Tragic Genius: Wally Wood
All,
On the advice and consent of our pals at Wizard, I'm running the text of the Wally Wood feature I just wrote for the magazine. It's currently in ish #228, guest-edited by another pal, Mark Millar. In the mag, it's WAY better illustrated than you'll see here, so check it out.
On a Hero Initiative-related note, the organization came into being about 19 years too late for a Wally Wood, but I've often wondered if a Hero-like organization could have prevented Wood's tragic end. Like so many things Wally Wood, perhaps we'll never know.
I found the piece very difficult to write. The subject matter is not always very pleasant. But I hope that in the end, you as a reader will get a circumspect view of Wood, and see the amazing warmth and his genius that accompanied his tragic, but very human, flaws.
Jim McLauchlin
HEAD: TRAGIC GENIUS
Sub: Wally Wood was an artistic hero to an entire generation, a pillar of the legendary EC Comics, and one of comics’ first successful self-publishers. And then he killed himself.
For Wizard magazine
The County of Los Angeles keeps seven pages on file pertaining to Wally Wood. The pages are maintained by the Department of Coroner, as part of its mission is “the investigation and determination of the cause and manner of all sudden, violent or unusual deaths in the County.”
The death of Wally Wood certainly fits all those categories. Sudden. Violent. Unusual.
Sometime around midnight on Halloween night, 1981, Wallace Allen Wood pressed a Charter Arms “Bulldog” model .44 caliber revolver to his right temple and fired.
“GSW to head (T&T). No note. Recent despondency over health. Was to be put on dialysis today,” the case report notes. “GSW” tells us it was a gunshot wound; “T&T” denotes through and through—the bullet passed through his skull on the right side, and went out the left. The bullet, a Smith and Wesson Special, round nose and bare lead, was found on a pillow “directly under the decedent’s head.”
Wallace Allen Wood committed suicide in a sweaty, cheap apartment at 15150 Parthenia St. in what is now known as the Panorama City section of Los Angeles. This is a fact.
It is also a fact that Wally Wood was one of the most talented artists comics has ever seen, a giant whose work on Mad, Weird Science and more inspired generations.
And in between these two inescapable points lies a man’s life.
To say that Wally Wood was a complicated man would be an understatement.
“To me, he was a great friend and mentor,” says artist Ralph Reese, who worked under Wood in the 1960s.
“He was just an engine of rage. I really can’t put it any more specifically than that,” says artist Howard Chaykin, who later worked under Wood circa 1970.
“Everybody who actually met him, liked him,” says Larry Hama, another Wood assistant. “He had his problems, but he was a stand-up guy.”
“Wally was a very talented artist, but he was a dour, humorless person, at least when relating to me,” says Al Feldstein, Wood’s editor at EC. “I found him difficult to talk to, almost impossible to criticize, and often depressed.”
“You can’t talk about Woody without talking about drinking,” says longtime comics writer and editor Denny O’Neil, himself a recovering alcoholic.
All these things are, of course, true. Human beings don’t fit conveniently into single, carefully labeled pigeonholes. Wally Wood was all these things: Great friend, mentor, engine of rage, stand-up guy, depressed, alcoholic.
But what made him “him,” what made him so quintessentially Woody, was his immense talent, and exactly that complicated personality.
WOODY'S EARLY CAREER
Wally Wood started drawing at age two, doing his best to copy the comic strips he loved best in the newspaper. He particularly obsessed over Hal Foster’s “Prince Valiant” and Milton Caniff’s “Terry and the Pirates.” His mother lovingly bound many of his early drawings into a book using her sewing machine.
Wood wanted to be a cartoonist since his earliest days, and by age 20, decided to try his hand in the field. He spent one term at the Minneapolis School of Art, but didn’t take well to formal education. “Decided they couldn't teach me anything; they had the same idea,” Wood wistfully recalled in his National Cartoonists Society bio.
But Wood moved to New York, and soon got his first break. By October of 1948, at age 21, he was working for Will Eisner as a background artist. By ’49, he was working on Westerns and romances for Fox Comics. By 1950, he was assisting artist Harry Harrison on EC Comics stories, when his biggest break came.
