Wally’s World: The Brillant Life and Tragic Death of Wally Wood, the World’s 2nd Best Comic Book Artist

Wally’s World opens Halloween night, 1981, in a seedy world of pornographers and addicts, with a death by .44 magnum gunshot… This is no mystery club thriller but the true, dramatic illustrated biography of legendary cartoonist Wallace Wood. But his death, in semi-squalid surroundings and the wretched state of his body belie the glory that came before. Within the world of pop-art, Wood was revered as a rebel genius who inspired a generation, including "underground" artists Robert Crumb, Robert Williams and Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman. Wood rose to the pinnacle of pop-culture stardom as one of America’s top humorists at MAD magazine. Surviving McCarthy-era politics, Wood excelled as a cutting-edge science-fiction illustrator and mainstream regular of daring superhero deeds. The award-winning artist was sought out to collaborate with pop-art maestro Peter Max; noted filmmaker Ralph Bakshi; Harry Harrison, the Nebula Award winning author of the Charlton Heston sci-fi thriller, Soylent Green; Marvel comics creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; and Pulitzer Prize winner Jules Feiffer. But the star of the illustrated page was haunted by demons that tore him from his creative peaks to die an early death on the outskirts of Hollywood.