Monday 25 July 2011

Wood You Believe It


I doubt it's just me, so I gues we've all pondered what we'd do with a huge lottery win. After securing a nice home and having a nice holiday in New York and the wider US, I always thought I'd set up a comic company devoted to quality products. One of the first things I'd do would be issue a collection of all Wally Woods's EC sci-fi stories (followed by a similar Al Williamson volume, then a Wood collection of his other EC work and yet another with his other short stories for other publishers).

While not exactly quite the same thing, I'm pretty excited by the news that IDW will be following their Dave Stevens Rocketeer and Walt Simonson Thor Artist Editions with a Wally Wood volume. Shot directly from the original art, these volumes represent as close as possible a reproduction of the original art as you'll ever get, corrections and all. Some of these corrections can be distracting but are nevertheless fascinating insights into the artists' work. At £75ish, I'm gonna have to save my pennies but what a collection...

...and I'm kind of tempted by the Romita Spider-Man edition too...

4 comments:

dave said...

Lovely stuff there Nigel, but these pieces just remind me of how terrible the lettering was in those old books, and how distracting it was to read. I can't deal with Commando library books and old IPC pre 2000ad for the same reason.

Nige Lowrey said...

I know what you mean about the IPC and other British comic stuff, they seemed very impersonal because of the typed lettering...but somehow it doesn't bother me with the EC stuff, don't know why though...

Rol said...

Naturally, I wish I could afford the Romita book... But my appreciation of Wally Wood has grown recently too.

Nige Lowrey said...

Wally Wood has always been there in the background of my mind too but it's only the past few years that i've got into his stuff...although he hated the fact that fans always preferred it, his EC stuff is still his nicest looking stuff...if you're looking to sample stuff, stay away from later stuff like his Wizard King books and THUNDER Agents but stuff like Cannon, his inking on Kirby's Sky Masters or his few Daredevil issues are all worth looking at...