Alter Ego #63

Roy Thomas’ Toth & Nail Comics Fanzine

REMEMBERING COMICS LEGEND

ALEX TOTH

PLUS:

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82658 27763

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INDUSTRY TRIBUTES NEVER-SEEN INTERVIEW UNSEEN ART

All characters TM & ©2007 DC Comics.

6.95

$

In the USA

No. 63 December 2006

Vol. 3, No. 63 / December 2006

™

Editor

Roy Thomas

ALEX TOTH

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

TRIBUTE TO A TITAN

Design & Layout

Contents

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor

Writer/Editorial: Who Cares? Toth Did! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Alex Toth: Edge of Genius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

John Morrow

FCA Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck

Greg Theakston examines the first few years of the master’s career—plus A/E’s Toth Checklist.

Comic Crypt Editor

“Let The Imagination Of The Audience Do the Rest” . . . . . . 15

Michael T. Gilbert

A 1978 interview with Toth on media violence, conducted by Michael Vance.

Editors Emeritus

Jerry Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White, Mike Friedrich

Production Assistant

“Alex Toth Had It All!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Golden/Silver Age great Joe Kubert talks to Jim Amash about his fellow legend.

“This Guy Was A Driven Artist” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Phantom and DC artist Sy Barry on—what else?—Alex Toth.

Chris Irving

“Alex Was Into Everything” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Circulation Director

“Batman” artist Lew Sayre Schwartz has his own say about the terrific Mr. Toth.

Bob Brodsky, Seastone Marketing Group

Cover Artist

“Photographic Memory Plus” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Artist and producer Jack Mendelsohn discusses Alex and TV animation.

Alex Toth

“He Was A True Genius In His Field” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Cover Colorist

Cartoonist/animator Sparky Moore relates his own close encounters with Toth.

Tom Ziuko

With Special Thanks to: Michael Allred Heidi Amash Michael Auad Terry Austin Bob Bailey Tim Barnes Mike W. Barr Jack & Carole Bender Dave & Jill Bennett Luca Biagini Bill Black Dominic Bongo Ray Bottorff, Jr. Frank Brunner Brett Canavan Peter Carlsson R. Dewey Cassell Bob Cherry David Cook Ray A. Cuthbert Teresa R. Davidson Craig Delich Al Dellinges Shel Dorf Creig Flessel Shane Foley Ron Frantz Stephan Friedt Bill Fugate Jeff Gelb Joe Giella Janet Gilbert Walt Grogan Jennifer Hamerlinck David Hamilton Bill Harper Irwin Hasen Heritage Comics

Bill & Sue-On Hillman Joe Kubert Steve Leialoha Zorikh Lequidre Dan Makara Esteban Maroto Jack & Carole Mendelsohn Clifford Meth Steve Mitchell Sheldon Moldoff Sparky Moore Joe & Gillian Moores Carrie Morash Brian K. Morris Will Murray Mart Nodell Jerry Ordway Dana Palmer John G. Pierce Paul Power Rubén Procopio Al Rio Sammy Salfity Eric Schumacher Lew Sayre Schwartz Robin Snyder Marc Swayze Tony Tallarico Greg Theakston Dann Thomas Damon Toth Eric Toth Michael Uslan Michael Vance John Workman Alex Wright

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Alex Toth

“It Was Worth The Journey” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Jim Amash remembers his boisterous friendship with Alex Toth.

1941 And All That. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 John Workman tells why Toth didn’t draw the graphic novel of Stephen Spielberg’s 1979 film.

“A.T.T.A. Boy Productions, Inc.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Inker Terry Austin on Toth at DC & Marvel in the 1980s.

TOTHtimonials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

By Irwin Hasen, Manuel Auad, Will Murray, Michael Allred, Tony Tallarico, et al.

A Colorful Christmas 2006—In Glorious Black-&-White. . 67 Another year’s worth of holiday hellos sent by comics pros & fans alike.

Comic Crypt: Russ Manning – The Lost Works! . . . . . . . . . . 73 Michael T. Gilbert showcases the Tarzan/Magnus artist’s John Carter of Mars project.

FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) #122. . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 P.C. Hamerlinck presents Marc Swayze, “Freddy Freeman’s Christmas”—& a salute to Alex Toth.

