Patrick Woodroffe

And now, for my 500th post…

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… I bring you a of ‘clip show‘ of sorts: excerpts from past entries of this blog, but with a slight twist. For, unlike your textbook clip show, I’ll be drawing from episodes you’re probably unfamiliar with. After all, while this is my 500th piece, this is our blog’s eight hundred and fortieth: quite enough of a tangle to get hopelessly disoriented in.

I have culled from the earliest days of WOT?, when we had precious few readers — each one precious! Five picks from the lot seems a reasonable ratio: neatly one per hundred.

While many of our posts from those days have since, one way or another, found their audience (or vice versa), these dispatches have languished in obscurity — deservedly or not, who can say?

Here they are, in chronological order and everything:

Unexpected Delights: John Severin, 1971-72 (Published on Jan. 5, 2018)

While it seems like everyone and their probation officer dig Severin, this look at Marvel’s ‘Picture Frame’ era got lost in the shuffle.

“Cartography of a nowhere-land”: Patrick Woodroffe at Warren (Published on Apr. 26, 2018)

This one was a gathering of English fantasy artist Patrick Woodroffe (1940-2014)’s covers for Warren Magazines. You may have seen his fabulous cover for Judas Priest’s 1976 LP Sad Wings of Destiny.

Free Inside Package: James Sturm’s The Cereal Killings (1992-95) (Published on June 10, 2018)

A love letter to one of my favourite series, sadly obscure. I’m still surprised and grateful that it got finished — and in such fine fashion.

Barracks Life With Le Sergent Laterreur (Published on June 23, 2019)

A truly singular concoction from the pages of Pilote at its 1970s peak. Honestly, you don’t need to read French to grasp its appeal.

Celebrity Car Crash Corner! (Published on Aug. 24, 2019)

A ghoulish and gloriously fitting backup feature for Pat Mills’ unhinged Death Race 2020 (1995-96, Roger Corman’s Cosmic Comics). I collected them all so you don’t have to!

Incidentally, this is all you’ll be seeing of me this month — it’s not a case of burnout: I’m just furiously cobbling together this year’s Hallowe’en Countdown, and that takes time. Thanks for your patience and loyalty, and see you in October!

-RG

“Cartography of a nowhere-land”: Patrick Woodroffe at Warren

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« That minuscule ogre on the throne
must be the King. What a peculiar little man. »

In 1978-79, the rightly-celebrated English fantasy artist Patrick James Woodroffe (b. Halifax, West Yorkshire, on October 27, 1940; d. May 10, 2014), fresh from his high-profile paperback (much Moorcock!) and album cover assignments (including Judas Priest’s splendid Sad Wings of Destiny), hired out his talented brush with Warren Publishing long enough to produce ten covers, a varied, eye-catching and often unusual lot. Let’s make the rounds, shall we?

1984_3A
« He isn’t a *bad* sort. He just lets his temperamental gonads get the best of him! » Using a laser rifle on a dragon? Hardly seems sporting, does it?

1984_4A

Creepy102A
Here we make the acquaintance of a memorably omnidextrous lepidopteran gunner. This is Creepy no. 102 (October, 1978). Read the entire issue here: https://archive.org/stream/warrencreepy-102/Creepy_102#page/n91/mode/2up

Galactic-Wars-ComixA
One of Warren’s post-Star Wars, all-reprint cash grabs of the era… but it’s got a Woodroffe cover.

Eerie98A
Eerie no. 98 (January, 1979) Likely the darkest of the set in terms of subject matter. Visually, it certainly brings to mind the visual vibe of John Carpenter’s They Live, still nearly a decade away.

BlacklightWoodroffeA
Interestingly, the piece has also made the rounds, in a modified version (flipped, for one thing), as a “black light” poster titled  « In the Name of the Law ». Speaking of the law, was the artist duly compensated?

1984_5A
Don’t mess with the Surly Smurf! This dusky scene is dated 1975, so it’s safe to assume it wasn’t created expressly for this publication. This is Warren’s 1984 no. 5 (February, 1979.) Aside from the usual sex fantasies and space operetta from the usual suspects, the issue holds a single nonpareil gem, Nicola Cuti’s  « I Wonder Who’s Squeezing Her Now? », gorgeously brought to life by Ernie Colón and Wally Wood. Bear with me, we’ll return to it in due time.

Creepy110A
« You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan. »  — Arthur Machen
With his second and final Creepy cover (no. 110, August, 1979), Woodroffe lifts the veil, and how, on a troubling closeup of a gleefully sinister Greek God of the Wild.

1984_7A
« Well, if that ain’t about the unfriendliest thing I’ve ever heard of… » 1984 no. 7 (August, 1979.)

1984_9A
Aw, missed your ride home. This is 1984 no. 9 (October, 1979.)

1984_10A
As it turns out, one couldn’t have picked a better artist to depict « the cumbrous hands of a deformed, spastic little twit », though he seems like a sweetheart, really. On this whimsical note ends our survey of Mr. Woodroffe’s Warren covers. This is also the last issue of 1984 under that title; it would leap a decade ahead to “1994” and carry on for another nineteen issues.

-RG