Tatjana Wood, the German-born colorist who brought a distinctive sensibility to decades of DC Comics covers and interiors, including Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing and Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, passed away Feb. 27. She was 99.
Her passing was confirmed by former DC editor Karen Berger. Today would have been her 100th birthday.
“So sad to share that legendary colorist Tatjana Wood has passed away at the age of 99,” Berger wrote. “Her pioneering painterly touch graced scores of DC & Vertigo series. She was truly one of a kind and a special friend. May her memory be a blessing.”
Wood was born Tatjana Weintraub in Darmstadt, Germany, on March 2, 1926. Her father was Jewish, and she and her brother Karl — who went on to become a distinguished scholar at the University of Chicago and author of two books — were sent to an international Quaker boarding school in the Netherlands during World War II. After the war, the two siblings moved to New York. She attended the Traphagen School of Fashion, and in 1949 met comics artist Wally Wood, who was fresh out of the military and looking for work as an artist. The two were married in 1950, and during the 1950s and 1960s she made uncredited contributions to her husband’s artwork for titles like EC Comics’ Two-Fisted Tales.
The two divorced in 1966, three years before she would begin her tenure with DC Comics. Wood began working as a colorist for them in 1969 and succeeded Jack Adler as the company’s cover colorist in 1973.
“Tatjana began providing color guides for DC comics in the late 1960s, after the company shifted from an in house color department to freelancers. Gravel voiced from her long cigarette habit, she’d spend time discussing each assignment with its editor, and finding a distinctive approach that met their goals,” Levitz posted on Facebook. “Given the less-than-modest amount paid for each page’s color guides in the field at the time, that was an unusual level of artistic dedication, and the results showed that she carried that through in the work. She graduated in 1973 to become the regular cover artist for the whole line, probably only the third person (and the last) to be given that responsibility, and stayed in that role for well over a decade.”
She continued in that role until 1983, when those duties were split between her and Anthony Tollin. Tollin took over the superhero covers while Wood continued on the western, war and horror titles. It was also in the 1980s that some of her most-remembered and best-regarded work happened, as she became the interior colorist for more adult-oriented titles like The Question, Camelot 3000, Saga of the Swamp Thing and Animal Man, which would set the stage for the launch of DC’s Vertigo imprint. Many of these titles were printed on a better paper stock, which really made the colors more vibrant. She continued working on titles in the Vertigo and Helix lines through the 1990s, and retired from comics in 2003.
Artist Phil Hester, who worked with Wood on Swamp Thing #149 in 1994, said she “is as important to Swamp Thing lore as any writer or artist. One of the highest honors of my career was to be colored by her for my time on that title.”
Cartoonist Derf Backderf said: “In Tatjana’s time, floppy comics were printed on shitty newsprint. The printing was garbage. The color resolution was low. Think about those Ban Day dots that so enthralled parasite Roy Lichtenstein. If you look closely at any comics page you can see those dots with the naked eye. It was the most primitive– and inexpensive– reproduction available, and yet a master like Tatjana could achieve incredible effects.”
“My tenure as editor of Wonder Woman in the 1990s featured a run of talented cover artists, from Brian Bolland to John Byrne to Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, but only one cover colorist: the immeasurably talented Tatjana Wood. Every month she would deliver the latest cover and sit across from me and explain why she had done what she did with the color. Finally, after several months, I said, ‘You know, I’d never think of second guessing any of your choices. You’re Tatjana Wood!’ To which she smiled gently and said in her gravelly, cigarette ravaged voice, ‘Thank you, but it’s important you understand why I made those choices,'” former DC editor Paul Kupperberg wrote.
“The day after we put the final touches on issues #88-91 of ‘Swamp Thing,’ news broke about the passing of Tatjana Wood, the original colorist on the series. Tomorrow, March 2nd, would have been Tatjana’s 100th birthday. Let’s raise a glass to one of comics’ originals,” said Trish Mulvihill, colorist for Swamp Thing 1989.
Wood won the Shazam Award for Best Colorist in 1971 and 1974, and was inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame in 2023. In addition to her comics work, she was a dressmaker and weaver who crafted theatrical costumes and pictorial loom tapestries.
“If there’s an afterlife, I think we can fairly anticipate even more vivid sunset skies, ’cause the scenery crew just added a truly splendid talent,” Levitz said.