About Our Cover: No single drawing could possibly fully encompass the colorful career of Alex Toth—but Ye Editor was determined that, because Alter Ego is a magazine devoted primarily to super-hero comics and their creators, this issue’s cover should spotlight the Golden Age Green Lantern, whom Toth drew incomparably in 1947-48. In the end, at the suggestion of publisher John Morrow, we opted for (most of) a 1981 illustration that depicts GL with other heroes of the fabled Justice Society of America, whose group adventures Alex likewise chronicled under DC/AA editor Sheldon Mayer. For what this stalwart septet are looking at, see p. 37. [JSA heroes TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Above: For the past several decades, the artist’s handwritten letters to correspondents have been laced with art studies of people and things. A/E has printed a number of these multitudinous montages over the past few years… so what better way to introduce this special issue dedicated to the life and times of the terrifically talented Alex Toth?

Alter EgoTM is published monthly by TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: 32 Bluebird Trail, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 8266501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $9 ($11.00 outside the US). Twelve-issue subscriptions:$72 US, $132 Canada, $144 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective companies.

All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas.

FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada. ISSN: 1932-6890 FIRST PRINTING.

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writer/editorial

Who Cares? Toth Did!

y relationship with Alex Toth was a backward thing, compared to most. It began stormily, but improved. And I’m very thankful for the memory of it.

Since 1947-48, Toth has been one of my favorite comics artists, based primarily on a handful of Golden Age “Green Lantern” and “Justice Society of America” stories—and to a lesser extent on his “Johnny Thunder” in All-American Western. Work he himself eventually disowned, and had moved beyond by the 1960s. His later art intrigued me, even if he’d journeyed from romantic lyricism into almost pure graphics. Opening a comic book containing a Toth story, I always knew at once I was in the presence of a true master of storytelling and design. But I don’t mind confessing—my heart still belongs to his “Green Lantern.”

[©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

I’ve related before the story of our sole in-person encounter: While I was casting about for backup stories for The Avengers during that brief time in 1971 when all Marvel comics leaped from 32 to 48 interior pages, Stan Lee informed me that Alex Toth, who lived in L.A., had written him concerning work, and Stan wondered if I had anything I could send him. He added that Toth had said he’d like to be a “creative part” of the process. I quickly typed up what I called “Notes toward a Plot” for a “Black Panther” story of 8 or so pages, a racially-charged episode set in “Rudyarda,” a stand-in for apartheid South Africa. Therein, I explained the kind of tale I wanted to do, and various potential elements of the plot… and I invited Alex to run with it.

A week later, Stan and I received a handwritten diatribe from Toth that began: “IS THIS YOUR CORPORATE IDEA OF A PLOT?” He then proceeded to lambast the “story” because it rambled, lacked structure, etc.—ignoring the fact that I’d specifically stated that it wasn’t a full plot. I wrote back that I’d been told he wished to be a “creative part” of the team, not just the artist… but that I’d gladly send him a complete synopsis—if he’d assure me he would follow it. I never heard back from him.

Then, in late 1976 or so, soon after I’d moved to L.A., I attended the first meeting of the Comic Art Professionals Society, assembled by Mark Evanier, Sergio Aragonés, and Don R. Christensen. Among the dozens of pros present, a bear of a man was pointed out to me as Alex Toth. Determined to forge a fresh start, I walked up and introduced myself by name as a longtime admirer of his work. He looked down at me, haughtily though not in an entirely unfriendly manner, and said, “Oh, yes. You and I had that little altercation a couple of years ago.” I glossed over that as being in the irrelevant past… we exchanged a few noncommittal sentences… we each moved on… and that, alas, was the first and last time I ever met Alex Toth face to face.

Sometime after I revived Alter Ego in the late 1990s, Comic Book Artist editor Jon B. Cooke handed over to me some of Toth’s illustrated missives, thinking I might utilize them in A/E. (Jon had put together the excellent CBA #11 devoted to Toth—we’ve duplicated few of its images in this issue, since it’s still available from TwoMorrows.)

Oddly—perhaps because by then Alex and Jon were permanently on the outs—the artist and I exchanged a number of notes during the last few years of his life, with never a hint of tension… at least once he accepted the fact that I’d related in print my version of my one and only “Toth anecdote.” I offered to print his own comments on the matter, but he declined, leading me to believe he had no quarrel with my basic

account, at least in terms of the raw facts, if not interpretation.

Nor did he ever complain about the art (his own and others’) that I printed with his letters and essays. I explained I was doing the best I could to illustrate his points. By and large, his personal remarks to me were scribbled in the margins of my own letters which he sent back to me… and on the envelopes which contained them. Not wishing to use the same “Before I Forget” heading for his column that CBA had, I utilized a pair of word balloons in one illustration he sent as a title instead: “Who Cares? I Do!” He seemed to enjoy the exposure in A/E; he wrote a note on one envelope to “keep those $50s coming in.” I tried my best, using his essays and art in most issues.

