Wallace Wood Presents: Shattuck by Wallace Wood

Wallace Wood Presents: Shattuck Reviews

• 
  Dan Schwent

  Wallace Wood Presents Shattuck contains the original art of every Shattuck strip that was produced.
  
  I picked this off the unread pile for Western Comics Month. I grabbed this during the same Fantagraphics sale that netted me Cannon. It has similar origins to Cannon in that it was produced for a newspaper geared toward overseas servicemen. Merle Shattuck is a gunslinging cowboy. He goes from being a cowhand to a sheriff, back to a cowhand, and finally a bank robber before the strip abruptly ends. The formula of the strip starts as "boobs, gunplay, boobs" but the strip gets more serious toward the end and the formula becomes "gunplay, boobs, gunplay."
  
  The division of labor on this isn't quite clear. Nicola Cuti writes some of the strips and Wood writes others. Wood does layouts and lettering and inks some of the strips. Young Howard Chaykin and young Dave Cockrum do the pencils. Jack Abel does the inks on Cockrum's work. Syd Shores was involved somehow and Alan Kupperberg drew one panel. Like I said, the division of labor is muddy.
  
  Even though Chaykin and Cockrum were barely out of diapers, the art is great. I normally like my Westerns looking grittier than this but it really works for me. They prove to be equally adept at rendering western towns, sleazy gunfighters, and the many, many women in states of undress.
  
  Picking this up from the unread pile, I wondered if it would be as dirty as Cannon. It was. Cockrum said the object of the strip was getting the women out of their clothes as soon as possible. Since Shattuck frequented a whore house in the early half of the strip, it wasn't difficult. One thing I found hilarious is that the only places I saw corrections done with whiteout were on breasts. I have to think Wally was saying "Damn it, Chaykin, I said perky!"
  
  I was a little disappointed that the strip ended when it did. Merle's balls deep in a back robbery and Karen is the hostage of another robber. For a breast oriented adventure strip, things Merle's character has a pretty good arc, going from cowhand to sheriff and back again before falling in with some bank robbers.
  
  Wallace Wood Presents Shattuck is the best T&A oriented western comic I've ever read. Four out of five stars.
• 
  Granit Hysiqi

  This was a long-lost comic strip by Wood that's been slightly re-edited by an amazing team of artists and I have to say that they did an amazing job. This remains Wood's rarest strip, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to read it.
• 
  James

  Written in the 70's for US troops overseas, this western has more sex, bondage and violence than you would see in strips published stateside and a good example of so-called gentlemen's comics of the period. Extremely sexist, woman are there to be used or conquered, interesting from a historical perspective with a mediocre story and some interesting artwork.
• 
  Rick Ray

  Shattuck collects Wally Wood's short-lived newspaper strip. It's a western themed comic featuring the gunslinger Merle Shattuck who beds many women, shoots up corrupt lawmen and gets into a series of high octane adventures. Shattuck begins as a cowhand who turns sheriff to suit his needs for adventure, but eventually turns bank robber. The strip ends abruptly due to the circulation ending, but largely the strip followed a base formula of showing off women with ample features and lots of violence in the form of Old West gunplay. It's a bit of a tiring trend by the end and the casual sexism and overall sleaziness can be a but overbearing. Still, fans of Wood's work will find this as an interesting novelty item, though I personally don't think it holds up to the same level as
  Cannon, a very similar strip in terms of the formula. It's enjoyable in a way, but nowhere near the best work by Wood.
• 
  Nate

  An unfinished adult western comic strip from 1972. It was created for Overseas Weekly, a periodical whose audience was primarily U.S. military members. There are western tropes galore: machismo, shootouts, sheriffs, outlaws, naked ladies of the night, you know the drill. The nakedness seems to be the main draw in the first strips but it becomes more about the title character’s journey (though the gunplay of course remains). The writing is terrible, but the art, presented in its original form with whiteout and notes, is good. It's actually a little unclear who did what. Wood plotted, produced layouts, and did some inking. Nicola Cuti, Dave Cockrum, and Howard Chaykin (all fairly new to the industry at the time) contributed. There are no credits on the strips, however, and the art looks consistent throughout. Bit of a puzzle I suppose.
• 
  Tommy Grooms

