Pages from ww v2

THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF

WALLACE

WOOD VOLUME 2

Edited by Bhob Stewart & J. Michael Catron

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS Seattle

Contents Introduction | 7

Wood Screws | 151

Ed Piskor

Paul Kirchner

From the Woodwork Out | 9

The Third Man | 155

Clark Dimond

John Workman

Making “My World” | 17

The One That Got Away | 167

Ben Saunders

Mike Moore and Bill Spicer

The Bubblegum Years | 25

The Woody Papers | 171

Len Brown

Richard Bassford

A Case History of the Disneyland

Wood Posts | 183

Memorial Orgy Poster | 37 Paul Krassner

Blowing Down This Dusty Road | 45 Flo Steinberg

Wood Workers | 47 Bhob Stewart and Mike Catron

Strange Magic | 51 Tom Sutton

About Woody | 55 Trina Robbins

Wood at His witzend | 59 Rick Spanier

Guitars and Flying Tigers | 67

Wallace Wood

The Wizard of Odkin | 195 Fershid Barucha

In France | 199 Wallace Wood

Cover Story | 207 Roger Hill

The Big Blue Pencil | 213 Wallace Wood

Self-Portrait | 217 Wallace Wood

Portrait Gallery | 233

Larry Hama

Final Curtain | 237

The Overseas Weekly Discovery | 71

Mike Catron

Roger Hill

There Are Good Guys and Bad Guys | 243

Wood Engravings | 79

Bhob Stewart

Paul Levitz

Contributors | 263

Ghost Story | 85 A.L. Sirois

Selected Bibliography | 270

Rapping on Wood | 93 Bassford, Cuti, Kirchner, Pearson, and Stewart

Acknowledgments | 271

Trajectories | 125 Paul Kirchner

Hooray for Wally Wood! | 272

Second-Story Man | 137

Bhob Stewart

Bill Pearson

Strange Magic Tom Sutton

I

met Wallace Wood only once, and I was tongue-tied by the fact that I was actually sitting next to this guy who, for years, I had wanted to say so many things to. I remember sending fan letters to him during the EC days, trying to copy his stuff. See, it was more than wanting to draw like him. It’s like I was getting something else from that work, some subliminal message-feeling I could never decipher.

The feeling I had for his work from the 1950s was uncomfortably close to idolatry. Put it down to bizarre adolescent intensification. I recently acquired the Weird Science and Weird Fantasy boxed sets. Beyond nostalgia, the Woodwork brought back that weirdness I had felt so long ago. Very pure now, because I no longer had any desire to draw that way.

Indeed, I could be very critical of the stuff.

The wonderful weirdness, that special undercurrent, concerns the way the figures all look like they are molded from plastic and carefully placed in very detailed, carefully lit little boxes, not two-dimensional panels. An illusionist. 3-D without the red-and-blue cardboard glasses. A miniaturist. Little claustrophobic cubes in which frozen mannequins look as if they might move, or had just moved, but were at that instant static. So much was suggested rather than actually delineated.

The master of the cast shadow. Look at the automobiles and airplanes and spaceships, all carefully crafted toys.

I get this image of Woody, from people who were around him, of a real downtown New York City commercial artist-cartoonist out to win fame and fortune, doing his damnedest to make it, hunched over his board through days passing to night then day again. Dreaming of big bucks and the time to take the time to do something much better than the stuff he was forever making appear so much better than it really was for publishers whose creed — was and still is — “Fuck everybody!”

The self-imposed discipline, a bondage of the mind, for half a lifetime, meticulously rendering, elaborating on, polishing. And doing that long enough, and knowing you should be using the skill on something at least worth the effort.

Thinking about that makes one very angry.

The bitterness, the anger held inside, had to get out. There was the drinking and other self-destructive stuff brought about by this internal conflict. Edgar Allan Poe’s “Imp of the Perverse.”

You know you must do something to change what is destroying you. You must do something at once. Yet one puts it off.