A year or so ago, Jim Amash (once a friend and familiar of Alex’s) and I toyed with the idea of interviewing him for Alter Ego. When I asked Toth about the possibility, he wrote back that it would depend on the questions asked. Jim and I were encouraged… but not long afterward I received a postcard from Alex giving a new address—which I instantly suspected of being a managed care facility. He scribbled on the card that this would be “probably my last address.” Unfortunately, he was only too prescient. I wrote him back wishing him well, but never received a reply.

Well, in one sense I did: in February of this year, I received an envelope stuffed with two handwritten essays, totaling several sheets. Alex had run across them and felt I might be able to use them. The envelope was emblazoned with his trademark duck (Why a duck? you’d have to ask Chico Marx) and a note. I put them with other Toth materials I intended to use—and still do, in a future issue, unless Alex’s heirs have other plans for them. (Incidentally, my thanks to the four Toth children—Eric Toth, Damon Toth, Carrie Morash, and Dana Palmer—for their gracious cooperation with this special issue. And check out the official Alex Toth website at: www.tothfans.com.)

While one could argue with many points Alex makes in his missives—nor would he have generally minded that—one must always respect the sincerity and depth of his passion… his desire to see comics be the best they can be. Even if there can be valid disagreements about precisely what that means.

When I was informed Alex had passed away on May 27, the news was not unexpected, but still saddened me. Besides the loss to the comics world, I had enjoyed my latter-day association with him, even if it had been from a distance and with a light and not too personal touch.

Alex Toth will continue to influence comics and even other-media artists in the future, as he has for the past five or six decades… in ways that others will expand upon in the pages that follow.

He was one of the giants.

Bestest,

P.S.: Because of the outpouring of tributes to Alex Toth, we’ve had to delay both our letters section and Bill Schelly’s report on the 1966 Kaler Con till next month.

P.P.S.: Oh, yeah—and Season’s Greetings!

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COMING IN JANUARY

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Fabulous FAWCETT Favorites–& FILCHOCK, Too! Just Imagine—The Captains & The Centaur, In One Adventurous Issue Together!

• Never-before-seen cover painting by 1970s-80s Shazam! artist DON NEWTON featuring Captain Marvel Jr. & Captain Nazi!

• “The Monster Society of Evil!” OTTO BINDER & C.C. BECK’S 1943-45 Captain Marvel comic book serial featuring Mr. Mind, Dr. Sivana—all that and World War II! Issue-by-issue appreciation by ROY THOMAS! • Was Captain Marvel modeled after German champion boxer MAX SCHMELING? Film model-maker ROGER DICKEN thinks… could be!

• Special FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) Section starring SWAYZE, SQUEGLIO, THOMPSON, BECK, RABOY, & DISBROW, hosted by P.C. HAMERLINCK! • JIM AMASH interviews MARTIN FILCHOCK, Golden Age artist for Centaur Comics (Mighty Man, Fire-Man, The Owl, etc.)—and of a zillion zany cartoons!

• A Special Tribute to ERNIE SCHROEDER—artist of Airboy and The Heap!

• A/E’s 2nd annual 1943 Pin-Up Calendar—featuring wartime stars and starlets as Marvel super-heroines—colorfully composed by ALEX WRIGHT! • Plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT on the “evil twins” of Superman & Wonder Woman— BILL SCHELLY (at last!) on the 1966 Kaler Con—& MORE!! (Yeah, like we’re gonna have room for more!) ics.]

Com DC 06 TM & ©20 [Capt. Marvel Jr. & Capt. Nazi Edited by ROY THOMAS

SUBSCRIBE NOW! Twelve Issues in the US: $72 Standard, $108 First Class (Canada: $132, Elsewhere: $144 Surface, $192 Airmail).

NOTE: IF YOU PREFER A SIX-ISSUE SUB, JUST CUT THE PRICE IN HALF!

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ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part one

Alex Toth: Edge Of Genius An Overview Of The First Few Years In The Career Of One Of Comics’ Greatest Talents

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by Greg Theakston reg Theakston is a comics collector, researcher, and historian, and through his company Pure Imagination has published numerous books on comics and comic artists, many of them featuring the work of Alex Toth.

The noble Julius Schwartz was being amused by his favorite pastime—bridge—in the production department, with anybody who knew how to play the card game. During working hours, Schwartz was one of a team of editors who had been producing material for the highly successful National Periodicals (now better known as DC Comics) for going on a decade. Part of comic book royalty, whose only equals—or betters, some would whisper—resided in the kingdom of Dell Publishing. All stern with their subjects—and in some cases, tyrannical.

