Wally Wood from Witzend Complete Collection - Woodwork by Wallace Wood Hardcover

Book Synopsis

The definitive collection from the creator and publication that inspired the underground comix movement.

Hall of Fame comics creator Wallace Wood's revolutionary, self-published Witzend (often spelled in all lower case) has always been hard to define--the birth of the pro-zine, underground, independent... Whatever you call it, Wood's witzend was a mid-'60s milestone event that represented all of the loftiest Fine Art goals of the Underground Movement including art-for-art's-sake, freedom from censorship, and creator rights. The vast majority of the underground comix movement creators were directly inspired by the EC Comics and Mad work of Wallace Wood and Harvey Kurtzman (as well as psychedelics). Until R. Crumb's later and eminently notable Zap Comix, no underground had the impact of witzend which combined top-flight comics pros like Wood, Frazetta, Steranko and Ditko side-by-side with up-and-coming Undergrounders like Art Spiegelman (Maus) and Vaughn Bode (Cheech Wizard)

Review Quotes

"...including the ULTRA RARE Wood EC story, 'Spawn of Venus.' Originally created for EC's cancelled EC 3-D Classics #3 in 1953, the masterpiece went unpublished until EC/MAD publisher Bill Gaines gave Wood his blessing to premier it in Witzend #6 (1969). In the decades since... the layered [3-D original art] version ran in IDW's [expensive, out of print] Wood Artist Edition... but... has not run in other EC collections. All of which means Wood's 'Spawn of Venus' may still be the rarest EC comic-book story of all and, it is by EC's biggest fan-favorite star talent. ...Fantagraphics' Best of Witzend [isn't comparable as it] only has 42 pages of Wood [while] this new ultimate Wood collection has 160 pages of Wood." -- First Comics News (June 18, 2024)

"Witzend; What is this?" -- Pablo Picasso, legendary fine artist

"Wally Wood may be the top comic book artist for a unique style. With Witzend Woody expanded the borders of comic books wider and deeper than Marvel and DC." -- Steve Ditko, Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, and Mr. A creator

"Wood was very enamored of Tolkien and was reading Freud, so he began doing things that didn't have any place in what was then a far more rigid marketplace than exists now. It was really pure impulse, wanting to just make stuff that would be interesting to him. Since there wasn't a venue, he made one, which is not dissimilar to the impulse that got Raw to happen." -- Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus

"I'm a big Wally Wood fan. WITZ-END! I subscribed from the very first issue." -- Gene Simmons, KISS rockstar