“I had given Harrison and Wood a few assignments and quickly came to realize that Wally was being exploited by Harry, and that the work was actually all Wally's,” longtime EC Editor Al Feldstein recalls. “I managed to have a private conversation with Wally, encouraged him to free himself from Harry, and told him that I would give him work if he did. The rest is history.”
History, indeed. EC Comics exploded just as Wood did, morphing its old crime, Western and romance titles into new books such as Tales From the Crypt, Shock SuspenStories, Two-Fisted Tales, and Weird Science. Sales shot through the roof. EC had a goldmine of great artists such as Harvey Kurtzman, Johnny Craig, Al Williamson—hell, even Frank Frazetta would do the occasional story. Wood was surrounded by stars, but he shone as brightly as anyone.
“Wally Wood would come in with a story and three artists would crowd around him and just faint, just poring over every brushstroke and every panel,” EC Publisher Bill Gaines recalled in a 1983 Comics Journal interview.
Howard Chaykin notes the Wood influence throughout the EC line. “Certainly Johnny Craig was influenced by him, whether he was aware of it or not,” Chaykin says. “The way he drew science fiction influenced Frank Frazetta, and thus influenced everybody who was post-Frazetta.”
But even in happy times in a booming business, something always seemed a little…off…about Wood. He had a tendency to keep people at arm’s length.
“I didn’t know Woody all too well,” admits Jack Davis, another legendary artist in the EC stable. “Really about the only time I’d see him is when we’d show up at the office at the same time to drop off work. And then maybe we’d go to lunch. He was a pleasant man, but he’d always be looking over his shoulder, his eyes shifting around, as if he was worried about something.”
EC continued to hum along, and Wood with the company, until Seduction of the Innocent rocked comics’ world in 1954. The book by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham tried to link comics to juvenile delinquency, and public outcry led to the formation of the Comics Code Authority and the gutting of EC’s line. Edgy horror comics were all but outlawed, and EC was left a shell of its former self. Only Mad continued, and Woody continued with it, supplementing his work and income with advertising jobs, comic strips, and magazine covers.
THE CRACKS START TO SHOW
But the cracks at the base of Wood’s life were starting to show. Although he remained a top-name artist for many years, most fans and critics consider his EC work from 1950-54 to be his best. There was also the drinking. “It was after I took over the editorship of Mad [in 1956] that I really noticed that there was a serious problem,” Al Feldstien says. “It became a huge problem for me when his work was getting sloppy and unacceptable.”
Wood himself was getting sloppy. He was arrested on a Mad editorial trip to the Virgin Islands, and eventually fired from Mad entirely. But comics and art remained a passion for Wood, and he remained in the field. Trading card jobs, comic strips and more continued to roll in, and Wood himself rolled on to the hot new player on the scene, Marvel Comics, in grand fashion.
A cover blurb on December, 1964’s Daredevil #5 proclaimed, “Under the brilliant artistic craftsmanship of famous illustrator Wally Wood, Daredevil reaches new heights of glory!” Ten months later, on Avengers #20, another blurb boasted, “Special note to art lovers: Wait’ll you see Wonderful Wally Wood’s inking of Don [Heck]’s drawings in this great ish!” In a day and age in which NO ONE got cover credit, Wood somehow was getting it…even as an inker.
“It just goes to show what great respect Stan had for Wally’s work,” says Roy Thomas, who joined Marvel in 1965 as Editor Stan Lee’s first assistant. “He was just wild for him. His whole style—penciling, inking, the whole thing. And he thought that Wally had his own following from the EC stuff and Mad that would help Marvel.”
The problem was, the help was sparse. Even on a bimonthly schedule, Wood penciled and inked only four issues of Daredevil, before Bob Powell was brought in to help. Wood stuck around to pencil part of Daredevil #9, and ink #9-11. The Avengers inking stint lasted three issues.
Credit where credit is due: Wood gave Daredevil’s costume a much-needed redesign in Daredevil #7, and he even wrote #10. He also saved a life.
WOODY'S SECOND RISE…AND FALL
Ralph Reese was a 16-year-old comics fan, runaway, and escapee from a juvenile detention facility when he showed up on Wally Wood’s doorstep in 1965. “Wood kind of took me in as an assistant, paying me $50 a week. I washed his brushes and so on,” Reese remembers today. “To me, he was almost a father figure.”
