I've been looking for this story since I started buying original art but didn't think it would ever surface. Though I started buying comics in 1980, I also had access to a box of my cousin's abandoned (or perhaps just undefended?) comics from a decade prior. At that time, horror comics were all the rage, with DC titles like House of Mystery offering a tamer alternative to the "creepy, with a plot twist" short stories that had filled EC titles a generation earlier.

70s Marvel went heavily into monster books but pursued the "thriller anthology" market less avidly. As a result, this issue of the short-lived Tower of Shadows was one of the few Marvel titles in my cousin's horror-heavy collection. But it turns out to be a banger, with a lead story by Roy Thomas and an early Barry (not yet officially "Windsor") Smith and two backups, one of which was both written and fully illustrated by Wally Wood. Each story's opening page depicted the artist himself as the "horror host."

In this tale, a stone gargoyle comes to life and whisks a crippled teen from our world to a fantasy realm. There, he is not only able to walk but is also much taller and stronger than the locals. He helps a fairy princess defeat an evil wizard and, upon returning home, is no longer lame. A classic wish fulfillment story!

Except for Sam Rosen's lettering, it's 100% Wally Wood, with an excellent sense of light and shadow, full backgrounds on every panel, and a variety of camera angles. He was clearly enjoying the work. It predates Marvel's immensely successful Conan era by six months, making it a vanguard of the fantasy/barbarian craze that Marvel and DC both rode through the 1970s.

Wally Wood was very passionate about fairy stories rather than sci-fi at this point in his career, culminating in his "Wizard King" work of the late 1970s. This story is essentially an early version of that pre-Elfquest world, populated by pint-sized "Woodlings." It's not difficult to imagine the spirits of Hal Foster and JRR Tolkien informing the proceedings.

When I started collecting original art, this story immediately came to mind. I didn't remember that it was by Wally Wood, didn't know his stature in the collecting community, and didn't immediately realize what a tall order it could be to seek one of his few Marvel pages. I found no record of its previous sale online.

Discussions in the CAF community educated me, but I was still floored when the first page of this story finally came up on Heritage Auction in January 2025. Could it be mine? Nope, it went for over $30,000. But two more pages from the same story were offered in the following quarterly auction. I set my sights on this one and found it barely within my means. Quest concluded! Achievement unlocked: Wally Wood.

Social/Sharing