With the demise of "Ambler" in 1974, Wildey took on more comic book work. He work appeared in the comics of a variety of publishers during this period, from Atlas/Seaboard to Archie (Red Circle), from Skywald to DC. Everywhere, it seems, but at his old employer, Marvel (formerly Atlas). Even though Marvel did a brisk business reprinting his old work in their reprint titles of the early 1970's, Wildey did no new art for them.
True to form, Wildey stayed with the genres of fantasy, horror, war and, of
course, Westerns. He continued to eschew the prevailing, more popular, super-hero
comic work. Much of the work he did accept at this time was for DC editor
and legendary 
artist,
Joe Kubert. Kubert was the editor of the DC war titles and Wildey worked on
a number of them throughout the mid-1970's. But one Kubert-edited/Wildey-drawn
comic that was unpublished deserves mentioning. It was called The
Savage World, created circa 1975, and it exists today only in remnants
made up of a complete story and a few incomplete pages of original art.
"I was editor for "The Savage World", Kubert wrote in a letter not long
ago, "a book featuring stories where animals played the star roles. It
was beautifully illustrated by Doug. The book, however, was never published,
for reasons that elude me presently." The two pages of original art presented
here convey the power of Wildey's striking artwork on this book. The cinematic
look and story content recall the Disney " True Life Adventures" series
of documentaries.
Wildey also worked for Kubert on his self-published tabloid effort, Sojourn in 1977. His contribution to this anthology book was the private eye strip, Eddie Race. "When I was looking for the best cartoonists to be represented in my Sojourn publication," writes Kubert, "Doug's name was one of the first that came to mind."
Wildey
also had one final go-round with the E.R.Burroughs canon, a Korak
story for the British Tarzan Weekly in 1977.
Writer Mark Evanier explains, "Doug just did the one story for me and it
was never published in this country…Dan Spiegle was the main Korak artist,
but we needed occasional fill-ins and I was delighted that I got Doug to do
the one."
Throughout his career in animation, Wildey had worked with and mentored many aspiring young artists, but the acquaintance of one in particular would have a profound effect on the lives of both men. "I met him in April of 1978, on a job interview at Hanna-Barbera," writes Dave Stevens, "Though I wasn't looking to work in animation, my bank account needed a steady paycheck… Doug and I hit it off instantly. He hired me on the spot and wanted to know if I could start the next day. Well, from that point on, he was in my life for good."9
Wildey guided and coaxed Stevens through the rigors of the industry while
providing his friendship and fatherly presence to him away from the job. Stevens,
in turn, gave Wildey some measure of immortality by basing Peevy, the mechanic
in his 
Rocketeer
series, on him. Though by now in his late fifties, Wildey wasn't done
yet. "I can remember him showing me film presentation art for Rio back
in 1979," says Stevens, "He'd apparently been thinking about the character
for quite a while. Rio was a classic Western hero, galloping through wonderfully
told stories in the tradition of Ford and Hawkes."10
First published in Eclipse Monthly #1 (August, 1983),
Rio was an 
illustration
tour de force. Everything that Wildey had learned in his long career,
every technique, was poured into this epic Western. This was a film on paper
and nowhere is that more evident in this page of original art from the story,
" Robber's
Roost," (Eclipse Monthly #10, July 1984).
This full-page illustration is a Peckinpah-esque orgy of mayhem, complete
with wild-eyed horses, their flying riders and the hero, Rio, squarely
in the foreground, silhouetted by the flash from his rifle. The nuances depicted
by Wildey's brush and pen, easily overlooked in their printed form, are thankfully
obvious in the original. As are the painterly applications of zip-a-tone Wildey
painstakingly placed about the page. Rio was Wildey's masterpiece.
(A large, original Wildey illustration
of a U.S. cavalry soldier hangs 
on
my office wall, providing inspiration even as I write this line. For some
time, I have attempted to discern its time and its place within his career.
I have even gone so far as to show it to several persons close to him (including
Dave Stevens) and no one has been able identify it other than to estimate
its age, circa the 1970's. Ironically, this re-examination of Wildey's Rio
work has perhaps given a clue. The Rio cover of
Eclipse Monthly #5 is an 
apparent
reworking of this illustration. It is doubtful that the cover was entirely
new work since it is virtually a line-for-line duplicate of the illustration,
with only the head and some subtle clothing changes. Questions arise: was
this cover a photocopy with just certain parts redrawn? Or did Wildey lightbox
the illustration and trace his own work? A recent email to me from Eclipse
publisher Dean Mullaney has the answer: "Since I bought the story
(as Eclipse publisher) from Doug, I can assure you that the art was original
and not a photocopy. It was (and still is) and incredible piece of work. Looking
at the repro of the watercolor in your possession, I can only assume that
Doug liked the composition so much, he reused it for the cover, redrawing
it as line art, which was better suited to cover reproduction at the time.
")
Over the next decade, Wildey continued the Rio series and saw the first three volumes published in graphic novel form. A fourth novel was finished and a fifth nearly so, when Wildey passed away from heart failure in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 5, 1994.
In his final years, Wildey had attained a kind of celebrity status that stemmed not from his many years as a skilled illustrator, but from his appearance in The Rocketeer as Peevy and as a fictionalized version of himself as the father of Rachel (Wildey) Quest, the deceased mother of Jonny, in the Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures mid-1990's cartoon series. Despite this new found fame, however, Wildey's place in the pantheon of great comic artists remains unclaimed. I believe several factors contribute to this situation.