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Mike Catron On TCJ’s Long Ago Coverage Of Wally Wood’s Passing
posted July 26, 2017
 

I beg to differ with your recollection in your column today that "Wally Wood's TCJ obit, for example, was 1-2 pages long instead of the 15 it might have been a dozen years later." Please allow me to set the record straight.

When Wood died in 1981, the Newswatch section of The Comics Journal #69 devoted four pages to Wood, double your estimate, but that was just to get the news out. We followed up in The Comics Journal #70 with a 15-page memoir of Wood by his former assistant, Bhob Stewart, "There Are Good Guys and There Are Bad Guys." So, the 15 pages you might have expected had Wood died "a dozen years later" (would that it could have been so), was actually 19 pages contemporaneously.

I am currently working on The Life and Legend of Wallace Wood Volume 2, which will contain both the original obituary (which I wrote) and Bhob's update of his piece -- and a lot more besides. Volume 1 was nominated for an Eisner Award this year. The book was originally Bhob's project, and it has been both my privilege and my duty to the late Mr. Stewart to honor him and the tremendous amount of work he put into this book by bringing it to fruition for him.

Tom Spurgeon Responds: Thanks, Mike. I'll give you the four pages over two -- my apologies -- but I don't count the memoir as proper obituary coverage, just as I don't count memorial pieces and reminiscences that are done now as that kind of coverage. It's a good piece, though. Wood was not the best choice; my bad.