Only two Wood drawings, on a vintage page from Witzend. But what images! This is sequentially the third World of the Wizard King board, from the very first installment as printed in 1968.
These scenes recur in several versions of the Tolkein-esque fantasy that Wally Wood created and obviously held particularly close to his heart during the last two decades of his life. Wood depicts the bustling and idyllic village of the Peepl, a civilized but warlike clan of Elves, and contrasts it with the foreboding and nightmarish fortress of the evil god, Horrob. That's the head of Immortal Aristos, the deposed and assassinated King of the World, up there on the spike (not looking terribly immortal, at that).
I prefer this earlier and more hallucinatory variation of The Wizard King to the graphic novel. I think this is some of the artist's loveliest and least diluted draftsmanship. Here, we can really see what his rendering looks like without the obfuscation of input from assistants, or without having to squint through a slick and commercial bag of tricks like Zip-a-Tone or Craftint.
And here we can also glimpse the pure and simple love of drawing that Wood never really lost, in spite of his legendary clashes with publishers and personal career setbacks, vividly represented from a period before the onset of his debilitating health problems.
I'd like to publicly thank Belgian collector Gino Vernimmen for a smooth and pleasant transaction, which let me add this easily to my collection.
