Saturday, June 30, 2012

Wally's Wood God!


Somewhere many years ago, I got hold of Wally Wood's self-published over-sized albums collecting both his Cannon and Sally Forth comic strips produced for the military overseas market. Both strips are notorious for their violence and especially for their sexual content, most notably lots and lots of patented Wally Wood-style nudity. The above image showing Sally Forth bathing while a rather familiar figure watches overhead is very much an image which evokes memories. I explored that similarity here before.




Frank Frazetta's fantastic image of the Ape Man, seen from the back seeing a grand hidden empire before him is arguably my favorite image of the character all time.


That image though is almost certainly inspired by this panel from Hal Foster's comic strip run on the character many many years before. And it's the ultimate source for the image Wood uses in his Sally Forth story.

Here's a Sally Forth four-week sequence (gathered from various sources)featuring "Starzan" and his amorous interactions with Wally Wood's pulchritudinous heroine.





We skip a few weeks and...



In the 90's Fantagraphics collected the Sally Forth material in eight issues, each sporting a new cover by a different artist. Below is Frank Thorne's contribution for issue six of the run, a wild image of "Starzan" and the object of his...ahem...affection. Thorne is one of the few artists who seems to me to be able to combine eroticism and pure fun in his images like Wood could do so very well.



And finally a parting shot from Wood himself.


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1 comment:

  1. ...How exactly did " this " Sally Forth transmute in the constantly chocolate bunny-ear swiping , suburbanite , " Smirky Forth " of my Sunday newspaper ?????????
    I ask yez . Damn you , Ronald Reagan ! Or Tip O'Neill...want to play both sideds of the aisle , after al:-) .

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