The company's top-paid artist, Alex Toth, pushed through National’s cold double-doors, bundled against the winter winds, portfolio/treasure-chest in tow, eyes scanning for Schwartz. Locking on his target, Toth beelined for the pick-up game, and said, “I’m here to pick up my check.”

Noble Schwartz refrained from looking up, contemplated his hand, and answered in an offhand manner.

“I’ll give it to you after lunch.”

“Do you have my next ‘Johnny Thunder’ script?” Alex parried.

“No, your next assignment is a science-fiction story.”

“I’m turning in my ‘Rex’ job, ‘Johnny Thunder’ is next.”

“The science-fiction story is your next job.”

Growing discontentment began to boil at the back of Toth’s neck. It wasn’t the first time he wanted to rebel. More and more, National seemed a claustrophobic kingdom, with unseen walls pressing in, and an evil foreshadowing of continued compromise. Unwilling to have his fate so randomly decided, Alex Toth, arguably the top dog at the company, quit on the spot.

Apocryphal versions of this story have Toth dragging Schwartz to the nearest window and dangling Julie out of it until he promised to immediately produce the check. And while Toth’s anger is infamous, the story underlines Alex’s frustration far more than it does an actual event.

It didn’t matter either way.

Alex had an ace in the hole.

Julie played out the game, went back to his office, and quickly divided Toth’s estates among his round-table of creators.

Gunfight At The DC Corral Editor Julius Schwartz (left center) and artist Alex Toth (right center) slapped leather circa 1952—seconded by two horse- and spaceopera heroes in an incident which, according to legend (which seems to be at least largely substantiated by fact), ended Toth’s first stint at DC. (Left:) Johnny Thunder, in the lead splash from AllAmerican Western #101 (Sept. 1948), the second tale of the new Robert Kanigherwritten hero. (Right:) The splash penciled by Toth and inked by Dan Barry for Strange Adventures #12 (Sept. 1951); thanks to Bob Bailey for the scan.

[Schwartz illo ©2006 the Estate of Gil Kane; Toth portrait ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth; other art in montage ©2006 DC Comics; art at top of page ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

Alex Toth: Edge Of Genius

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Four From The Firmament “Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates and Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs (with Captain Easy), Frank Godwin’s Connie, Noel Sickles’ Scorchy Smith…” These, says Greg Theakston (seen in photo), were the early icons of young Alexander Toth. So here are vintage panels from all four of those newspaper comic strips: Terry (1935); Wash Tubbs (1937); Connie (1929 or ’30); Scorchy (1935). A Toth tribute to Terry can be found on p. 19. [Terry art ©2006 Chicago-Tribune-NY News Syndicate or successors in interest; Wash Tubbs art & ©2006 NEA; Connie and Scorchy Smith art ©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

It was time for a change, anyway.

Change had been the touchstone of Toth’s career.

The fall and winter of 1952 found Alex in the middle of the change he’d been working for his entire professional career. Many jazz musicians of the era were working and thinking hard the same way, trying to push their art beyond what had come before. Passionate expression and unique approach in the face of faceless monotony. Toth, who was aware of all modern trends, felt a kinship.

The streamlining introduced at the 1939–40 World’s Fair finally began to hit the minimalist wall. The arts were becoming, as industry had become: simplified. Louis Armstrong was old-hat; Charlie Parker ruled the day. Milton Caniff had set the standard in the more highfalutin’ world of comic strips, but as yet no one had appeared in the comic book field as a pretender to the throne.

Alex Toth was well on his way to changing that scenario.

Humble Beginnings The Depression pressed on during Alex’s entire New York City childhood. Relentless brick, cement, and steel days and nights were brightened by the movies and the comic strips. A trip to the Loews was a big 10¢ event and didn’t come often enough. The strips, on the other hand, lined every city street trashcan, four to an intersection. Discarded thrills and laughs within hand’s reach if you weren’t too proud. Every day, and in color on Sunday evenings.

Found Art. Literally.

Hot styles abounded, and the guy on the end of the brush was a star to the public. The Golden Age of the Newspaper Strip complemented the Golden Age of Hollywood perfectly. One satisfied the need for

visual satisfaction with fleeting movements, the other with delightful static permanence. The young Alex Toth’s eyes were quenched looking over the frozen images of Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates and Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs (with Captain Easy), Frank Godwin’s Connie, Noel Sickles’ Scorchy Smith, and a hundred others. But it was far more than just a pleasurable read; it was study time. Homework without deadlines or grades. Each panel and its contents were mentally scanned and re-scanned, and more and more of the young boy’s brain-matter branded with the basics of composition, style, and storytelling.