Wood taught Reese the trade, and started building up his own studio as he worked on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for Tower Comics. Come 1966, Wood was approached by artist Dan Adkins, who was working on a fanzine called Outlet and wanted a drawing from Wood for the book. “He said he’d do a drawing in trade for me helping him out with a deadline he was chasing,” Adkins recalls. “And the fanzine became witzend. He convinced me he could do a better magazine than me. He knew more people.”
witzend launched in the summer of 1966, with contributions from Wood, Ralph Reese, Al Williamson, Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, Jack Kirby, Roy Krenkel and more. It quickly became one of the most influential comics of its day, and in the minds of many, the very first “underground” comic. Wally Wood suddenly found himself one of the most significant publishers of the counterculture 1960s.
But even that success was short-lived. After four issues, Wood sold the magazine to witzend contributor Bill Pearson for a mere $1. Wood was largely sober during the witzend period, but had other problems. “He was seeing a psychiatrist the whole time I was working for him,” Dan Adkins recalls. “He’d see him twice a week, just someone to talk to. I think [Wood’s wife] Tatjana was seeing the psychiatrist with him. He had some prescriptions, he was taking medicine.”
Wood’s personality was certainly obsessive. Paradoxically, what made him great…also made him weak. “He was a workaholic. Like many other successful artists, he was really most comfortable when behind his desk, and like many of us, somewhat less successful at making a life outside of his work,” Ralph Reese says. “He never really had any hobbies or outside interests. Too much stewing in your own juices is not necessarily a healthy thing.”
Adkins saw much of the same in Wood. “Wally! Jesus! From the word ‘go,’ he put in a lot of work,” he says. “You could see he was frustrated by all the work he had to do. He was meticulous in a lot of things. He had 36 different bottles of ink he’d keep, in shades from black all the way down to a light gray. You made your own grays then by diluting the ink with water. And he’d mix and keep all 36 bottles up, all the time.”
Larry Hama, another Wood studio protégé who went on to a lengthy comics career, saw Wood’s intensity up close and personal. “When he got into something, he’d just pursue it,” Hama says. “I taught him how to cook a couple simple dishes once, then I went away for a week. When I came back, I found he had just been cooking those same things, over and over. And not because they were the only things he knew how to cook. It was just because he discovered something new, and he had to get into it, master it, discipline it.”
Mastering his life was a different matter. Wood’s marriage to comics inker and colorist Tatjana Wood (who declined to be interviewed for this article) ended in divorce by the late 1960s. A marriage to a second wife, Marilyn, ended quickly. And the drinking started anew.
Artist Howard Chaykin worked briefly in Wood’s studio in 1970-71, and saw Woody’s pain. “He was kind of at the end of his rope. He was not a healthy guy,” Chaykin says. “He felt betrayed by so many circumstances. He was a classic untreated drunk. It’s a shame, because he was one of my artistic heroes. He was an astonishing artist who just ran out of steam.”
As the 1970s wore on, Woody started to wear out. The drinking worsened. He showed up at a convention wearing one shoe. He started to push friends away. “Like many alcoholics, when he was drinking, his personality totally changed,” Ralph Reese notes. “I never spent that much time around him when he was drinking.”
Wood started to develop kidney problems, and a 1978 stroke left him with diminished vision in one eye. As fast as Wood was deteriorating physically, he was even worse off mentally. “Larry [Hama] and [artist] Jack Abel and I had gone down to see him at the VA hospital just after he had a stroke,” Ralph Reese recalls. “He looked to be in very bad shape. I asked him about his plans, what he was gonna do after he got out of the hospital. He said, ‘I’m gonna go get a drink.’ You know…what can you say to that? I had a feeling then that might be the last time I saw him alive. Like I said, he really looked bad. He looked sick. He looked old. He looked beat up by the world.”
Woody likely felt beat up. In a 1980 interview with Shel Dorf in The Buyer’s Guide, he remarked, “I worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for years. Being a comic book artist is like sentencing yourself to life imprisonment at hard labor in solitary confinement. I don’t think I’d do it again.” By February, 1981, Wood was told by doctors at a VA hospital that his kidneys were operating at 10%, and that he should get on a list for transplant. It was then that he made his last, desperate move.
