The Erotic Art Of Wallace Wood!

Wally Wood was one of the great artists in the history of the comic book form, and one of the most troubled. He was a mercurial figure, starting out on the sci-fi and horror comics of his day in the 50's and elevating to the best of them at EC Comics before broadening out to humor and superheroes and more. He was always it seemed a maverick of sorts, spending a few months at Marvel revising Daredevil, stopping at Tower to develop the THUNDER Agents, beginning Doctor Doom's series, visiting DC to spruce up the Justice Society of America, and all the while working at the edges of the establishment in the Undergrounds with work that the Big Two would never publish, most of it with a distinctive slant on explicit sex.

Much of Wally Wood's notorious sexy stuff was collected some years ago in a French collection titled "Con de Fee" and that title was lifted by Fantagraphics for their relatively modern collection of Wood's "dirty comics".

His racy cartoons kick off the collection, lifted from magazine here and there and science fictional and other wise. 

One of the most famous pieces in the tome is Wood's Malice in Wonderland which takes Dodgson's little darling and retools her, so to speak for National Screw. There are pages dedicated to the Wizard of Ooz also. 

Some oddities I'd never seen before are some sexy fable revisions from a men's magazine called Cavalcade.

Dragonella is included, a very Woodesque fairy tale. 

For Marvel he kicked off their Pussycat series, also in one of the copious men's magazines that were quite common once upon a time. 

Of a more purely satirical form is the infamous Disneyland orgy scene from The Realist Magazine. It's one of the gems in this book and I'm very happy to at long last have it in a hard copy format after admiring it for years online. 

Wood's somewhat gritty pages "My Word" from the ground level  Apple Comix #1 are included as well. 

Wood did some really attractive if naughty covers for Screw Magazine and there are several more than seen here. Some I'd never seen before.

Gang Bang is a flat-out soft-porn comic and features some of Wood's more outrageous takes on popular comic strip characters from across the decades. His voluptuous if dizzy Sally Forth is on hand as well. 

There's lots of other things here such as "The Brave Nude World" originally done for Someday Comics and lots of wacky sexy sci-fi images like the one above which require no comment.  This isn't a collection for those who think comics are for children only. These are not those comics, these are comics for adults, admittedly in some cases adults with a singular focus. Wood's style (which truth told diminishes mightily as the years roll by in this collection) is so spare and clean and sleek that when he uses it for naughty purposes it still resonates with a shimmer less polished porn fails to achieve at all.

I'll let Wally Wood himself (or guys on his staff at least)  handle my usual closing.