The one and only time I met Woody was in July 1970, at Jim Warren’s apartment in New York. It was an impromptu gathering following a splendid dinner. Jim treated the artists and writers of Warren Publishing, many of whom had been honored at the comics convention earlier.

I’m a loner. Social gatherings confuse me, and sitting an arm’s length away from Mr. Wallace Wood rather overwhelmed me. There were a dozen, maybe 15, people, all talking. All except Wood, who slouched next to his then-wife, gazing moodily into his glass, while Warren talked about the upcoming book Woody was to do for him. Nick Cuti, the only person I knew there, was preparing that project with Wood for Warren Publishing.

My poor head was bursting with stuff I had wanted to say to this man since I had seen my first Weird Science. His work had had such a powerful effect on me, beyond just my imitating his style. There was something much more than that.

There was some kind of strange magic in his work. I wanted to do what he did. I wanted to draw comic books in order to have magic.

OPPOSITE: Detail from the splash panel of “The Outsider.” Aces High #1, March-April 1955. ©WMG.

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“You know, you’re the reason I’m doing comics,” I said.

“Uh, well, you do some really strange things, Tom.” He wasn’t really looking at me, just in my general direction.

“I really tried to draw and render just like you. I labored over the cast shadows and those wonderful highlights on the space helmets. God, did I sweat for it. You made it look so easy, so perfect.” He let me rant on. How many times had he heard it? “It was just too damn hard trying to be you.”

He spoke quietly and carefully. “Yes? You know, I really wanted to draw like Jack Kirby when I started.” He said it flat, like he wasn’t trying to be funny. I thought he was putting me on. I was trying to get him to talk about the EC days. I was so enthralled with that phase of his work.

“I could sense that you really loved the science fiction stuff — the way you put so much into it.”

“It was a job. Just work. Nothing special.”

Now he was looking right at me, and I didn’t believe him.

I was crushed. “The airplane stories, the World War I dogfights, trench warfare …”

Wood made a little smile, kind of strained, like he really didn’t want to hurt my feelings. “Just a lot of work, that’s all.

Just another job, another story … nothing special.”

It was over. I felt lousy. Something had gone sour inside me. I was angry with him. Who the hell did he think he was, puncturing my balloon like that? I hardly remember saying goodnight to him when we left. All I could think of was how cheated I felt. How was it possible for him to have felt nothing for his creations that were and sometimes still are a sense of wonder for me? The fragmented memory of that chance meeting returns to haunt many a late-night drawing session.

I think I understand better now.

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TOP LEFT: In the mid-1950s, most of the EC artists did paintings for publisher Bill Gaines to display in his office. Wood painted this 20" x 18" oil, The Dweller in the Dungeon. Years later, Gaines returned it, and Wood sold it. It was later issued as a limited edition print signed by Wood. ©WWE. TOP RIGHT: Not all EC art has survived in perfect condition. A large brown stain on the upper left of the creature’s wing on the artwork for the cover of Weird Science #21 printed as a two-inch long black blotch in Russ Cochran’s The Complete EC Library in 1980. Chemical restoration techniques in 1986 removed the stain and revealed Wood’s original crosshatching. ©WMG. ABOVE: “The Loathsome!” Panel from page 8. Script by Al Feldstein, art by Wood. Weird Science #20, July-August 1953. ©WMG. OPPOSITE: “Space Circus.” An unpublished Wood cover painting for Galaxy, 1958. ©WWE.

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About Woody Trina Robbins

W

allace Wood was the first cartoonist’s name that I really knew as a kid. You couldn’t miss those letters in heavy Gothic lettering, even in those days when cartoonists didn’t get credited. It also helped that he was my favorite. I think I learned to draw three-quarter view faces from copying his faces in Avon’s An Earth Man on Venus.

Years later, rereading the early EC Comics that I remember from my childhood, I find I wasn’t really that hot at spotting Woodwork and that some of the stories I had thought at the time to be by Woody turned out to be by Joe Orlando and even by Al Williamson. But what did I know? I was just a kid.