HALLOWEEN, 1981
Comics was looking like a dead end for Wood, but animation was a possibility. Wood moved to Los Angeles to be near Hanna-Barbera Studios. He was looking for work there, and more to the point, was looking to sell Hanna-Barbera on a property he owned called The Wizard King. Panorama City was far from the most fashionable neighborhood in L.A., but it was cheap, and close to Hanna-Barbera at a mere 11 miles away.
But a Wizard King deal never came to pass. Wood found work doing some pornographic comics for a local publisher, and took appointments at a VA hospital on L.A.’s Westside. His final doctor’s appointment was October 30, 1981.
Around 9 p.m. on Saturday, Halloween night, Woody was chatting with some residents in the courtyard of his apartment building. He talked about the pain he was feeling, his loss of vision, and the fact that he was scheduled to start dialysis Monday. Woody then quietly slipped inside apartment #71.
Three days later, on November 3, 1981, Barbara J. Friedman, Wood’s publisher, called the Los Angeles police. She’d been phoning Woody for a few days, getting no answer. She asked if the police could check in on him. At 9:55 a.m., the police entered Wallace Allen Wood’s apartment. GSW to head (T&T). No note.
Police could find no next of kin. Barbara Friedman offered to take care of funeral arrangements.
THE AFTERMATH, AND THE LEGACY
Many in the comics industry were surprised, but few were shocked, when the news of Woody’s death rippled back to New York. The inevitable question of “why” was bandied about. People knew of Woody’s alcoholism, the stroke, the kidney problems. But the deeper “why” of what made Wallace Allen Wood take his life remains unanswerable. Ralph Reese might come closest to a final answer.
“I never understood what drove him to destroy himself,” Reese muses. “We talked a lot, but…I dunno. I guess he never really had a father. His father was a lumberjack, so he was never really home much. And when he was, he would be drunk and beating on him. I guess that left some kind of hole in him that he could never fill. Somehow, he could never get the love he wanted or needed.”
The love is there now. Woody’s legacy is a massive one. “There was such a warmth and appeal to his stuff that’s missing from so many others’ seminal work,” Larry Hama observes. “You look at a Jack Kirby, and you get this strong, graphic feel. But in Woody’s stuff…I dunno. There’s just a lot of heart. And he had such a wide range—horror, sci-fi, and the humor stuff. The Wally Wood humor stuff in Mad was just as good—if not better—than his more serious stuff with knights in armor and spaceships. And his stuff is just as believable, just as fun, anywhere across that range.”
Howard Chaykin considers Wood one of the two most important artists—along with Alex Toth—of the postwar generation. “Out of Wallace Wood, you get that dramatic realism and unembarrassed verisimilitude of everybody from Johnny Craig to Michael Golden to many artists today,” Chaykin says. “I can’t think of Adam Hughes without seeing Wallace Wood in him. The characterization he exhibited in human faces was amazing, and continues to knock the hell outta me to this day.”
Woody was also a teacher. Larry Hama, Dan Adkins, Ralph Reese, Howard Chaykin, Paul Kirchner, Joe Orlando and more learned volumes with Woody at their side. And Woody loved passing the knowledge along. “You have to have a certain facility to teach, and Woody had it,” Larry Hama says. “He liked to talk about the process. Lord knows a lot of people are great draftsmen, but they can’t talk about it, can’t transfer that knowledge. Woody thought about the process a lot, grappled with it, developed methodologies and mechanical fallbacks. And he could explain it to you, transfer that knowledge to you. You could learn an awful lot at that font.”
The font continues to flow. It was Wallace Allen Wood who ducked into apartment #71 one fateful Halloween night, never to be seen again. But through the lives he touched, the generations he inspired, the artists he taught, and the mountain of work he created, Woody lives on.
37 comments:
Great article Jim, I'm too young to remember most of the golden and silver age artists but their impact on every artist after them is evident. I love Wood's work but never really knew anything about him. Hopefully the Hero Initiative can help prevent something similar happening to another creator. It's an honor to be able to contribute to the Hero Initiative sketch-cover series and knowing that every little bit helps.
Very nicely balanced piece. Really did a good job of capturing the humanity between the art-god and alcoholic. No small thing, that.
I've been drilling his 22 panels that always work into my brain lately.
Brilliantly written. Such a tragic story.