Full cartoon creations with nuance and the subtlety of the best Hollywood production. Not just characters you knew and liked, but characters you got to know and liked better every day. Alex wondered if he could bring comic characters to life, too.

However, to suggest that comics and movies were Alex’s only youthful passion would be misleading. Like every child of the ’30s, the young Toth cut his literary chops on the other teething rings: radio; pulps; Big Little Books; the classics. All contributed to the boy’s heroic spirit, sense of adventure, and wonder.

Like most kids his age, Alex was an Errol Flynn in the making, if he had anything to say about it.

All of this combined inevitably led to experimentation on works of his own with pencil and paper, and his artistic baby steps were taken during off-hours after school, and on rainy weekends. Failure after failure led to works that failed, but not by as much.

Certain that comics was what he wanted to do for a living, Toth eventually enrolled at the Art Students League and the School of Industrial Arts. While at the latter, he won a competition and was picked to illustrate a digest soft-cover edition of David Copperfield, published by the school. To his astonishment, teenaged Toth was in print.

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The First Few Years In The Career Of One Of Comics’ Greatest Talents

Toth Becomes A Heroic Figure Two of Alex Toth’s earliest published works. (Left:) A text illo from Heroic Comics #32 (Sept. 1945). (Right:) A splash page from Heroic #33 (Nov. 1945). A splash from the first bylined published Toth story, also from Heroic #32, can be seen on p. 20 of this issue. Thanks to Tim Barnes. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

Fueled by his personal growth and encouragement from his teachers, Alex began to refine his craft to the point where he was almost ready for steady publication. Whether or not he was ready ceased to be an issue at the end of 1944 and in early 1945.

Serfdom The Second World War was a boon to comic books and the companies that published them. Millions of Americans looking for heroes found them in the pages of the color comics, and millions of troops looking for relief from the boredom of the quiet times of war also made comics a huge industry. Presses were running at full capacity without the help of the younger men pressed into the service of their country. In fact, the lack of younger men was a problem in all aspects of the business. So much so, that the comics publishers were forced to seek artwork from pre-draft-age teens, Alex Toth included.

Eastern Color, the originator of the comic book, might not have otherwise taken a chance on Alex, but they couldn’t be choosy.

“How old are you, kid?”

“Sixteen,” Alex replied nervously.

“You’re hired.”

Thus began his three-year on-the-job- training course in the medium in the pages of their flagship title Heroic Comics. While his friends were schlepping groceries or hawking papers, Alex was parked in front of the drawing table, making a fair rate, and getting his name in print.

“That’ll impress the babes, and every guy in the neighborhood!”

He was only turning out about eight pages every two months, and this allowed him time to perfect each and every drawing without a pressing deadline: a luxury few professionals ever get to enjoy. Unlike almost any other artist, Alex got to assess his work without pressure, and to re-assess it, and I suppose the pattern was set early on.

The urge for perfection.

Of all the artists I’ve met, none have been so quick to crucify their own work, and with so much disdain. For that alone, I suppose this makes Toth unique in the history of the comics. So much passion that he would resort to the total destruction of what had come before, only interested in what was to come next. Such a high personal standard is rare, in the 21st century or in any other.

Eastern Color had hired him as a freelancer, though he probably wasn’t sure if they liked his stuff. At least he was working steady in the comics industry.

However, sometimes there was no joy in Mudville, as in Alex’s ill-fated attempt to get work from Jack Binder, the art director of Fawcett Publishing’s comic book line. Best known for its Captain Marvel character, the Fawcett empire constantly nudged up against National for the #2 spot, just after the Valhalla that was Dell. Having dealt with much of the current talent, and knowing what he was talking about, Binder’s critique was far from kind, but Alex knew it was honest. Heartbreaking, but honest: the best kind of critique you’ll ever get.

In immaculate dissatisfaction, the young Alex tore the contents of his entire portfolio into shreds and started from scratch, incorporating lessons from the recent unpleasantness. Tenderfoot Toth was far happier with the new work.

Changes hot and fast.

By summer of 1947, the change had been remarkable: from crude Caniff wannabe to polished Caniff wannabe, and the All-American comics line (founded by M.C. Gaines, but now owned wholly by National) liked what they saw. A number of their artists were working in the Caniff mold, and Toth would be a welcome addition to their kingdom.

Editor Sheldon Mayer started him on a couple of “Dr. Mid-Nite” stories, then had him spell Irwin Hasen and others on some “Green Lantern” tales in Green Lantern, All-American Comics, and Comic Cavalcade. The total workload during 1947 zoomed to ten pages a month, and the work was still very strong.

