Wally Wood's The Complete Cannon
By Leroy Douresseaux
January 23, 2004 - 14:30
Fantagraphics Books
Writer(s): Wallace Wood
Penciller(s): Wallace Wood
Cover Artist(s): Wallace Wood
ISBN: 1-56097-425-7
$19.95, soft cover
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Every now and then, it's important to remind comic book fans about the man many folks consider the greatest comic book artist ever. Wallace E. Wood or Wally Wood, as he was better known, was not the most talented or skilled writer, artist, or cartoonist. His style was also an amalgamation of many influences he'd picked up over the years as either a fan or colleague of better cartoonists. However, how Wood put pictures on paper eventually defined the way comic book stories should be drawn.
From 1970 to 1973, Wood produced CANNON, a single page, Sunday style newspaper strip for OVERSEAS WEEKLY, a newspaper for U.S. military bases around the world. It was a kind of spy strip with a manly hero named John Cannon as the lead. Cannon was the "perfect agent" because he'd been brainwashed by communists then recaptured by the C.I.A. and re-brainwashed. The strip featured lots of hard-hitting action, explosions, and gunplay, but most importantly, for the soldier's, lots of voluptuous pinup girls who spent the majority of their strip appearances either semi-naked or naked.
THE COMPLEAT CANNON is the first book to publish all the existing strips in one collection. Cannon isn't Wood's best work, but it's a good example of what he could do as an illustrator, designer, and one-man production studio. All things considered, fans of Woody will take what they can get, and editor Bill Pearson and Fantagraphics have produced a very nice gift volume for Wally Wood's admirers.
[INCONSEQUENTIAL, NOTEWORTHY, IMPORTANT, ESSENTIAL]
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