Great read Jim!
I have always been a fan of Wally. Some of the earliest comics ( tho inappropriate for my age at the time) were EC books. Wally always stood out. Hearing his story all at once, & not just in passing conversations at cons, really makes it hit home.
Very, very nice and impressive piece, Jim.
Brilliant. I think the history of the comics industry is endlessly fascinating, and all too often ignored in favor of what's popular at the moment. So very cool to see you dig into it, Jim, and pull out a gem like this. I miss Wally Wood, I grew up on his T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and humor stories, and I was shattered when I learned of his death. Despite the sad circumstances, it's nice to finally know what was going on with him. Thanks again, Jim.
powerful, and tragic story....thanks for sharing the information about Wally Wood.
Well done Jim. Good looks was a given, but who knew you were such a dam fine writer.
I just picked up Woods' CANNON series a month or two back and have been loving it.
Wish I could have met the fella and talked shop with him.
Makes me proud to contribute to the HERO cause, knowing that it will ease this sort of thing.
Thanks Howard for "engine of rage".
Great article- but very sad.
Great read Jim. I love Wood's work and loved the book Wally's World, love reading about that guy.
Wally Wood has long been one of my favorite illustrators(Thunder Agents is one of the few titles I collect), but I knew nothing about his life. Thanks for shedding some light.
Knowing Wally Wood only from what I read here with scant detail as it is, I'm wondering if Wood was an undiagnosed Aspie. An Aspie is a person with Asperger's Syndrome. He's a stand-up guy who's sometimes exploited by others at work. Had deep interest in narrow topics, special interests (comic art mostly, in his case). May talk for hours about work and the craft but can't or won't do small talk. The tendency to keep people at arm's length. The obsessiveness: "when he got into something, he'd pursue it" singlemindedly to the exclusion of everything else (cooking the same dish over and over). The meticulous work rituals (the ink bottles with 36 shades of dark). That may ring alarm bells now. But not in his lifetime when the syndrome was still a mystery.
Love it. This is very well written and makes me long for the Wally Wood big trade book I've never found. Thanks for leaving out his own reference to bathroom problems which he wrote about in Witzend.
Amazingly honest, candid , open guy in some ways.
Good article, Jim ... well-written, informative, and heart-felt.
I already knew a lot of the details of Wood's life, but some elements of your article really jumped out at me:
You wrote, "He showed up at a convention wearing one shoe." I hadn't heard that one before, and it says a lot.
This quote of Wood's really struck home for me, too: “I worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for years. Being a comic book artist is like sentencing yourself to life imprisonment at hard labor in solitary confinement. I don’t think I’d do it again.”
And, the fact you cite of Wood's not having any hobbies or interests outside of comics is also strikingly pertinent to me. I know that my own interests in exercise, camping/hiking, movies, writing, poetry, etc., serve to keep me sane and healthy.
Wood is kind of like the Jim Belushi of comics inasmuch as he serves as both an inspiration and a warning.
I loved Wally Wood’s THE SPIRIT strips, and I always wanted to know more about Wood.
"Wally Wood's 22 panels that always work" is essential for any young cartoonist. I believe we have Larry Hama to thank for letting us know about that one.
Nice job with the article, Jim. It’s a shame that comics has so many sad stories concerning so many incredible creators. Thanks for sharing the article with us.
Oops. Er, of course I meant to type "John" Belushi.
Need my coffee ...
Hey Jim,
I still remember the San Diego con Wood attended the year before his death. Steranko introduced him to me. He was a ravaged man selling off the last of his art. He kind of glommed onto me for a bit, the problem was he had such a quite voice at a noisy show, I couldn’t understand hardly a word he was saying. He was perhaps my biggest influence, I’m so very sorry I didn’t try and meet him earlier.
Such a talent. I recently read a great, but very sad, biography about him. He's one of my favorite artists. Thanks for the fine account and collection of quotes.
"It is also a fact that Wally Wood was one of the most talented artists comics has ever seen, a giant whose work on Mad, Weird Science and more inspired generations."
-Actually, that's an opinion. Granted, it's an opinion that is nearly universally agreed upon, but stll an opinion. A fact would be that many people CONSIDER HIM one of the most talented artists comics has ever seen. Great work otherwise.