The bonus provided by working for DC/AA was the cover assignments denied him at Eastern, and soon he got to do one for the multihero All-Star Comics (#38, Dec. 1947-Jan. 1948), and another that same month for All-American (#92, Dec. ’47)! After a decade of viewing the castle from the streets, he was finally through the gates,

Alex Toth: Edge Of Genius doing what he’d always wanted to do, indentured to a magnificent master who could offer many rewards.

Things had changed, and Alex Toth was thrilled.

During 1948, his rate of output doubled to twenty pages a month, and he moved from the minor leagues to the majors with amazing ease. It was another demand to change the way he had done things, and adapt to the new rules. The editors at National understood what working regularly in the professional world was doing to the sprout, and encouraged him with tough love.

He’d finally met the deadly deadline dragon, and, as with the best of all freelances, slain it.

A Royal Command Alex’s fortunes changed as National’s did, and the prevailing trend in the middle of 1948 was away from super-heroes and into any

Nitey-Nite And Turn Out The Lantern AA editor Shelly Mayer started young Alex out drawing “Dr. Mid-Nite” in All-American Comics #88 (Aug. 1947)—but soon moved him up to the mag’s lead feature, “Green Lantern,” as per the splash from AAC #92 (Dec. ’47).

The latter drawing, reversed (“flopped,” as they used to say in the trade), became one of the artist’s first covers for DC—though he probably didn’t get paid extra for it. He was only 19 or 20 at this time. [©2006 DC Comics.]

The (color) drawing at top right was done by Toth in 2003 for collector Joe Moores and his wife Gillian, featuring two JSA heroes the artist had drawn at various times over the years. [Dr. Mid-Nite & Black Canary TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

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The First Few Years In The Career Of One Of Comics’ Greatest Talents

They’ve Got Him Covered Even when Toth didn’t draw the “Johnny Thunder” story inside, new editor Julie Schwartz had him doing covers for All-American Western, as witness this one for #106 (Feb.-March 1949). Carmine Infantino penciled the “JT” tale within. [©2006 DC Comics.]

other genre. Companies diversified at an alarming rate, with more changed Third-Class Mailing Permits than you could shake a dime at.

The big trend was toward romance and crime comics: that’s where the cash was. Lev Gleason’s long-running Crime Does Not Pay was selling a hard-to-beat two million copies an issue. Simon and Kirby’s instant success Young Romance was doing over a million per, and the publishing monarchs smelled cash and opportunity.

“Let’s go invade the rich Romance and Crime kingdoms.”

Most also took a stab at Western comics, and Toth suddenly found himself stripped of his “Green Lantern” feature in All-American Comics and receiving commands to produce “Johnny Thunder” in its replacement All-American Western in mid-1948. While it was just a case of musical titles to “the suits,” it was a step closer to what Alex really wanted to do and would eventually excel at: human drama.

Though not much less cardboard than the super-hero work, the new projects dealt a bit more with the emotion of the scene rather than the action. People had to sit in a chair as convincingly as they formerly flew through the air. The Western motifs also allowed Alex to decorate, rather than simply present them. Lots of hats, horses, and architecture to master, and a lucky/logical next step in his career. National was so pleased with the result that Toth worked on the Western genre regularly during the rest of his first tenure there.

Every Dog Has His Day—And That’s No Bull!

(Left:) The “Roving Ranger” splash from All-Star Western #58 (April-May 1951), actually the first issue of the mag that replaced All-Star Comics. Inks by Bernard Sachs. Thanks to Bob Cherry.

Since few artists come into comics specializing in drawing animals, it must’ve been a challenge for young Alex to draw Westerns, Green Lantern’s dog Streak, and The Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog. Thanks to Eric Schumacher for the above splash from Rex #2 (March-April 1952); inking attributed to Sy Barry, who talks about Toth on pp. 25-28. [©2006 DC Comics.]

Alex Toth: Edge Of Genius

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For the next five years, Toth drew “Johnny Thunder” in AllAmerican Western, “Roving Ranger” in All-Star Western, “Sierra Smith” in Dale Evans Comics, and Jimmy Wakely Comics, the latter a feature which was forced on him and which he didn’t enjoy at all.

The half-breed Romance Trail tried to cover two bases at once: Western comics sporting photo covers to make them look more like romance magazines. National hoped to rope in a mess of cowgirls, but seems like the fillies didn’t like the brand, as the title only lasted six issues, even with Alex’s art.

In an ever-expanding attempt to tap into new corners of the market, National began to dabble in the crime genre shortly after the cowboy attack, launching Danger Trail and the comic book of the radio show Big Town, both of which carried Toth art and covers.

