Wally Wood I

For a few years in the mid-Seventies, I worked for Wally Wood, the well-known comic artist and MAD magazine alumnus. Woody was more than an employer to me -- as a child, I learned to draw partly by copying his stuff out of old MAD paperbacks. He was, in a real sense, one of my heroes. Woody was a brilliant artist, a mediocre guitar player, a terrible businessman, a devoted gun fancier, a kind-hearted and generous man, an alcoholic, and a lover of science fiction and folk music. Not long after I married my first wife, Woody married her mother, Muriel. It was a joyful time, but it didn't last. Woody and Muriel broke up due, in my opinion, to his inability to face his growing health (and financial?) problems.

On these pages I want to share some of the things he taught me about art, as well as some of the great delight he brought me -- and so many others -- through his own "wood work."

I cared for Woody -- and I miss him.