  Shattuck never aspired to be more than oversexed genre fiction, and if the name “Wallace Wood” wasn’t attached to it I never would have picked it up, but regardless of the subject matter the stories are expertly plotted and meticulously rendered. The presentation of original art, wite-out and all, is just a pleasure to admire. The plot of the earliest strips are thinly pornographic (exercises in getting women out of their clothes as fast as possible), but just as Wood ended the series I found myself invested in Shattuck as a character, and would have kept reading for the story alone. This back contains a brief history of the impressive creators mentored under Wood during Shattuck’s publication history.
• 
  Sezer Turgay

  Çizgi roman efsanesi Wally Wood'un kayıp işlerinden biri olan Shattuck sonunda gün yüzüne çıkarılıp okuyucuyla buluşturuldu.Adam o kadar fazla çizgi roman çizmiş ki daha nice isleri kayıptır kim bilir?
  
  Shattuck,Merle Shattuck adlı çapkın kovboyun hikayesini anlatıyor.Denizötesinde (overseas'ı biraz kötü çevirince) görev yapan askerler için hazırlanan bir dergide yayınlanan bu kısa öyküler yeterince askeri eleştiri,çıplaklık içeriyor.Wally Wood bu seride genç Howard Chaykin ve Dave Cockrum'a kalem tutma fırsatı verip büyük ihtimal kariyerlerinin her anında yanlarında oluyor bu seriyle birlikte.Tek eksisi maalesef hikaye tam en heyecanlı noktalardan birinde yarım kalıyor.Buna benzer bir is arıyorsanız tamamlanmış olan ve aynkonseptteki Cannon'u öneririm.
• 
  Ryan

  A nice presentation by Fantagraphics adds a little value to this collection of comic strips created and (I think) inked by Wally Wood. Pencils in the early strips are confusing because Howard Chaykin was learning still and couldn't consistently draw the main character. But things get better when Dave Cockrum becomes the penciller. The plots and characters are so one-dimensional that it's no surprise this was forgotten. But the art and salacious nature of the content makes it a fun, quick read.
• 
  Morgan

  what the hell
• 
  Jesse Grubbs

  3.75/5.0
• 
  Quentin Wallace

  Im a big fan of Wally Wood's art, going all the way back to the EC Days. This was one of his rare strips published only in military newspapers, in this case back in 1972. Cannon was a spy/military story, which I liked. This one, Shattuck, is a western, and even though I'm a big Western fan the story here was very unpolished.
  
  The art is nice, as one would expect from a Wally Wood book. There isn't quite as much nudity in this one, which is too bad as Wood really can draw the female form. However, the story itself just jumped around too much. The main character, Shattuck, was very hard to characterize, and not in a good way. I never understood if he was a brave cowboy or more of a no good outlaw.
  
  While women in this one and in Cannon do seem to lose their clothes often, this book had one scene which was just too misogynistic to overlook. A prostitute at a brother goes to check on Shattuck, who's been injured. She's naked of course. We hear a scream, then she comes back down and says hes fine, and also horny. Later, as Shattuck is leaving, the same woman meets him and tells him he's just the kind of man she's been waiting for all of her life. She knew it as soon as he raped her. Whaaaaa?!?!?!? And women had their clothes ripped off and were carried away for who knows what several times. I understand this was supposed to be a rowdy, mens adventures type story but it got a little hard to overlook.
  
  The strip was so rare the art is reproduced from the actual handdrawn art without much doctoring, so it's rough, but still well done.
  
  So overall, if you are a big fan of Wally West, especially his Cannon series, this is something you'd probably want to check out for the art and it's historical significance. The story and characters, however, could use some work.
• 
  Jacob

  Public library copy.
  
  Great art and adult western storytelling via comic strip format, published for oversea audiences.