And the prize for pointless pedantry goes to...
Great, concise article! But I should also point out to those who think Woody had no hobbies that he was really into guns (which he used to kill himself, unfortunately), and he used to dabble in folk music. You can sometimes find an unreleased early 1970s album he cut for sale on eBay.
I wrote the following a few months ago, and if you'll forgive the pretension, I'd like to share it here, since it seems appropriate.
Oh, and don't worry, this poem isn't about me per se; it's only about a possible version of myself (and some others), which I strive to avoid.
THE AWFUL TRUTH
Breaking through some subtle, undefined surface,
tottering the progressively faltering equilibrium of my days,
bringing everything nearer to a final cataclysm of nagging self-doubt,
my endless inner zombie clown parade perpetuates a colorless circus indistinguishable from bacterial culture:
just as putrid,
just as pointless,
and just as doomed.
Is this it?
Is this all there is,
this long, slow decline with no escape until death?
Below consciousness lies the awful truth;
shadowy uncertainties throb, shift, and dart at the corners of my vision,
and I fear that what Mom felt as she suicided when she was my present age
is what I’m only just beginning to feel now.
No one will save me,
for no one can save me.
No one will know why,
not even me.
In a short while, no one will even care.
Then, at depression’s apex, it appears.
No longer hidden from view,
undisguised by the formerly bright colors of my dying, fantastical hopes and futile imaginings,
repellent in its insensate squalor,
it sits and drools:
the lonely, hunchbacked homunculus spawn of my life-long hermitage.
This is it; this is all there is.
This is all that’s left of me.
I could write volumes myself about my love of Wally Wood's art - I own the original oversized CANNON & SALLY FORTH books. I bought the DAREDEVIL HC Masterworks just to have them in a good-quality format after having been forced to sell my originals years earlier. DD # 7 is my all-time favorite splash page / comic art of all time. When I told this to Stan Lee in 1993, he said "Ah, Sub-Mariner in Atlantis. You got good taste, kid."
I remember buying the few issues of THUNDER AGENTS I could find here (scarce on newstands in the 60's in Canada) and knowing they were so gorgeous. Wood was one of the first inkers / artists I could recognize on sight.
I look at Jerry Ordway's work and see a lot of Wood influence. I am glad to see his legacy lives on.
This is something that has to be corrected in future articules about Wally Wood and I want everyone to know about it. It is a falsehood to think that Wood died in a run down apartment.
Back in 1980, that apartment complex was brand new and alot of people lined up to move there. An old friend of mine Billy Ingram lived in that neighborhood and he said that apartment on 15150 Parthenia was a beautiful place to live at that time. He should know, he was there.
Now if you drive by there it is a run down place.
This story of where Wood died has been passed around book by book.It is time to correct that and I hope this helps.
Terrific article, Jim. My only criticism would be the absence of mention about his work at DC (STALKER, JSA, etc.) with Joe Orlando (he felt that STALKER was going to be a huge hit) and his late 70's attempts at self-publishing (SALLY FORTH, CANNON, etc.)
Bill Pearson introduced me to Wood at Wally's home in Connecticut in 1977. I had the chance to sit and talk with him for around two hours, and to tour his studio, etc. He was a very quiet guy, but seemed to be impressed that I knew so much about his work (I loved the guy's stuff and bought all of it) and his current projects. He seem especially proud of all of the creators that he had worked with as assistants over the years (Bob Layton was another), and how so many of them had gone on to success in the field.
As you stated, he had a love/hate relationship with a field that, years after his death, continues to love him so very much.
Wally Wood was my ground zero cartoonist. Daredevil, Mad, Spirit, Combat, Warren Mags, THUNDER AGENTS...I devoured it all. My first published work at Vortex comics was a slavish imitation of him. He still shows up when I ink stuff.
Though I knew the basic details of his suicide, I didn't know that he was living in a new city without his circle of people around him. Belushi was out of town when he died, too. As was Jim Morrison.
And the scene of the missing shoe will stick in my head.
Thanks for the informative, if haunting story.
Jim,
As usual, you are a terrific story teller. Very few people can capture the essence of the story the way you do. It's good to see that you're still actively writing.
