Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jun 17, 2024 | 1 comment

A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE in 13 SPLASH PAGES…

By PETER BOSCH

When you think of Wallace Wood (born June 17, 1927) during the EC Comics era, it is usually for the spectacular science-fiction stories he illustrated. However, greatly overlooked are the amazing tales he was drawing in their war comics, Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales. Like Jack Davis, George Evans, Harvey Kurtzman, and the team of John Severin and Bill Elder, Wood was one of the regular artists on the two series.

Frontline Combat #15 (Jan. 1954)

Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales featured exceptional stories written by Kurtzman, covering wars from before the time of Christ to the Korean War. And, always, the stories focused on the humanity of the people fighting them. Quite a number of these were based on historical events and many were assigned to the great pencil-and-ink work of Wood. Below are nine of those magnificent splash pages (and, just to note, the rest of the story pages were equally incredible!). In the same vein, accompanying them are four highly-detailed portrayals that Wood intended as samples of a new Sunday newspaper comic page, This Is the Week to Remember…, which never came to pass, unfortunately.

All art below by Wood and all EC pages written by Kurtzman:

Two-Fisted Tales #22 (July-Aug. 1951)

Frontline Combat #2 (Sept.-Oct. 1951)

Two-Fisted Tales #25 (Jan.-Feb. 1952)

Two-Fisted Tales #26 (Mar.-Apr. 1952)

Frontline Combat #6 (May-June 1952)

Two-Fisted Tales #27 (May-June 1952)

Frontline Combat #8 (Sept.-Oct. 1952)

Two-Fisted Tales #31 (Jan.-Feb. 1953)

Two-Fisted Tales #32 (Mar.-Apr. 1953)

—

MORE

— The TOP 13 WALLY WOOD EC Stories — RANKED. Click here.

— 13 COVERS: A WALLY WOOD Birthday Salute. Click here.

—

13th Dimension contributor-at-large PETER BOSCH’s first book, American TV Comic Books: 1940s-1980s – From the Small Screen to the Printed Page, was published by TwoMorrows. He is currently at work on a sequel, about movie comics. Peter has written articles and conducted celebrity interviews for various magazines and newspapers. He lives in Hollywood.