As a kid, Saturday mornings were spent occupied in front of the television rooting on animated superheroes. And even with five channels and no cable, mornings were filled with the imaginative artistry of Alex Toth, responsible for Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, Moby Dick and Mighty Mightor, Marvel comic book’s series Fantastic Four, Space Ghost and Superfriends.
Jack Kirby Hall of Famer Alex Toth, (1928-2006), launched his comic career at the age of fifteen and started inking true stories for Heroic magazine, but soon realized he needed to focus on comic books. His first drawing assignments were to re-realize the Golden Age versions of Green Lantern, The Atom and Flash as an illustrator at National/DC Comics.
In 1954, Alex Toth was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in Japan where he initiated a weekly adventure strip, Jon Fury.
Alex Toth reported in his 1977 artwork promotion, “Jon Fury was created back in the late ’40s, and I, in my youthful naiveté, intended to sell him as a Sunday page only. I had a title, logo, story lines, sketches and formats for page designs all worked up—bu soon, caught up on heavier comic book workload, Jon Fury, like many other original adventure strip workups, was filed away for future use.”
“Years later, 1955, I found myself in the U.S. Army in Toko, Japan. The Art Editor post on our camp newspaper was created so that I might lend a hand. The weekly was 8-pages, printed on multigraph machines, 600 copies at a time, and it had one artist—a Japanese civilian employed to redraw the logo each issue and letter new article headlines!”
When Mr. Toth returned back to the United States in 1956 he worked for Dell Comics until he became the art director for Space Angel, a science fiction show. Years later he would be hired by Hanna-Barbera as a story board artist in 1968 illustrating everything mentioned in the first paragraph with exception to Superfriends which he developed in 1973. Tireless? Wow!
Alex Toth shared , “Oftimes it's hard to verbalize... but let me try. I’l put it this way: It’s just not enough to have talent.” How you apply that talent is what demonstrates touch.” Alex Toth would go on to continue illustrating comics until his death in 2006.
Alex Toth had an amazing touch, and one of the greatest comic artists who really inspired, influenced and changed generations and how we perceive comics.
Hollywood’s big screen certainly recognizes the thousands of character developments realized by Alex Toth and I am sure there’s more to come.