In 1953, I went to a science fiction convention in New York, and Woody was there with a beautiful woman who, I now realize, was probably Tatjana. I remember approaching him for an autograph — holding out my program with a trembling hand and telling him he was my favorite artist.

I called him “Mr. Wood!”

After that, there was a good 10 years during which I didn’t read comics, and then, in 1965 when I got back into comics after discovering Daredevil during Marvel’s Silver Age, I immediately recognized the work of my childhood fave.

In 1968, when I was finally introduced to “Woody” by Art Spiegelman, it was nice to be a grown-up and at least an equal. When Artie brought me to Wood’s studio for the first time (that turned out to also be my first introduction to Ralph Reese, who was then Woody’s assistant), I won’t deny that I purposely wore my shortest mini-dress. You could tell from his work that here was a man who liked women.

I regret I never became one of the long list of people who assisted Woody. What a way to learn the business! I know he would have had me as an assistant, but somehow it was never right; I was in San Francisco, then I had Casey, and even for the supreme experience of the Wally Wood School of Art,

I didn’t want to bring up a kid in New York. Woody gave me a graduation certificate anyway; I’ve got it put away somewhere.

But hanging above my drawing table as I type this up are his immortal words, lettered in that bold Gothic:

ABOVE: A sign from Wood’s studio proclaiming his famous admonition to the artists who worked for him.

OPPOSITE: Trina Robbins taught herself how to draw three-quarter-view faces from studying Wood’s work in An Earth Man on Venus. Detail from inside front cover, An Earth Man on Venus. Avon, 1951.

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Did you know that those words have become a Murphy’s Law? I had the Murphy’s Law calendar book one year, and there they were, correctly credited to Wallace Wood.

Apropos of Woody’s rules, I remember one year I sent him something I had done in some underground comic. I don’t remember what it was, but at the time I was pretty proud of it. (Now I’ll bet it was awful!) Woody wrote back, “Next time I see you, remind me to tell you about feathering.”

So the next time I was in New York, I saw Woody and reminded him to tell me about feathering. And you know what he told me?

“Don’t.”

My feelings about Woody’s last few years are very sad.

He started writing to me, sending out really pathetic letters along with funny photos of his studio and his cat. I know I’m not the only one who received these sad little notes and cat pictures in the mail. It’s like he was making some kind of last attempt to reach out. In one letter, telling me he was coming to the San Diego Comic-Con, he wrote, “Well, here it is 1980, and I’m not any smarter or richer than I was, but I have one thing, The Wizard King … hope I live long enough to finish it.”

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After Woody died, Ron Turner gave a small memorial for him at Last Gasp. He made a little altar consisting of Woody’s books and a bottle of whiskey. We talked a little about him and drank a toast to him. (I drank wine.) I was the only one there who had known him well enough to call him Woody, but everyone who attended was there because they loved him.

I heard later that some comics people in New York ex­ pressed shock because we had liquor there. But anyone Irish would have understood, and I’m sure it would have been OK with Woody.

I would never have told this to Woody, and I know he hated to hear it from anyone — but I liked his early work best.

BELOW: The furnishings may seem spare (note the taped-up chair), but Wood seems happy to be sharing some time with this cat in his Syracuse studio (c. 1980–1981). He frequently sent such photos of himself to friends.

OPPOSITE: Wood’s early work. EC provided pre-lettered pages, so artists had to work around the lettering. In this rare look at an EC page in progress (scanned from a trimmed photostat), Wood has finished his pencils, and he has inked the word balloon outlines and the panel borders. He would handletter the word “Now!” in the final balloon of panel 4 and then ink his pencils to complete the page. It was his first science fiction story for EC. “Dark Side of the Moon,” page 2. Script by Al Feldstein, art by Wood. Weird Fantasy #15 [#3], September-October 1950/Spawn of Mars And Other Stories, Fantagraphics Books, 2015. ©WMG.

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Wood at His witzend Rick Spanier

This is the time! It is now or never! The existence of fandom gave the necessary impetus to our faint hearts, and so we want to say to all you horny-handed, ink-stained editor-publishers, demon reviewers, and wild-eyed mimeograph machinists, rustling out there in the underbrush … You have shown us the way! We are eternally grateful … unless we lose our shirts!

