"Sex and science fiction have always been
two of my favorite things."
- Woody
Published in a signed and numbered edition of 2000 by Collector's Press in 1977, this was a series of images that were inevitable from the mind and inkwell of Wallace Wood. Each print is a large 12" x 16" and his signature is on the first plate.
Woody sums it up in his introduction:
November, 1977
Dear Friends,
In the few words allotted to me, I would just like to say that you who purchased this portfolio have shown yourself to be a person of rare discernment and taste, not just a thrill-seeker (God knows you can find plenty of explicit stuff on any newsstand and without shelling out big bucks for it). I would venture to say that your interest in it is the same as mine. Sex and science fiction have always been my two favourite things. And they have always been sort of mutually exclusive – rather, until recently SF has excluded sex – so the news that Wally Wood has done a SF/Sex Portfolio got to you, right? I think the time is right – the world is ready for some frankly erotic art – and stories. It almost makes me wish I hadn’t drawn it, so I could see it for the first time myself. (I’m a Wally Wood fan, too.)
I confess that I still feel I’m exposing myself in public, but I’ve come to realise that one is doing that every time one opens his mouth or puts anything down on paper. Once someone said to me. ‘Don’t you realize that little boys are going to take this stuff into the bathroom and jerk off?’ I’m still proud of my answer, ‘Let ’em find out why God gave ’em hands!’
Some years ago Screw magazine described me as an ‘old time leftwinger and one of the horniest men alive.’ I take exception to the first part of that, but the second pleased me very much, as I have always believed ‘All the good guys are horny’. And this was before Richard Nixon ... really, fourteen years?
I'm a fan of Woody's erotic work. He had a knack for blending the perverse with the naive in a unique way. I like how the portfolio spans the SF timeline from Ming the Merciless to Darth Vader.
ReplyDeletePossibly in an attempt to leave no sci-fi fan disappointed!
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