Alex Toth, Dead at 77
Agent Smith
BURBANK, Calif. (AP) - Alex Toth, a maverick comic artist who
designed classic Hanna Barbera adventure cartoons such as The
Superfriends and Space Ghost, has died.
Toth died while sitting at his drawing table at his home in Burbank on
May 27, his son Eric said. He was 77.
Eric Toth said the cause of death had not yet been determined, but his
father had been in failing health for years.
Before working in animation, Toth was a comic book artist, widely
regarded as brilliant, who had some success but even more frustration.
He rarely held on to an artist job for long because of a simple, subtle
drawing style and a stubborn adherence to his artistic principles. And
he preferred pirate tales and westerns over the more popular super hero
comics.
"Toth was one of the most brilliant artists ever in comic books but
also someone who was the odd man out in many ways," said comics
publisher and critic Gary Groth. "He was never associated with a
particular character, and he was pushed off to marginal titles."
But Toth's forms would prove influential in underground comics and
graphic novels in later decades. Comic artist Will Eisner called him "a
mastery of realism within a stunning illustrative style."
Toth was born in New York, where he lived and worked until settling in
San Jose in the late 1950s. While living there he worked for Dell
Comics on titles derived from television shows like Sea Hunt and Zorro.
That led to animation work in Southern California, where he moved in
1964.
Drawing for Hanna Barbera in the 1960s and 1970s, Toth designed
characters for adventure cartoons Jonny Quest and The Herculoids in
addition to The Superfriends and Space Ghost, and he achieved the wider
recognition and commercial success that had eluded him.
"The work he did there touched more lives than anything else he had
done," said Paul Levitz, president and publisher of DC Comics. "He
found ways to take characters like Superman from their more complicated
printed form into a simpler form for animation that still held on to
their power and majesty."
Toth is survived by sons Eric and Damon Toth, daughters Dana Palmer and
Carrie Morash, and four grandchildren.
At Alex Toth's request, no memorial service was planned.
Charles Knight
then.
"Agent Smith" <agent...@two-blocks-on-your-left.com> wrote in message
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HorseFly
"Agent Smith" <agent...@two-blocks-on-your-left.com> wrote in message
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>
Joe Sewell
In article <GI6dnf-qtebAdBjZ...@insightbb.com>,
"HorseFly" <sainth...@insightbb.com> wrote:
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"Agent Smith" <agent...@two-blocks-on-your-left.com> wrote in message
news:Xns97DAA62EE1087ag...@207.115.17.102...
>
Pick up a back issue of Sinister House of Secret Love number two or three (I
can't remember off the top of my head which he drew). Some of the best art I
have ever seen.
Me.
YKW '06
Some of my favorite Toth work came in a simple little batch of BLACK
CANARYs he did for ADVENTURE in the early 1970s as part of a series full
of promise that dissolved into nothingness over a writer-artist dispute.
(Toth either altered or corrected, depending on POV, a story point; Denny
O'Neill pulled his own writing credit off the feature and apparently
refused to write any more installments.)
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Agent Smith
news:Xns97DF879EFF1AC...@140.99.99.130:
> Some of my favorite Toth work came in a simple little batch of BLACK
> CANARYs he did for ADVENTURE in the early 1970s as part of a series
> full of promise that dissolved into nothingness over a writer-artist
> dispute. (Toth either altered or corrected, depending on POV, a story
> point; Denny O'Neill pulled his own writing credit off the feature and
> apparently refused to write any more installments.)
Now that's a great tragedy, when two giants like Toth and O'Neil can't
work together. I just learned that two famous historical
mathematicians, Euler and d'Alembert couldn't work together. By taking
the chair of Math Department d'Alembert drove Euler out of the
presidency of the University of Berlin, under Frederick the Great.
Euler was far more important than d'Alembert, yet Euler lost the fight,
because he was getting old and losing his energy. Likewise, I have an
enemy, who is also a good scientist. I'm hoping my next paper will make
him look like a Monkeybone.
HOST
"YKW '06" <ykwBLOC...@gmail.BLOCKER.com> wrote in message
news:Xns97DF879EFF1AC...@140.99.99.130...
I have those too, great stuff.
Toth was cool.
Agent Smith
news:64d8a$448caa98$4088c253$17...@EVERESTKC.NET:
I've got the issue of "The Comic Reader" that he did a Sandman cover
for. It came with another deal for something that I actually cared
about. Wanna take it off my hands, at a wholesale price?
Those old B&W fanzine covers are great. You can photocopy them at
kinkos and then color them with markers from the art shop. That way you
actually get to do art with the grandmaster you love so much. And it's
an obscure piece of great hero art that was never published anywhere
else, before or since.
