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Tag: Alex Toth
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Toth Zorro Cover
The original cover of Toth's Zorro Volume 1, published by Eclipse (1988). Most of the stories ain't much, but the work and storytelling is top notch. And the Introduction by Howard Chaykin is worth the price of admission itself.
Cropped original art.
Color version of the cover as published. The entire background was intended and printed as a extreme deep purple, but shows in the scan as black, alas.
Black & white original art of the full cover.
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TothPix: If I Were King
I cleaned and remastered this sweet Toth story as best I could. Most copies are pretty yellowed. This ran in Sorcery #9 (Red Circle, October, 1974). There's not much to the story, although something could have been done with the concept - here it's pretty rote. As usual with these Toth stories, the genius is in the drawing and in the telling.
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I cleaned up this great self portrait Toth did on the back of one his many handwritten notes to a fan/fellow artist. He sez:
TothPix: Self Portrait
I cleaned up this great self portrait Toth did on the back of one his many handwritten notes to a fan/fellow artist. He sez:
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In this next, the ranger meets with the lock-picker dude. Notice the tilt of the heads, the naturalistic placement and rendering of hands. Toth spots his blacks great here, in an unassuming manner, and places a lantern in the foreground for depth.
As the two guys head into town, he shows us what we need to follow the story - the town, the main players, the crowd) but also love the way the lock-picker leans from his horse, the tilt of the guy's head looking up, his gesture to the crowd. That post in the foreground helps again with depth, as well as the shadow on the horse.
Our three dudes move in, seen here in the distance framed by silhouettes. And the overhead shot let's us know where everyone is, who's doing what. Nice stuff.
Inside, the lock-picker has a decision to make - save the kid and expose his true identity, to shut up. He gets to work, Toth enhancing the drama with a low-angle POV (right).
Then, in the most compelling shots of the piece, he gets us right in there with the lock-picker as he does his stuff. We're in so tight, one can almost hears the tiny clicks, feel the subtle turns of the dial. The cropping makes us focus on the hand and the dial. Dang, this is so good!
Then the little tyke is saved, and the lock-picker earns his freedom. All in a day's work for a ranger - and the brilliant Alex Toth!
TothPix: Safecracker
I grabbed and cleaned up some choice panels from an obscure four-page back-up story from Roy Rogers #111 (1957), about a kid who locks himself accidentally in a vault. A Texas ranger has tracked down a dude long on a run, who exposes his true identity by breaking the kid out using his lock-picking skills. Of course, the ranger let's him off. What guy! Even with this short knock-off story, Toth, as usual displays his superb storytelling chops - varying the shots between close-ups, mid- and long shots, changing the POV, staging, cropping and composition, no-nonsense drawing and expert characterization. Here's a great close-up, a partial profile from slightly below, the panel split in two. Actually, the word balloon breaks up the half-and-half composition, while avoiding a tangent.
In this next, the ranger meets with the lock-picker dude. Notice the tilt of the heads, the naturalistic placement and rendering of hands. Toth spots his blacks great here, in an unassuming manner, and places a lantern in the foreground for depth.
As the two guys head into town, he shows us what we need to follow the story - the town, the main players, the crowd) but also love the way the lock-picker leans from his horse, the tilt of the guy's head looking up, his gesture to the crowd. That post in the foreground helps again with depth, as well as the shadow on the horse.
Our three dudes move in, seen here in the distance framed by silhouettes. And the overhead shot let's us know where everyone is, who's doing what. Nice stuff.
Inside, the lock-picker has a decision to make - save the kid and expose his true identity, to shut up. He gets to work, Toth enhancing the drama with a low-angle POV (right).
Then, in the most compelling shots of the piece, he gets us right in there with the lock-picker as he does his stuff. We're in so tight, one can almost hears the tiny clicks, feel the subtle turns of the dial. The cropping makes us focus on the hand and the dial. Dang, this is so good!
Then the little tyke is saved, and the lock-picker earns his freedom. All in a day's work for a ranger - and the brilliant Alex Toth!
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From an artist known for his stark chiaroscuro imagery, a study in subtlety.
TothPix: Captain Marvel Profile
From an artist known for his stark chiaroscuro imagery, a study in subtlety.0
One of my favorite Toth illustrations, from a never used filmstrip for Mattel, featuring Aladdin.
Wow.
Scanned from the signed and numbered Alex Toth book from Kitchen Sink and Manuel Auad (1995).
TothPix: Aladdin
One of my favorite Toth illustrations, from a never used filmstrip for Mattel, featuring Aladdin.
Wow.
Scanned from the signed and numbered Alex Toth book from Kitchen Sink and Manuel Auad (1995).0
TothPix: Character Types and Body Language
Toth was awfully good at varying his character types, making them distinct, yet universal. And the body language he employed tells us more about each character and is integral to his visual storytelling. I captured and isolated a batch of images from his Romance comic, Undecided Heart (Intimate Love 21, 1953). At the time he drew this, he was 24.
For the splash panel, Toth uses unorthodox positioning and clever overlap (above) to focus attention on the heroine, and to convey her distress.
Unwelcome potential suitors (below) - a great opportunity to design and draw interesting bit players. Just look at those face shapes and features!
Sans glasses, and with a new hair do, Eve cleans up nicely. Toth trained early for these female profiles by tracing and copying his Mother's drawings.
Snarky stud:
On the beach:
Glasses again:
More bit players - face shapes and features!
In a switcheroo later, this big doofus ends up being the slimeball of the piece:
What's not to like about this bellhop kid? I love everything about this drawing:
Ain't that that truth?! More bits & pieces:
And Eve ends up in lowly Chris's arms after all...
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TothPix: Sandman
Toth's tribute to Bert Christman's Golden Age Sandman:
I cropped and rotated the above image, from Toth's original drawing, which I find busy, due to the background pattern. This piece was scanned from the rare book, Toth: Black & White (1999).
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Yes, lets! Here's some of Toth's take on The Fox, the hero first drawn by Irwin Hasen.
These first few are panels from the comics Toth drew for Red Circle in 1983.
TothPix: Foxes!
Yes, lets! Here's some of Toth's take on The Fox, the hero first drawn by Irwin Hasen.
These first few are panels from the comics Toth drew for Red Circle in 1983.
Sketches:
And a few small sketches of Toth's revamped Fox...
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TothPix: Space Ghost Comics
I was pleased to discover a few years ago that Toth had drawn a Space Ghost comic book story (TV Stars #3 (1978), all five pages of which I present below. I cleaned up and tweaked the images as best I could - remastered, if you will. Enjoy!
Mark Evanier's title is a play on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, which doesn't have anything to do with the story, really. Funny that while the character is named "Pilgreem" throughout the story, lettered by Toth, near as I can tell, whoever lettered the title (might've also been Toth) misspelled it as "Pilgreen." Whoops!
I love the design and set-up of the splash panel. Jan never looked curvier than in the 1st panel on page 3. There's a gorgeous sweep and flow to the last three panels of page 3, and the first three of page 4. And it'd be great to see the black and white art of the final panel of that same page to better check out the sexy lady alien feeding Buzzard grapes.
All in all, a tasty trifle, and great to see Toth handle these characters in print.
Extra! Space Ghost links, model sheets and video.
Next: The Many Moods of Toth, a gallery of faces and expressions.
