Number 1492: The Wallace Wood acolyte

In the early seventies I picked up issues of Charlton’s Midnight Tales for the work of Wayne Howard. Wayne had once been one of Wallace Wood’s assistants. Derivative or not, I liked his work, and thought the early issues of Midnight Tales had fun stories with a sense of humor. I found out later that Wayne was African-American, and that after casting about for work in the era, getting jobs here and there, finally left comics in 1982. On the Prodigy bulletin boards in the early nineties someone who knew Wayne personally told me that he was a survivalist who lived a spare existence and had lots of guns. Wayne Howard died in 2007.

Booksteve had a posting a couple of days ago with a story by Howard. You can find it at Four Color Shadows.

This story from Midnight Tales #18, “The Iron Man,” I found on the Heritage Auctions website. It sold for $262.90 in September, 2010. It shows the care that the artist put into his panels. The photographs of the pages were a bit blurry so I darkened them and sharpened the images a bit.