Danger Trail, which only lasted for five issues, was another strip which demanded that he expand beyond his then-current abilities. That was a demand from Toth, not National. While he’d done exotic locations in many of his earlier stories, now he was called on to mix the action and scenery with a more human element: character-driven tales rather than gimmick-driven stories. In various interviews, Toth has expressed his disregard for the rock-’em sock-’em world of superheroes, and a preference for the genuine emotion of the common human.

In response to William Gaines’ EC science-fiction comics (Weird Science and Weird Fantasy), the always-ready-to-milk-any-new-trend National launched Strange Adventures, then Mystery in Space, the scene of Toth’s first sf work. Though his tenure in those titles would be short-lived, it marked one more change in the way the young man approached his art. Though he was a long-time science-fiction fan, these stories would be some of the few in that genre that he would do in his career. For some reason, the romantic Alex was always more comfortable with a rapier or a six-shooter in his hand than a ray-gun.

Most unexpected is Toth’s assignment on The Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog, National’s star canine crime-fighter. As with all of his work there, Toth rose to every challenge: men in tights above our heads, six-gun heroes and horses below, international intrigue everywhere, or how to make a dog look like he’s running convincingly. The result was a more polished, well-rounded artist who could perform with grace and skill under any conditions. A near-complete mastery of his art exhibited by a quickly changing approach to the work. Fast now, fast as a quick-draw, or a rapier cut on the cheek.

And at $40 per page practice rate.

The effort had almost paid off, and Alex was about to graduate. Kiss that allegiance goodbye dear and amen.

An Allegiance Broken— A New One Formed Since he’d begun creating for All-American in 1947 (actually, by 1945 it had been subsumed into the larger National line), Alex’s work was under the careful scrutiny of his editor Shelly Mayer at AllAmerican, and of National production manager Sol Harrison, both of whom he listened to very seriously. In an interview in Comic Book Artist (Vol. 1) #11, Toth remembers: “When I visited dear old Shelly Mayer, 1,000 years ago, at 225 Lafayette Street, at Gaines Publishing, he said, ‘Kid, learn to do it all, to letter. The more you do of your own work and less you rely on somebody else, the better that work is going to be.’”

Sol Harrison, who logged in every job published by National, knew a stinker from a good one, and he’d seen every job Toth had turned in

Romantic Standard “My Dream Is You!”—penciled by Toth, inked by Mike Peppe—appeared in Standard/Nedor’s New Romance #18 (Oct. 1953). This tear-jerker was reprinted by Greg Theakston a few years back in his out-of-print Standard Comics #1. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

since he’d started at the company. Alex was well aware of Harrison’s expertise in decoding the mysteries of a great comic page. Sol (like Shelly) stressed simplification. A pruning of the unnecessary, and the accentuation of what’s important. Or, in Toth’s paraphrase, “Strip away everything you don’t need, and draw the hell out of the rest.” A lesson he’d far from understood in 1947, but five years later he’d almost figured it out.

Another lesson he was figuring out was that his style and temperament were quickly growing away from the flag of National Periodicals.

At a company notorious for having a rather vanilla house-style basically patterned after that of Dan and Sy Barry, experimentation was looked on with fear and misunderstanding by imperials who didn’t like the boat rocked. In a conscious or unconscious effort, Alex had conformed to the company look while in training. The problem was that, by the end of 1951, he’d learned all he needed from National and was ready to move to his next natural level unencumbered by a caste system.

The place of this revelation was at Standard Comics.

Standard had also been publishing comics since the World War II years with limited success, and yet by the early 1950s the company had become the Greenwich Village of the industry. A place to make a personal statement without much interference from the top. A place

10

The First Few Years In The Career Of One Of Comics’ Greatest Talents

Standard Issue(s) Also in Standard Comics #1, Greg/Pure Imagination reprinted the above two Toth-penciled gems from Standard mags of different genres: “The Phantom Ship,” from Adventures into Darkness #8 (1952), with inking by John Celardo; and “Show Them How to Die” (both mag and inker uncertain). The splash of “The Blood Money of Galloping Chad Burgess” is repro’d from a scan of the original art on the Heritage Comics Archives website; our thanks to Dominic Bongo for retrieving it for A/E. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

where you wouldn’t have your head chopped off in some inquisition.

Much of the success in attracting talent to Standard, and helping it bloom, goes to art director Mike Peppe.

Peppe came out of the Jerry Iger comics shop, and when Toth met him he was sharing a studio with artist Mike Roy. Peppe’s work had appeared throughout Fiction House’s line between 1945 through 1947, but shortly afterward he moved into the art director/head-inker position at Standard, and the results were impressive.

