You can name just about any comic book artist who's done a substantial amount of work and I have met (a) someone who thinks that guy is the all-time best artist who ever lived, and (b) someone who thinks he stinks and that anyone who likes his work must be blind and probably an idiot, to boot. One exception is that I've never met anyone who didn't like the output of the late Wally Wood, who drew for MAD, for EC Comics, for DC, Marvel, Tower, everyone. His artwork was and is almost universally loved — this, despite the fact that there also seems to be general agreement among those who knew him that he rarely had the opportunity to give us his best.
He was a tragic, quiet man whose life was plagued by cluster headaches, editors who misused and mistreated him, and extended periods when he was simply unable to meet his own high standard.
Some of this is true of many great comic artists of the past, but Woody's life seemed like 40-some-odd years of losing battles against The System. You can sense some of that if you read a collection of his correspondence which someone has posted here.
One comment: In one dispatch, Wood bitches about the pencil work of Ric Estrada, saying how difficult it was to ink. I suspect he was misplacing the blame on this. Estrada — a wonderful artist who, happily, is still with us — was another guy who got misused in comics, back when he did them. In this case, much against his own wishes, he was drafted to do rough layouts (not full pencil art) for some comics that he didn't especially want to work on. One suspects that someone, aware that Wood could turn almost anything into superior finished art, commissioned Estrada to do layouts and then paid Wally as if he was working over tight pencilling. In any case, it's a splendid example of two fine illustrators not being used to do what they did best…