For those of you unfamiliar with WITZEND, it was a publication edited by Wally Wood that saw print sporadically from the mid ‘60s to the mid ‘80s. The Wood-edited issues often begin with a short editorial diatribe, usually with a surprisingly uncensored feel, in which Wood would decry the major comics publishers and bash away at the notion of shying from “obscene“ content.
One could easily imagine Wood speaking with his fellow comic artist friends, saying things like “If we all just contribute to this, and we all don’t censor ourselves, we could actually change how these things are seen and done.” In many ways that idealism paid off, and in fact that imagined statement did turn out in many ways to be true, in part solely for the art that was created.
Wood was friends with artist Gray Morrow and respected his work greatly. Wood seemingly requested something without limits from Morrow, and Morrow replied with intensity. Part of the fun of Witzend was that the likes of Gray Morrow, Frank Frazetta, Wood himself, and more, would try and impress each other, and I can only imagine the impact this piece had on Morrow's contemporaries - a sublime slice of inter-dimensional sorcery and witch-hunts, titled “The Journey” …
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