Edited and published by Bill Pearson on an irregular schedule spanning decades, the alternative comic book witzend featured contributions by both newcomers to comics, leading comic book artists and professional illustrators. The title was printed in lower-case. With the emphasis on graphic stories, the magazine is generally regarded as a forerunner of the underground comics movement of the late 1960s. It was launched in 1966 by the writer-artist Wallace Wood shortly after Richard Kyle coined the term "graphic story" (1964-65) and Bhob Stewart, during a panel discussion at the second New York comic book convention, coined the term "underground comics."
In 1965, when the illustrator Dan Adkins began working at the Wood Studio, he showed Wood pages he had been creating for his planned comics-oriented publication, Outlet. This inspired Wood to become an editor-publisher, and he began assembling art and stories for a magazine he titled et cetera. A front cover paste-up with the et cetera logo was prepared, but when Wood learned of another magazine with a similar title, there was a last-minute title change.
Wood published the debut issue of witzend in the summer of 1966, with a statement of "no policy" and a desire to give his friends in the comics field a creative detour from the formulaic industry mainstream.
In the introduction, Wood announced his plan: "This first issue may be a bit misleading. It is a comic book -- and it is not. Neither is it a Science Fiction, Fantasy, Monster, Satire or Girlie Book. It is a platform, a vehicle, for any idea in any form." The debut issue displayed stories and art by Adkins, Reed Crandall, Frank Frazetta, Jack Gaughan, Archie Goodwin, Roy G. Krenkel, Ralph Reese, Angelo Torres, Al Williamson and Wood himself. The next three issues featured work by Richard Bassford, Roger Brand, Crandall, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Bill Elder , Richard "Grass" Green, Harvey Kurtzman, Don Martin, Gray Morrow, Warren Sattler, Art Spiegelman and Bhob Stewart.
With witzend 4, Wood began a serialization of his epic fantasy, "The World of the Wizard King." These installments of illustrated prose fiction were co-authored with Pearson. Shifting from illustrated text to a comics format, Wood continued the storyline in his later graphic novel, published in two editions (one b&w, one color) -- The Wizard King (1978) and The King of the World (Les Editions du Triton, 1978).
After the fourth issue, Wood sold witzend to Pearson "for the sum of $1.00," and the Pearson-edited issues continued to explore new avenues with contributions from Vaughn Bode, Eisner, Jeff Jones, Wood, Bernie Wrightson and others. Pearson also assembled theme issues -- Good Girls (diverse drawings of women in issue 13) and a non-comics issue profiling W.C. Fields (issue 9).
A critical survey of the magazine, "Wood at His witzend" by Rick Spanier, appears in Bhob Stewart's biographical anthology, Against the Grain: Mad Artist Wallace Wood (TwoMorrows, 2003). Designer-typographer Spanier once edited a similar graphic story publication, Picture Story Magazine, requested by the Museum of Modern Art for its collection. After analyzing all 13 issues of witzend and fitting it into the context of alternative publishing of the period, Spanier concluded that witzend's "salient point, that comic artists were entitled to more control and ownership of their own work, would eventually be recognized by the publishers of comic books, but it is hard to argue that witzend itself was a key factor in that development. Like so many other visionary endeavors, it may simply have been ahead of its time."
External links
Witzend Index
Witzend art by Bill Pearson
