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“Each One Was Unique, Creating Fine Comic Art!” ALEX TOTH On A Handful Of Quality Comics Greats
[Art ©2004 Alex Toth.]
[NOTE: Since we’re (belatedly) getting around to printing comments on Alter Ego #34’s coverage of several key personnel of Everett “Busy” Arnold’s Quality Comics, this seemed like the time and place to print an early-2004 communication from Golden/Silver/Bronze Age artist Alex Toth—who, we’re told, once drew a “Blackhawk” story himself (for DC)! Here’s Alex on a few talents not mentioned (or at least not prominently) in that issue’s interviews with Dick Arnold, Alex Kotzky, Chuck Cuidera, and Al Grenet. —Roy.]
In early issues of Quality’s top title, Military Comics, which cover-featured Blackhawk, Al McWilliams drew the ongoing feature “Secret War News,” which told of alleged combat the public didn’t know about yet. Each story opened with a simulated newspaper front page, complete with headline and a single “photo.” (Left center:) In Military #2 (Sept. 1941), the first of the series, behind the headline/title “BRITISH MYSTERY SQUAD LANDS ON INVASION COAST IN SECRET MISSION,” England turned back a (fictitious but then-feared) Nazi invasion of the British Isles on June 20, 1940, in this penultimate page of war-action panels. (Left:) This McWilliams-drawn splash from Military #13 (Nov. 1942), non-PC language and all, celebrated the crucial (and very real) U.S. naval victory in the Battle of Midway in June of that year. Thanks to Bob Bailey for both these images. [©2004 the respective copyright holders.]