YKW '06
your-left.com> wrote:
> Those old B&W fanzine covers are great. You can photocopy them at
> kinkos and then color them with markers from the art shop. That way you
> actually get to do art with the grandmaster you love so much. And it's
> an obscure piece of great hero art that was never published anywhere
> else, before or since.
I like to do that digitally, scanning or downloading a B/W piece,
downsampling it to a two-color bitmap, taking it first into Paint to be
colored and then to PSP and/or NeatImage for touching up. Same reason...
Agent Smith
> On 11 Jun 2006, the voices tell me Agent Smith
> <agent-smith@two-blocks-on- your-left.com> wrote:
>
>> Those old B&W fanzine covers are great. You can photocopy them at
>> kinkos and then color them with markers from the art shop. That way
>> you actually get to do art with the grandmaster you love so much.
>> And it's an obscure piece of great hero art that was never published
>> anywhere else, before or since.
>
> I like to do that digitally, scanning or downloading a B/W piece,
> downsampling it to a two-color bitmap, taking it first into Paint to
> be colored and then to PSP and/or NeatImage for touching up. Same
> reason...
But you don't collect? I can't live without the original pub in my
library. There are some beautiful b&w images out there - Steranko,
Brunner, Smith, Wrightson, etc, etc, etc. After ten years, I've finally
found b&w copies of two incorrectly colored Silver Age Marvels: X-Men 50
and a late FF with the Silver Surfer against a background of ball &
stick molecules. Thank you Marvel Essentials. Boy, that took forever!
YKW '06
on-your-left.com> wrote:
> "YKW '06" <ykwBLOC...@gmail.BLOCKER.com> wrote in
> news:Xns97DFD7488A7AC...@140.99.99.130:
>
>> On 11 Jun 2006, the voices tell me Agent Smith
>> <agent-smith@two-blocks-on- your-left.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Those old B&W fanzine covers are great. You can photocopy them at
>>> kinkos and then color them with markers from the art shop. That way
>>> you actually get to do art with the grandmaster you love so much.
>>> And it's an obscure piece of great hero art that was never published
>>> anywhere else, before or since.
>>
>> I like to do that digitally, scanning or downloading a B/W piece,
>> downsampling it to a two-color bitmap, taking it first into Paint to
>> be colored and then to PSP and/or NeatImage for touching up. Same
>> reason...
>
> But you don't collect?
I used to. But when I was a kid, I did to my LEGION OUTPOSTs and AMAZING
WORLD OF DC COMICSes what you do to your 'zines. Bleed-through from the
colors made the things pretty much impossible to read. For which I kick
myself often, thank you. :)
I do hold on to quite a bit of the TwoMorrows stuff now, but I'll never
defile the printed page with color again...
> I can't live without the original pub in my library. There are some
> beautiful b&w images out there - Steranko, Brunner, Smith, Wrightson,
> etc, etc, etc. After ten years, I've finally found b&w copies of two
> incorrectly colored Silver Age Marvels: X-Men 50 and a late FF with
> the Silver Surfer against a background of ball & stick molecules.
> Thank you Marvel Essentials. Boy, that took forever!
>
--
Agent Smith
> On 12 Jun 2006, the voices tell me Agent Smith
> <agent-smith@two-blocks- on-your-left.com> wrote:
>
>> "YKW '06" <ykwBLOC...@gmail.BLOCKER.com> wrote in
>> news:Xns97DFD7488A7AC...@140.99.99.130:
>>
>>> On 11 Jun 2006, the voices tell me Agent Smith
>>> <agent-smith@two-blocks-on- your-left.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Those old B&W fanzine covers are great. You can photocopy them at
>>>> kinkos and then color them with markers from the art shop. That
>>>> way you actually get to do art with the grandmaster you love so
>>>> much. And it's an obscure piece of great hero art that was never
>>>> published anywhere else, before or since.
>>>
>>> I like to do that digitally, scanning or downloading a B/W piece,
>>> downsampling it to a two-color bitmap, taking it first into Paint to
>>> be colored and then to PSP and/or NeatImage for touching up. Same
>>> reason...
>>
>> But you don't collect?
>
> I used to. But when I was a kid, I did to my LEGION OUTPOSTs and
> AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICSes what you do to your 'zines. Bleed-through
> from the colors made the things pretty much impossible to read. For
> which I kick myself often, thank you. :)
>
> I do hold on to quite a bit of the TwoMorrows stuff now, but I'll
> never defile the printed page with color again...
One word, photocopy. If you colored well as a child, you could probably
overcome some of the headaches I'm having. I just can't figure out how
to do lighting properly. Do you write or draw?