WALLACE WOOD'S JEKYLL & HYDE

This is the second of several comic book adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", usually shortened to "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (the first was Gilberton's CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED in 1947). It was published under the title A STAR PRESENTATION #3 (Fox, May 1950). It was a one-shot, preceded by MY SECRET ROMANCE and followed by SPECTACULAR STORIES. It was reprinted in STARTLING TERROR TALES #10 (Star, May 1952) and THIS IS SUSPENSE #23 (Charlton, February 1955). The inside front cover splash page was removed in both reprints.

Cover art by L.B. Cole.

The script writer for the adaptation is unknown. Wallace Wood drew the cover and interior art, including the 3-page filler story, "The Repulsive Dwarf". Over the course of his career, Wood often cited Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff and Will Eisner as his major influences. It is easy to see that his Eisner influence shows through the most in this strip.

Cover art by Ted Galindo.

Wood was 22-years-old when he drew the story while working at Fox Comics in 1949. In THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF WALLACE WOOD by Bhob Stewart, et al (Fantagraphics, 2016), Wood's collaborator Harry Harrison recalled working for the shady publisher, Victor Fox:

"The art director would say, 'Well, yeah, this is great stuff but we don't pay very much. Know what I mean? I think the rate at Fox was $23 per page for ten-page stories. And while he was talking, he'd slip you a note saying something to the effect that they also expected kickbacks of $5 a page. This made a big difference to us in the rates, of course. But all these guys took kickbacks, and if you didn't go along with it, you wouldn't get any work...We would slide in this ten-page pile of crap with a real good splash page for the first page on top. He would look at only the first page and count the other nine, flipping through them fast. Nobody really cared about the quality. Nobody looked at these books, no one read the things very carefully. So he'd count the pages. We'd give him the $50 or whatever it came to----$5 a page in kickbacks---and then we'd get our check in the mail from Fox, not necessarily in a week or two but in a month or so, sometimes slower than that. The money owed would add up..."

Just a short time later, Wood's art would explode -- fully-formed -- in the pages of Bill Gaines' EC Comics.