— Wallace Wood, witzend #1

T

he year was 1966, and originally he was going to call it et cetera. Then Wood discovered that the projected title was already in use by another magazine, and at practically the last minute he changed the name to witzend. This is just as well, since the latter title suggests not a trivial postscript but a desperate stretch of the imagination, presumably a more laudable endeavor. But why was this most highly acclaimed of professional comic book artists inspired — by fanzines, no less — to become his own publisher? And what was witzend supposed to be, anyway?

Hundreds of comics-related fanzines were published in the 1960s, usually by teenagers, and most of them would not have seemed particularly inspirational at first blush. Some of the better-looking ones were printed on offset presses, but the majority were mimeographed in oily black ink, or “dittoed” on spirit duplicators in increasingly bleached-out shades of purple. The zines, usually produced in small editions of a hundred or so copies, were purchased by mailing the editor some coins Scotch-taped to a piece of notepaper, the “sticky quarters” that were fandom’s common currency. It was only after disregarding the rudimentary appearances that you could encounter precociously literate reviews of the current comic book scene, articles on the fabled eras of comic books past, prose fiction, and comic strips in a variety of genres created by fan artists and writers, some of them destined for careers

as comics professionals. The best zines offered creativity, freedom, vigor, and irreverence, all of which must have appealed to Wallace Wood when he first came to conceive of witzend.

The mid-1960s were not a bad time for comic books, and fans came to refer to the era as the Silver Age of Comics. Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were doing some of the best work of their careers at Marvel. Artists such as Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, and Joe Kubert were displaying their considerable talents at DC. And editor Dick Giordano was revitalizing the line at Charlton.

After the commercially successful premiere of Batman on the ABC television network in January 1966, more publishers entered the fray, and what nearly all of them wanted to produce were superhero comics. Wood did not seem to be particularly enthused by the myriad offerings, jumping from one company to another and even contributing to the hugely oversized oddity Wham-O Giant Comics. What he really wanted to do was to explore other genres, to develop new strips — and to retain the rights to whatever characters he created.

“There is the matter of copyrights … and this was a prime factor,” Wood wrote in witzend #1 (Summer 1966).

“Everyone in this business has given away characters and ideas for page rates, which then belong to the publishers. This will be a place to print, and therefore protect, an idea.” In Citizen Kane (1941), Charles Foster Kane launched his publishing career with a “Declaration of Principles.” By contrast, Wallace Allan Wood’s “Statment [sic] of NO Policy” kicked off the premiere of witzend. “This first issue may be a bit misleading,” he acknowledged. “It is a comic book — and it is not. Neither OPPOSITE: Snorky, one of Wood’s favorite oddball creations, as he appeared on the cover of witzend #1, 1966. ©WWE.

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is it a Science Fiction, Fantasy, Monster, Satire or Girlie Book.

It is a platform, a vehicle, for any idea in any form.”

Physically, it was 40 letter-sized pages crisply printed in black-and-white on a good paper stock, accommodating four comic strips and some shorter text and art features. The cover, smartly designed by Archie Goodwin, was a collage of artwork from the magazine to follow. The issue got off to a strong start with the eight-page “Savage World,” rendered by Al Williamson in his customary detailed style, and ably assisted by three friends: Frank Frazetta, Roy G. Krenkel, and Angelo Torres. The strip, “drawn in 1954 and written in 1966,” must have pleased fans with its artwork that recalls the days of the great EC science fiction comics, but a certain 1960s, “Aquarian Age” sensibility had crept into its new script by Wood.

A nuclear test explosion in New Mexico opens a passage to a subterranean civilization deep within the Earth, allowing its inhabitants to float to the surface with anti-gravity belts.

Abducting physicist Larry Gordon and reporter Helen McKenzie, they strap the woman to a super-science contraption and force her to experience “true mind union” with one of the hairiest of the local denizens. After Larry and Helen escape back to the surface, she confides, “all I saw in that mind were truth … and beauty … and love.” Compared to the superficially brutish underworld dwellers, “We’re the bad guys,” Larry muses.

