His real legacy, though, is a bounty of eye-popping comic art, and hosts of wide-eyed young readers, many of whom became artists that carry his influence in their work. His cynicism sometimes manifested itself in hilarious ways, such as his famous “22 Panels that Never Fail”, a guide to dealing with loquacious writers, and “Woody’s Rule”, his cynical artist’s “motto” of: “Never draw what you can copy never copy what you can trace and never trace what you can cut out and paste up.” Although it was never an overtly successful venture, Wood was one of the first comics artists to try an end-run around the publishers by self-publishing with a magazine format anything-goes anthology comic called witzend. Driven and obsessive about the quality of his work, he was also hard-bitten and cynical about the treatment he and other hard-working artists received at the hands of a money-to-the-top publishing industry that forced the artists to do “work for hire”, signing all of their copyrights to the publishers. Woody, as he was known, became something of a comics legend, both supremely gifted and tragic. He, in turn, was influenced by comic greats like Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, illustrators like Howard Pyle, Roy Krenkel and others as well as brilliant contemporaries like Al Williamson, Reed Crandall and the rest of the EC crew. Wood has had a similar impact on generations of comics artists, both directly and indirectly. I later discovered the beautiful tone-board work he did for Mad after it changed from a color comic to a black and white magazine in 1955, which just added another level to my wide-eyed fascination with his work. In the following years, I spent countless hours drawing from Wally Wood pages, trying to duplicate his trademark lighting effects and render his super-intricate sci-fi spaceships and futuristic machinery, not to mention the coolest monsters ever to slither off a comic page. When I later learned that he had also done straightforward (non-humorous) science fiction comics (also published by EC in the ’50s but harder to come by as reprints) I was hooked. (Parents were alarmed, congress got in on the act.)Īs much as I loved the Mad work by Elder and Davis, both brilliant comics artists, it was Wood who captured my attention. Comics were the visual equivalent to early Rock n’ Roll. (The current Mad magazine is a pale, sad shadow of the original.) 1950’s E.C. The early Mad comics were outrageous, subversive and outside the mainstream in a way that’s hard to describe now. These irreverent, hilarious comics, written by comic genius Harvey Kurtzman and maniacally drawn by Wood, Will Elder and Jack Davis, popped the top off my impressionable little brain. When I was 10 or so, I came across some paperback reprints of the E.C. Wally Wood’s dazzling, lurid, bizarre, and wonderful comic art is what made me want to draw comics. This is kind of a special post for me so I may ramble on a bit.
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