In 1976, a 29-year-old fan named Richard Pryor approached Wally Wood with an offer to publish a signed portfolio of new drawings by him, targeting what was then a popular comic book collector's market. The artist declined, but Richard was persistent, and eventually he succeeded in stoking Wood's enthusiasm for the project. The result was the release of the Weird Sex-Fantasy portfolio the following year, limited to 2000 signed and numbered copies. Each featured a plate signed by Wood, and the folio was available at cons and through snail mail order.

Maybe it was the subject matter that won Wood over. The proposed umbrella concept combined two of his favorite things, sex and science fiction, and even managed to parody his renowned EC science fiction art in the bargain. Woody was often chagrined to be told that his EC stuff was the best work he'd done, with the correspondingly insulting implication that he'd drawn nothing better in the interim. It must've been more than a little perversely satisfying to him, on some level, to poke a bit of fun at the personal albatross of his own achievements.

This is a stat which has been lovingly rendered and hued with delicate watercolors, but not original art in the literal sense. Regardless, this delightful piece was personally handled and verified by Richard Pryor in 2014 as nothing less than the one-of-a-kind color comp that was hand-colored by Wally Wood himself as his suggestion to Pryor for what a full-color slipcase for the portfolio might look like. This hung on Richard's walls at one time (see the accompanying photo), and the matte that came with this when I bought it is his original.

This is immaculately clean and beautiful. It's as close as anybody will ever come to owning the original cover art for the portfolio, which met with a bizarre accident when the artist's cat threw up over it. Wood promised to clean up that art and send it along to Richard, but never did. Presumably, as his health declined and events in his life took a tragic turn in his last few years, he had other things to worry about.

I'm not sure if this is more accurately described as a prelim or a comp or as a color guide or what, but I'm uncomfortable with calling it the latter. But I cherish it, both for itself and its historical significance from an era when a startling number of long-standing comic book artists were giants, and expressed themselves with unique and idiosyncratic cartoon styles that came out of their ids and personalities.

I'd like to tell everybody what a nice guy Richard Pryor is, and to thank him publicly for giving generously of his time and sharing my curiosity and enthusiasm and helping me to figure out exactly what I bought here. Richard sells some neat things on eBay as seller "nostalgiabooks," some of it Wood-related, so go and buy something from him.

I've owned dozens of published Wally Wood pages over the years that I no longer have, most if not all pretty spectacular. But I'll never, ever part with this.

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