TOP LEFT: The planned cover of et cetera #1 (witzend #1 before the title change), 1966. Design by Archie Goodwin. ©WWE. TOP RIGHT: An early ad for et cetera, before the name change to witzend. ©WWE. OPPOSITE: The first four covers. witzend #1, Summer 1966; witzend #2, 1967; witzend #3, 1967; witzend #4, 1968; ©WWE. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: “Bucky Ruckus.” witzend #12, 1967. ©WWE.

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Archie Goodwin wrote and drew the short second strip, “Sinner,” about religious intolerance in a post-apocalyptic world. The style and layout is graphically strong, the rendering somewhat resembles the pictures of royalty in a deck of playing cards, and the ending is genuinely witty.

Wood’s strip for the inaugural issue is “Animan,” in which adventurer Jim King travels to a jungle island in the South Pacific in search of a lost tribe of “Stone Age aborigines.” King’s expedition includes the beauteous and busty Dr. Catherine Le May, an anthropologist described as the “world’s foremost authority on extant primitive tribes” and who might have also enjoyed a lucrative sideline modeling tight clothing. The adventurers quickly lose interest in the lost tribe after encountering the more sensational Animan, a creature “neither man nor beast … and superior to both.” After a series of mishaps, they wind up in a cliffhanger ending as the prisoners of their strange discovery. The strip displays a lot of Wood’s panache, and the artist’s expert use of Zip-A-Tone gives an ominous and dramatic intensity to the title character and the jungle settings.

The final strip in witzend #1 is “Absurd Science Fiction Stories” by illustrator Jack Gaughan. His doodle-like creations look as though they’ve fled from the cramped margins of digest-sized Galaxy to cavort happily upon a larger canvas.

Sentient, ambulatory trashcans and anthills outwit multiple adversaries first on the moon, then upon the Earth.

Scattered throughout the issue are illustrations by Reed Crandall, Frank Frazetta, Dan Adkins, and Ralph Reese, along with artwork, poetry, and a fable by Wood himself. Clearly enthused about the glorious future of his venture, Wood devoted a full two pages to prognostication: “We have on hand, or have in the works, or have been promised, the greatest array of literary and graphic art in the history of the illustrated narrative

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form!” A listing of “contributors whose work will appear in the future” follows, and includes the names of Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Gil Kane, Harvey Kurtzman, and many others. Wood had even approached Jack Kirby, but admitted that “the entire [comics] field would no doubt collapse” if Marvel’s star artist took the time “to do anything especially for us.”

More cautious toward the end of the magazine, the fledgling editor/publisher urged his readers to order the next issue but not to subscribe beyond that. He wrote that he’d like to publish four issues a year, maybe even six if witzend made money, but “it may wind up as an annual!” He also suggested the possibility of a letters column in future issues. “But don’t write letters telling me how great I am — or used to be,” he warned. “I will not print them.”

Wood hadn’t mentioned that he wasn’t paying contributors, and witzend #2, dated 1967, suggests that he might have had some difficulty collecting on pledges that were mostly predicated on his friendships and his personal prestige. Some of the promised Big Names had not yet shown up for the party, and others were only nominally represented. Harvey Kurtzman granted reprint rights for a couple of “Hey Look!”

TOP LEFT: The inside front cover of witzend #1. The misspelling of “statement” in such a prominent spot underscores Wood’s lax approach to editing. ©WWE. TOP MIDDLE: A possible early cover idea for witzend #1. This reconstruction was based on a layout found in Wood’s files, consisting of a Mad-style border frame surrounding an empty picture area which had the witzend logo, “no. 1” and “one dollar” pasted in. During a search for the missing image, it was noticed that Archie Goodwin’s layout for et cetera #1 (see page 60) exclusively featured examples from the issue’s interior — with one exception: the drawing of Wood’s Snorky, made specifically for the cover.

That drawing was then inserted into the picture area with the above result.

