WALLACE ALLEN WOOD was born on June 17, 1927 in Menahga, Minnesota to Alma and Max Wood. His older brother, Glen, and he would move regularly with their parents. His father was a Lumberjack and would relocate to wherever there was work. Wally began drawing at an early age, and while he was encouraged by his mother, his father fervently disapproved. Art was not a manly profession. But with the support of his mother he kept drawing, copying his favorite strips in the newspapers and developing his craft.

Not long after his graduation in 1944 from West High in Minneapolis he joined the Merchant Marine. He was now able to visit new and exotic places, and traveled to the Philippines, Guam, South America and Italy. He continued to draw when he was off duty, creating cartoons of the life of the serviceman.

In 1946 he was discharged, but instead of looking for a job in the private sector, he enlisted in the Paratroopers and became a member of the 11th Airborne Division. He served for two years in that service, most of it in occupied Japan.

After his discharge from the Paratroopers, he returned to Minneapolis where he spent a short time as a student at the Minneapolis School of Art. The school didn't offer him an education in what he wanted to learn, so he decided to leave and moved to New York. He soon got a job lettering "The SPIRIT" for Will Eisner for $3.00 a page. Now in the world of professional comics, he met other artists in the field. From them he learned of the Cartoonist and Illustrators School. With help from his mother, he managed the tuition and began taking classes. But his talent was already far beyond that of most students and within a year he dropped out.

At the school he met another young cartoonist, Harry Harrison. Later Harrison would become a noted science fiction writer, but in 1948 he teamed up with Wally to draw comics. They began to sell stories to Victor Fox, a major publisher, and soon set up a studio in Manhattan where they could work. Their stories also appeared in other company's titles, and in 1949, they received their first assignment from EC comics.

In August of 1950 Wood married a woman named Tatjana Weintraub whom he had met at the Illustrator's School Christmas party. Wanting to have private time with his new wife, he closed the studio in Manhattan and moved to Queens where he now would work at home. Harrison continued to work on his own in comics until he decided to write science fiction, and would become quite successful at it.

Wally enlisted the help of an agent, Rinaldo Epworth, who would sell his work to FOX and paid him $15.00 a page. It was at Epworth’s office that Wally met Joe Orlando, who was striving to break into the comics industry. Wood liked Orlando's quick and pencil, and soon they set up a new studio together near Lincoln Center. They would share the studio with Harry Harrison and Sid Check.

The Orlando-Wood team put out a copious amount of work, and had graduated from the romance titles to something they were more interested in: Science Fiction. Their work filled the pages of many of Avon's Sci-fi titles, but they would take any assignment they could get. In 1951 Wood became a regular artist for EC, contrubuting art to their crime, suspense, horror, humor, war and of course science fiction titles. He would eventually bring in Orlando and Al Williamson to the EC stable as well.

To be continued...