Wallace Wood was born on June 17, 1927 in Menahga, Minnesota. Primarily a self-taught artist, Wood briefly attended both the Minneapolis School of Art and Burne Hogath's Cartoonists and Illustrators School in New York City (later to become the School of Visual Arts). He entered the comic book field in 1949, freelancing for various publishers including Avon and Ziff-Davis, among others. He is perhaps best known for his work with E.C. in general and their science fiction line in particular. His solid composition and lush inking were perfectly presented in titles like WEIRD SCIENCE and WEIRD FANTASY, which required a constant parade of spaceships, monsters, and luscious women in skintight space suits. Wood also worked on E.

C.'s horror and war titles, such as THE VAULT OF HORROR and TWO-FISTED TALES, and at the same time was a regular contributor to MAD. Like Will Elder, Wood was a master of MAD's "cluttered" sight gags and joke techniques. He continued to contribute to MAD for 12 years, even after its transformation to a black-and-white magazine. In the 1960s and '70s Wood also worked for Marvel and DC, providing pencils and inks for various characters, and broke new ground with his alternative proto-zine Witzend. Suffering from various health problems in his later years, he took his own life on November 3, 1981 in Los Angeles.