Wood originally used this border on the cover of the National Cartoonists Society 1961 Annual Report. ©WWE. TOP RIGHT: Illustration from “The World of the Wizard King” witzend #4, 1968. ©WWE.

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strips, while Will Elder and Don Martin each contributed a page or two. Steve Ditko’s single page is an uncharacteristic humor strip that looks suspiciously like an unsold magazine submission from earlier in his career. Warren Sattler’s “Feeble Fable,” about a dragon who must dress up like a chicken, is somewhat more substantial, and Wood was so pleased with Gray Morrow’s strip — six pages of elaborately drawn sword-and-sorcery adventure — that he positioned it at the very front of the issue. He demonstrated his interest in the underground comix movement by running three pages by the young Art Spiegelman — a psychedelic, surreal strip about death, television, temptation, and a trip to the dentist.

Witzend #2 also offers Reed Crandall’s portfolio of finely rendered illustrations from the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a second installment of Animan by Wood.

This time, the animal-man is captured and brought to America, where he is displayed in a traveling exhibition before finally escaping his exploiters. The story’s plot elements are interestingly developed and spiced with a little more sex and violence than normally found in adventure strips from its period, but the artwork seems sketchier this time, and the change of location eliminated the jungle scenes that were one of the first episode’s strong points.

The second issue of witzend is also missing some of the editorial enthusiasm that was so evident in #1. Wood had clearly given up on the hope of making money from selling his publication. “It has been definitely established — this is a HOBBY,” he wrote. “And a Public Service, both to the artists represented and to you. Issue no. 1 was a lot of fun. But it was the kind of fun that can wear pretty thin if it continues issue after issue.”

Announcing that he was taking orders for at least two further issues, he asked readers not to order beyond #4 because “we will have to make an appraisal of our situation at that time.”

Witzend #3, like its predecessor, was published in 1967, and offers Steve Ditko’s answer to the challenge of drawing something new and different. For a black-and-white magazine, Ditko created a hero who lives in a black-and-white world of starkly contrasted good and evil — the colorless media really is the message. Mr. A, a vigilante crimefighter in a white suit and gleaming metal mask, refuses to compromise his law-and-order principles. He is relentless in hunting down a young killer and exacting a rough kind of justice. The artwork is vivid and dramatic, the images more emotionally wrenching than those in ordinary comic books. Symbols of a permissive society such as parents, clergy, and social workers are depicted as defeatists and apologists for evil. At the end, Mr. A watches impassively as the murderer meets his own doom. “I have no mercy or compassion for aggressors,” Mr. A. declares, “only for their victims … for the innocent! To have any sympathy for a killer is an insult to their victims.”

Wood, who enjoyed singing folk songs and listening to the liberal ballads of Pete Seeger, might have seemed mismatched with Ditko, but the two were good friends. Both men cloaked powerful egos behind quiet demeanors, were shy about being interviewed, and suspicious of the major comic book publishers, DC and Marvel. While at times they may have seemed aloof, the passion they expressed through their artwork helped to establish an enduring rapport with their fans.

Pipsqueak Papers, Wood’s own contribution to the third witzend, is no less a personal statement than Ditko’s effort.

A fable about the naked (but demurely posed) sprites who inhabit a forest glade, drawn in a facile “slow cartooning” style, the strip has a darker, more violent core sensibility than its placid surface would suggest. The protagonist, Pip, not just a child-man but an actual “baby man,” must don the mantle of adulthood in a hurry to win and provide for a beautiful but self-absorbed forest nymph, Nudine. As her demands and his responsibilities mount, Pip must ask himself whether his love for the nymph is worth all of the sacrifices it entails.

Frank Frazetta contributed “Last Chance,” a rearranged version of an unsold, unfinished 1950s science-fantasy strip.

There’s an additional portfolio of Burroughs-inspired drawings

by Reed Crandall, two more Hey Look! reprints by Kurtzman, and other strips in the issue by young artists Richard Bassford, Roger Brand, and Art Spiegelman.

