Wallace Wood: Against the Grain, part 42 Wood worked incessantly, sometimes going without sleep. “I worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for years,” he admitted to Dorf. “Being a comic book artist is like sentencing yourself to life imprisonment at hard labor in solitary confinement. I don’t think I’d do it again.” Roy Krenkel, in 1972, offered this picture of Wood’s work habits: “You’d be going over to see Wally about noon or one o’clock, because you got up late like all the guys. You’d been sleeping seven or eight hours, which wasn’t enough. You’d come to Wally’s door, and you realize Wally had been up all night. You left him about two in the morning, and you’d come back about 12. You ring the bell repeatedly. The door finally, slowly opens, and Wally stands there with an absolutely glazed look in his eyes, totally incapable of focusing. A long pregnant silence lasting for about a minute-and-a-half would go by, and then without any change of expression, would be ‘eh,’ just a little coughing grunt, ‘eh.’ He’d be walking like a mummy, and he’d slowly amble in and guzzle some fruit juice and go back to the drawing board. Typical Wood. With all his brilliant imagination, everything is done totally automatic — a real frozen-zombie style of life. Why it didn’t kill him, I’ll never know. The guy was totally obsessed with work. Really hung up on hard work, and he’d never tire. He’d go on and on and on, and out would come brilliant stuff.”  ¶ 7:23 PM