Buddy
Wally was my second cousin and while I didn't get a chance to know him, I know the medical history of my family. My heart breaks to read and hear of the trials and tribulations my family has gone through emotionally. A major percentage of me is Finnish as he was. I have a gluten and dairy intolerance that is genetic and is common with Finns. If you don't know much about it the strongest diagnosis of this is called Celiacs Desease, but really it just means we have a hard time digesting wheat (gluten is the protien), barley, rye, cous cous. it causes so much difficulty digesting nutrience cannot be readily absorbed. Simply put, all the things we get from food that make us feel good, refreshed, healthy, and in a right mindset are not absorbed. I have watched my family battle depression (brain doesn't recieve necissary vitamines to feed energy), health issues ranging from inflamitory issues (arthritis, acne, psoriasis, fibromialga), imune issues (athma, allergies, lupus, always sick), gastro-intestinal (heartburn,irregular digestion, stomach diagnosis of all natures), to mental imbalances (depression, anxiety, lethargy). The thyroid and adreanal gland have such irregular behavior from being under an allergic reaction evey second of the day it can lead to tachacardia. Drinking is a by-product of trying to reduce the anxiety and depression, unfortunatly, most of it is made from wheat which makes it worse. If a person doesn't know about this one can easily ruin their life. My heart breaks...
I am also an artist, as is my father, sister, and uncle. It's one escape that takes me away from the fast heart beat I get after too much gluten in my diet. I am perfectly healthy and do a lot less art when I avoid the foods and beer....ironic one of the things that might have pushed him into the state of escape that gave us his works of art, might have been the same thing that kept him from balance, love, and living.
Something that seriously needs correcting... Wallace Wood wrote ALL 7 of his issues of DAREDEVIL. They are not structured like, do not feel like, and do not read like anything else from Marvel during that period. His editor, Stan Lee, wrote the dialogue, except for #10, where Wood wrote his own dialogue. Stan Lee STOLE both credit AND PAY, and even spent part of #10 and 11 denigrating Wood's writing efforts IN PRINT. Nice guy.
There has to be some reason that Wood, who worked for Lee for such a short period of time, came to HATE Lee with a passion that never left him until the end of his life (and possibly beyond).
Someone else pointed out the writer did not mention Wood's self-publishing efforts-- like CANNON, SALLY FORTH, WIZARD KING. I didn't see TOWER COMICS mentioned either. Of course, Marvel & DC collaborated to SABOTAGE Tower's distribution, which is the REAL reason the company went belly-up. That's NOT what I call "competition". That what's I call "GANGSTERISM".
And by the way... Wood was NOT fired from MAD. Wood QUIT!!!!! And, JUST before the page rates SHOT UP! (I thought EVERYBODY knew that?????????)
You write that Wood wrote issue 10 of DD. In fact, every issue he worked on he wrote and plotted; Stan Lee stole the credit and stiffed Wood on financial compensation - read about it by authority Dave Spurlock on the Wood FB page (and numerous books/articles). Were there super villains in the world? Yes, there was at least one, named Stan Lee.
I’ve been reading about comic artists from the silver and golden age and came across Wallys name so I googled him and found your write up. Kudos to you for writing such a thoughtful piece on this amazing artist. It’s sad that so many of these comments are from rabid fanboys and fangirls focusing on the one or two mistakes in the article. I for one appreciated this piece for what it is, a wonderful article on someone so revered in the comics industry.
Sorry had some spelling errors earlier. Anyhow I just wanted to bring up another obscure source of our favorite artist Wallace Wood. His Radian and Goody Bumpkin stories in the Wham O Giant Comics put out in 1967. I've always wondered what his involvement was as his Radian story was the first story in the book . Radian was similar to his Dynamo character and Goody Bumpkin was a silly kind of cartoony story. It's hard to find a copy in good shape as they were usually folded or rolled up due to their size of 14×21 inches. Radian his villian and Goody Bumpkin were featured fairly predominately on the cover. The front/back cover alone is worth buying and framing. Sadly , the cover isn't by Wood. But it still is an amazing comic with Wood stories in it!
Really enjoyed your article. Makes me want to dive deeper. Bought the Spurlock book a while back and been meaning to break open the shrink-wrap. Perhaps this is the time.
One minor correction — Woody’s middle name is spelled “Allan” rather than “Allen.”
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