Markley’s Fevered Brain: Golly Gee Wally

Wayne Markley

Wayne Markley


by Wayne Markley

Cannon

Cannon


Over the years I have written about Wally Wood a number of times. He is one of my favorite artists and, to be fair, his work would change dramatically from project to project. I think this was determined by how passionate he was about a project. At his worst, he was as good as anyone; and when he was inspired he was breathtaking. The reason I am writing this blog is Fantagraphics recently released a complete collection of Cannon. Cannon (along with Sally Forth) was a newspaper strip done for military newspapers overseas. It was a mix of cold war politics, action, t&a, nudity, and a large dose of violence thrown in.

Wood’s career went through a number of stages over the years, from working as an assistant to Will Eisner to inking Jack Kirby (in both Kirby’s newspaper strip Sky Masters and in the Challengers of the Unknown), to doing the original designs for Topps Mars Attack’s trading cards, to his famous humor work for Mad to creating The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents to writing and drawing M.A.R.S. Patrol to co-creating DC’s Power Girl. He was a visionary in a number of ways, perhaps most famously in his desire to self-publish long before there was a direct market or independent comics. His various attempts at this were mixed, with perhaps his most famous work in this area being Witzend. (Which Fantagraphics is also going to collect for the first time in a deluxe hardcover edition this summer). Wood worked in a number of different genres, everything from fantasy to science fiction to horror to superheroes to adult material (such as the long out of print and hard to find Wally Wood’s Gang Bang). And as mentioned before, he also did newspaper strips, pulp illustrations, and advertising design.

Getting back to Cannon. Cannon was the Borne Identity before there was a Jason Borne. He was a US spy who was brain washed by the Russians to be a cold killing machine but he escaped and the Americans re-brainwashed him and used his killing skills for their own devices. Throughout the two and a half year run of the strip, Cannon would meet and seduce a wide variety of women, from the farmer’s daughter to evil Russian and Chinese female spies to his boss’s wife. What I really enjoyed about this collection was the pace of the storytelling. Wood never wasted a panel in his storytelling and each panel moved the story along. Like his predecessors, Hal Foster and Roy Crane (who his work looks nothing like), he was a master at telling a story and keeping it moving at a break-neck pace. Fantagraphics collected Cannon before, many years ago, but I think this hardcover collection is far superior in production and quality. Now I cannot wait to see Wood’s Sally Forth get the same deluxe treatment.

Wally Wood’s Eerie Tales of Crime and Horror

Wally Wood’s Eerie Tales of Crime and Horror


As I mentioned, Wood did a number of different genres over the years and there are other collections of his work that collect these stories. Two collections come from Vanguard Publishing and are called Wally Wood’s Eerie Tales of Crime and Horror and Wally Wood’s Strange Worlds of Science Fiction. While Vanguard could not reprint any of Wally Woods’s fantastic EC stories, Fantagraphics has that covered in a nice hardcover called Came the Dawn and Other Stories. Another collection of his work is the Spirit Archive Vol. 24 which collects some of his most beautiful work, the Spirit in Space. Well, the Spirit was really on the moon but nevertheless it had beautiful art.

Wally Wood's Strange Worlds of Science Fiction

Wally Wood’s Strange Worlds of Science Fiction


Wally Wood’s Eerie Tales of Crime and Horror is a collection of Wood’s work, mostly from the 1950s, with mostly horror and crime stories. These are short stories with twist endings in the tradition of Tales From the Crypt, but there are also longer stories such as The Mask of Fu Manchu. This is a great read in you see how wildly his art could vary. At times it looks very much like everyone else doing horror comics of the time, and at other times it is amazingly beautiful. One complaint about this book and the Strange Worlds collection is the reproduction and the colors leave something to be desired. With Cannon, Came the Dawn, and Witzend all of the art is black and white so color is not an issue. I think that Strange Worlds is a better collection in only that it is all science fiction and fantasy stories which Wood excelled at. His style was radically different than Frazetta and Al Williamson, but it was just as beautiful. Both Strange Worlds and Eerie were published in softcover and hardcover and both are worth tracking down.

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

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


I would be remiss if I did not mention Wood’s superhero comics work. In addition to creating and drawing a number of issues of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Dynamo, he also created M.A.R.S. Patrol, a short lived Gold Key comic in the 1960s. Perhaps his most famous superhero work was on Daredevil where he drew and devised the early looks (the all red custom for example) and style of the character, along with Bill Everett. He also would do a short but memorable run on Doctor Doom in the pages of Astonishing Tales. (Soon to be collected in Marvel Masterworks Rarities). He would move over to DC in the mid-1970s where he worked on the revived All Star Comics with the Justice Society and introduced the busty Power Girl. Alas, busty women were the one thing Wood seemed to fit into all of his stories.

Wally Wood died far too early as the age of 54 by his own hand. He was famous for his drinking and for his ability to tell a story. He had a number of shortcuts on how to tell a story since, for most of his career, he was doing work for hire and he was always looking for ways to speed up the process. One of his most famous non-story arts pieces is 22 Panels That Always Work, a three page showcase of how to tell a comic book story. It is truly a shame Wood never was as famous as a number of his contemporaries, but I am glad his work is slowly coming back into print for all of us to enjoy.

As always, everything written in this blog is my opinion and I will defend it to the death. Well, not really, but I do not mind a good argument. Nothing here reflects the opinions of Westfield Comics or their employees. I welcome feedback, both pro and con at MFBWAY@aol.com. I do hope you take the time to check out some of Wally Wood’s work as he was a true master of the comic art form.

Thank you.

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