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BooksIllustration

Wally Wood: Galaxy Art And Beyond by Roger Hill (book review).

Wallace Wood is one of those rare breed of artists who worked from cartoonist to illustrator to comicbook artist. Oddly, his work for the SF ‘Galaxy’ magazine hasn’t been collected, as far as I know, into a volume until I came across ‘Wally Wood: Galaxy Art And Beyond’ by Roger Hill recently, even though it was printed 5 years ago. Getting a copy might be a little tougher.

Between 1962-1968, he provided over 200 interior illustrations and several covers. In a poll, he came third to Frank Kelly Freas and Ed ‘Emsh’ Emshwiller. It would be interesting to see similar books of their work for ‘Galaxy’ to draw (sic) comparison.

Wood’s illustrations were mostly pen and ink and wash to provide some different shades. No wonder he went wild when the duo-tone paper was available and a little water would provide dark or light tones to his illustrations. Texture is important for those who work in black and white because it gives depth. You only have to look at the black and white work in the Warren and Marvel magazines to recognise that need.

Seeing the pictures in date order, it’s interesting to see how Wood’s art developed. Undoubtedly, he was working to a brief or to the stories, like Pohl and Kornbluth’s ‘Wolfbane’ and Robert Sheckley’s ‘Time Killer’ and their needs but was slowly letting loose. There were several other stories he did multiple pictures to as well, hence my comment in the second paragraph, and extends to whether they did a similar thing for other stories.

There are a couple unused cover designs included as well so you get to see everything here. Based off the year of release, I suspect most Wallace Wood fans have got this book already. If you’ve missed out, don’t leave it too long before grabbing your copy.

GF Willmetts

May 2021

(pub: IDW, 2016. 168 page illustrated medium hardback. Price: I pulled a copy for £50.00 (UK) but it is rare. ISBN: 978-1-61377-184-6)

check out website: www.idwpublishing.com

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

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