Witzend #4 came out in 1968, and must have engendered a certain sense of familiarity among its recipients. Wood contributed another episode of Pipsqueak Papers, three pages of The Rejects (a satirical story scripted by Bhob Stewart that harks back to the days of the Mad comic book), and a prose episode of The World of the Wizard King with a generous number of spot illustrations. Steve Ditko did a full 10 pages of

TOP LEFT: Animan, page 1. witzend #2, 1967. ©WWE. TOP RIGHT: “Pipsqueak Papers,” page 1. witzend #4, 1968. ©WWE.

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his Mr. A strip, with an even grittier and more elaborate storyline than in the first episode, and the ubiquitous Crandall portfolio is back with more splendid Burroughs drawings.

But Wood appears to have been unsuccessful in luring other professional artists into the fold, and the magazine is filled out with strips by Roger Brand and Richard “Grass” Green that look not dissimilar to other work that the artists were contributing to fanzines at the same time. Seemingly unfazed, Wood declared, “I am going to continue publishing witzend, possibly indefinitely. But definitely up to and including #8.”

Yet it didn’t take long for him to change his mind. After the fourth issue, Wood sold witzend to Bill Pearson “for the sum of $1.00” and an agreement that at least four more issues would be published. The arrangement proved to be beneficial to everyone concerned. Wood himself continued to be a regular contributor, and the next few issues, coming out at the rate of roughly one per year, helped to spotlight the work of some of the brighter young talents then emerging in comics, including Vaughn Bodē, Jim Steranko, Jeff Jones, and Berni Wrightson.

Witzend #6 (1969) dazzled readers with an unpublished EC story by Wood, “The Spawn of Venus” (originally created for publication in 3-D). The sixth issue also broke format by offering an interview with Will Eisner, alerting newer fans to the brilliance of The Spirit creator’s work at a time when it was

ABOVE: Wood’s wraparound cover for witzend #10, 1976. ©WWE.

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not widely available. Witzend #7 (1970) featured Steve Ditko’s work and simultaneously parodied it (by editor/artist Pearson as “Sorrel Garika”).

Pearson continued publishing witzend beyond the required eight issues, though less frequently and more idiosyncratically. Witzend #9 (1973), for instance, was devoted to the life and work of film comedian W.C. Fields, dispensing with comic strips altogether. The next-to-last issue, #12 (1982), offers “Lunar Tunes,” a strip drawn by Wood in the last months of his life. Against the background of an eerie lunar mindscape, intrepid explorer Bucky Ruckus poignantly encounters characters and themes from earlier in the artist’s career, before at last arriving at “Wit’s End.” The final issue, #13, published by Pearson in 1985, featured drawings of women and was cover-titled Good Girls.

Jack Kirby, one of the artists Wood had approached in his first flush of enthusiasm, never made it into witzend. Nor did Gil Kane, though he later got some of his own experimental comics, His Name Is … Savage and Blackmark, published commercially. Most of the other artists mentioned in witzend #1 did make it into the magazine at one time or another, but much of what they contributed consisted of unsold strips and portfolio pieces from long and busy careers — odds and ends pulled from filing cabinets.

Ultimately, Wood’s personal prestige and “no policy” editorial policy resulted in a magazine that was pleasing and entertaining but was unable to ignite an immediate revolution. Only years later would its salient point — that comics artists were entitled to more control and ownership of their own work — be recognized by the publishers of comic books.

Like so many other visionary endeavors, it may simply have been ahead of its time — but where Wood had led, others would follow. In 1980, for example, Françoise Mouly and witzend contributor Art Spiegelman launched Raw, a more

deliberate attempt to open doors to new kinds of comics art expression. The magazine helped promote the careers of a number of alternative comics artists including Charles Burns, Drew Friedman, and Spiegelman himself, whose Pulitzer Prize–winning Maus premiered in Raw. A two-volume hardcover box set collecting the complete run of witzend in 2014 quickly sold out. A single-volume Best of witzend is due in 2018 from Fantagraphics Books.

TOP: “Lunar Toons,” page 2. witzend #12, 1982. ©WWE.

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