. The combination of Kirby’s dynamic compositions and figures with Wood’s detailed inking worked quite well, and Kirby sought him as a collaborator for Sky Masters of the Space Force, a daily strip syndicated to 300 newspapers in 1958, and recognized today as one of the most outstanding graphic works of Kirby’s career.

However, fights with the editor over the royalty cut from the strip would propel his departure from it a year later, at the same time that it would lead Kirby to not work with DC for 11 years.

Sunday strip of Sky Master of the Space Force, 6/7/1959. The strip sought to take advantage of the science fiction trend driven by the Space Race between the USA and the USSR, and Kirby and Wood were the perfect combination for the genre.

This bitter departure from the strip reflected Wood’s general situation during this time. After years of working constantly, for long hours and several consecutive days, with very little sleep, for less and less money, and even less recognition, his body began to feel the effects of stress, and from the 60s he suffered from severe migraines.

This detail aggravated the problem; his introverted and combative nature led him towards drinking, and the struggle against alcoholism marked long periods of his life.

The whirlwind of Wood’s inner life finally took its toll on his famous productivity, causing him to miss more and more deadlines for MAD, until finally, in 1964, he left the magazine after they rejected his work for the first time in his 12 years as a contributor.

Having lost a top-tier job (In his last era, Wood was paid $200 per page, something unimaginable in the contemporary comics industry) He returned to comics. On one hand, he collaborated with stories for Creepy, Eerie, and the other magazines of James Warren’s new line, which offered a return to horror comics, but this time in black and white and magazine format.

In this way, he escapes the censorship of the Comics Code Authority. Wood and his new studio produced several high-level graphic comics for these magazines, showing dedication to technique and detail, and the level of depth construction with grays that Wood was capable of is remarkable.

Splash from Creepy #41, January 1971. Beautiful women continued to be a Wood specialty, and towards the end of his career he would make several pornographic comics.

Working at Marvel Comics

Very different was his work for Marvel Comics, the trendy publisher of the moment, where Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, along with editor/co-writer Stan Lee, were carrying out a whole revolution in the tepid superhero genre.

With their explosive and dynamic art and their tragic heroes, Wood’s status at this point was such that Lee boasted of his arrival at Marvel on the cover of Daredevil #5, something unheard of in the Silver Age.

However, the pay of 45 dollars per page was still well below the standard Wood was accustomed to, and he was forced to dispense with his usual detailism, replacing it with a stripped-down and rather static style, which nevertheless still enjoyed his ability for compositions, human figure construction, and inking.

Wood contributed key elements to the Daredevil character, mainly the redesign of his now iconic red suit, and the use of visual effects, such as red rings, to represent Matt Murdock’s radar powers.

Page from Daredevil #8, June 1965. Although Wood’s style seems stiff compared to Kirby or Ditko’s heroes, his solid construction gives them their own personal mark.

His time at Marvel was short, motivated by his discontent with the Method, whereby Stan Lee only suggested a brief synopsis, the artist drew the story from that plot, and then Lee filled the panels with text and dialogues at his discretion.

While he enjoyed the freedom in storytelling, Wood was more than aware that he was doing at least half of the writer’s work without receiving any payment for it. When he confronted Lee about this, he managed to get a proper writer’s credit for Daredevil #10, but when he delivered the story to Lee, he told him that the plot was an incomprehensible mess, and that he would have to spend all night correcting his dialogue.

To add insult to injury, when Daredevil #10 went on sale, he found that Lee mocked his script in his capacity as editor and in the letters page, despite the fact that, according to Wood, the story was published with 99% of the dialogue intact.

From that incident, he could only get inking jobs at Marvel, and he moved away from them for the moment, realizing again that the comic book industry didn’t care about product quality, but what slice of the pie they could take with the least work possible.

Final panel of Daredevil #10, October 1965, to which Stan Lee attached a note pitying himself for having to finish the story he called incomprehensible on the editorial page, although when readers responded that it didn’t seem poorly written in the letters page Lee replied that he had actually re-written it before editing it, which was not the case according to Wood.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents.

Wood’s next step after leaving Marvel led him to Tower Comics, a new division of a pulp novel publisher, whose editor-in-chief, Harry Shorten, offered him creative control of a new superhero series, which was realized as T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents.

He served as co-writer, artist, and art director of the magazine, in which he invited high-caliber artists to collaborate, such as Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko, and Gil Kane. However, despite the caliber of talent collaborating, the project did not survive in the turbulent newsstands of the late 60s, and Tower Comics closed in 1968.

Splash page of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #2, January 1966. The magazine combined elements of the new 60s superheroes, the 60s secret spy trend, and a 64-page format reminiscent of Golden Age comics. This unusual strategy, along with its elevated price compared to others (25¢ compared to the average comic book’s 12¢) may have influenced its fall.

At the same time as his work for Tower, he initiated a bold self-managed project in an effort to take the reins of his career without having to depend on incompetent (or downright perverse) editors. Motivated by a project by Dan Adkins, one of his many assistants, in 1966 he launched witzend, a mail-order anthology with contributions from industry luminaries such as Kirby, Ditko, Williamson, and Frazetta.

Wood conceived witzend as a place where cartoonists could experiment at their pleasure in their stories, without restrictions or censorship of any kind, in addition to maintaining the rights to their works and characters.

It was a direct precedent to the Underground movement by at least a year, and in its pages debuted Art Spiegelman and Mr. A, Steve Ditko’s implacable objectivist hero, which would be one of his emblematic characters. After editing 4 issues, he sold witzend to his friend Bill Pearson for a dollar and continued contributing stories to the magazine, but the project had been, in general, a great artistic achievement that had failed to provide any significant profit.

Original art of a page from witzend #1, 1966. Note the use of various shades of gray to create depth, and a classic example of one of his characteristic techniques: Double lighting on the face, in panel 3.

He would insist on self-publishing several times, such as the following year with Heroes, Inc, a comic book with more adult action content, designed to be sold on military bases, and from which characters would emerge that he would use in daily strips for military newspapers.

His health problems

Towards the 70s, Wood’s work in general is of uneven quality, a product of his personal ups and downs, his health problems aggravated by alcohol, work, and his undisguised frustration towards the American comic book industry, which made its editors rich but treated the creators of its products like trash.

Most of Wood’s comics and illustrations from this era have the hand of one or several of his studio assistants, a brotherhood of young artists among whom are future stars such as Howard Chaykin, Mike Zeck, Paul Kirchner, and Larry Hama, among others.

It was Hama who compiled and disseminated one of Wood’s most enduring artistic legacies, the “22 panels that always work,” a series of solid and dynamic composition panels that he had pasted around his studio to help him quickly resolve a script.

Hama arranged these panels on a page, made photocopies, and distributed them among Marvel artists during his time as an editor. These artists made copies of these copies for their artist friends, and this cycle repeated until the 22 panels took on an iconic value among aspiring cartoonists since then.

Scan of the original page photocopied by Larry Hama. The extra space on the left gives it the exact proportion for a wallpaper!

But these, an efficient visual shortcut to not spend too much time on page composition, demonstrate Wood’s attitude towards his work in his later years, and his general disillusionment with his career. In interviews and conversations with fans, he constantly spoke of his frustration with the system, describing his craft as “condemning yourself to life imprisonment, doing forced labor, in solitary confinement.”

In this light, it’s relevant to consider another of the papers Wood had pasted on the walls of his studio, a set of rules reminding him:

“Never draw anything you can copy

Never copy anything you can trace

Never trace anything you can cut and paste”

One of the artists most dedicated to his art had to constantly remind himself that the industry didn’t deserve him. Finally, on Halloween night 1981, after years of struggling with depression and drinking, impaired vision after a series of strokes, and about to begin dialysis treatment, Wallace Wood put a Smith & Wesson .44 to his head and pulled the trigger. He was 54 years old.

Wally Wood’s personal legacy is complicated to unravel, as a cautionary tale about the dangers of immersing yourself too deeply in your work, or a brutal example of the mistreatment that the comic book industry inflicted on its best minds almost from its beginnings.

Conclusion

As we could see throughout the article, Wood was a unique artist, recognized and admired even today. His art will endure forever, as it marked a before and after in comic history.

His influence as an artist is undeniable and immensely rich. The variety and quality of his work make him one of the most admired comic artists, both within the medium and in the larger sphere of popular culture.

To this day, it’s enough to read one of his classic Weird Science stories to travel frantically back in time, first 70 years ago, and quickly, 5 centuries forward, in spaceships with hundreds of dials and little clocks, guiding us towards a bright future.

Remember, you can always go back to the beginning of the post to reread it. Until next time!