Once met and tested, Peppe became Toth’s principal inker for almost a thousand pages. Instantly, a mutual admiration society sprang up, and their partnership was sealed. Toth had watched Julius Schwartz’s bullpen render his pencils, and one has to wonder what he thought of the likes of Frank Giacoia, Bernard Sachs, Sy Barry, Joe Giella, or others who toed the National company line. With Peppe, Toth had found a trusted partner in crime, and he felt safe with his inker at last.

This must have contributed to his willingness to make an abrupt and right-on-time departure from National: “An inker I like. And he gives me lots of work. And he likes my stuff!

I should have hung my last editor out of the window by his heels!”

Standard was an island of safety, and Alex was no longer an indentured slave. Now he was somebody who could do what he really

Alex Toth: Edge Of Genius

11

Raising The Standard Toth drew the cover of Joe Yank #8 (Oct. 1952)—and the creepy 5-pager “Alice in Terrorland” (original source unknown). When Greg Theakston reprinted both in his 1987 publication Buried Treasure #3, which was composed wholly of Toth stories drawn for Standard, Alex sent him a swashbuckling 1983 illo to use as the cover. [Joe Yank and horror art ©2006 the respective copyright holders; Buried Treasure cover art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

wanted to do. A comics creator oasis. An art director who would give him all the work he needed, and glow over every penciled page turned in, and who’d render it with love.

National’s imperious attitude wasn’t what this freelancer needed at the moment. He needed somebody to inspire him, allow him to fight the good fight.

Peppe’s domain, while small, was comfortable. A ruler who would encourage the change happening so quickly, rather than inhibit or oppose it.

The shackles of the National house-style cut, Toth charged into his work at Standard with lance held high.

evolution. “My Stolen Kisses” from Best Romance #5, his first published work for the company, picks up where his work had left off at National.

Nudges in the right direction, but still, no butterfly. No, Alex had been given an entirely new, free-ofrestriction set of guide-lines, and his first steps at Standard were tentative.

“I can beat that. Easy,” must have been his pledge.

In 1952, we find a man taking his inevitable move in a direction that he only vaguely divined. In the following two years, Alex Toth finally figured out his artistic destiny: 400 pages which mark the turning-point in his career.

And, in doing so, he moved up from knighthood to royalty, to being a powerful influence on his equals and lessers.

This is not to say that Toth immediately found what he was seeking; the first Standard jobs were halting steps in his

1952 is where Alex finally found Alex.

The only thing expected of the freed Toth was, as usual, what he expected of himself.

“What’s the height of that bar?”

12

The First Few Years In The Career Of One Of Comics’ Greatest Talents

ALEX TOTH Checklist [This Checklist is adapted from information appearing on Jerry G. Bails’ online Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-99. See the opposite page for information on how to access this invaluable website. Names of features which appeared both in comic books of that particular title and also in other comics are generally not italicized below. Reprinted material is only sporadically listed. Key: (a) = full art; (p) = pencils only; (i) = inks only; (w) = writer; (d) = daily newspaper strip; (S) = Sunday newspaper strip.]

Name: Alexander (Alex) Toth (1928-2006)(artist, writer) [NOTE: Name pronounced with long “o”] [NOTE: Lettered some of own comic book work] Pen Names: Atoz; Hawk; Sandy Toth; [also signed] A.T. Education: High School of Industrial Arts, New York City; Art Students League, New York City Influences: Emil Gershwin, Mort Meskin, Jerry Robinson, Lou Fine, Noel Sickles, Milton Caniff; Roy Crane, Frank Robbins Print Media (non-comics): [as artist] advertising: booklets; album covers (1964 Space Angel); books: Pictorial Encyclopedia of American History (1962); The Art of Alex Toth (1977); Comique Mechanique (1981); EC Portfolio (1972); Warren Calendar (1976); Pretty Girl Sketchbook (1981); The Prince and the Pauper (juvenile, 1946); Maverick (juvenile, 1959); coloring books (Lone Ranger, Buffalo Bill Jr. & Calamity Jane, Tonto, all 1957); Real West (magazine) 1972; film magazines (covers); Fantastic Film Collectors Edition (1980); portfolios (1957, 1981); Street Enterprises Benefit (1975)

Comics in Other Media: Baron Von Roth (a) 1983 reprint in Fanfare; Blue Beetle (w)(a) Charlton Bullseye #6; Bravo for Adventure (w)(a) 1983 reprint in Yages [Voyages?]; comics (a) 1947 for Catholic Pictorial, published by Catholic Guild Educational Society; Jon Fury (w)(a) 1955 in Depot Dairy (Army paper); The Question (a) 1976 for Charlton Bullseye; Love, the Ultimate… (a) 1975; Bravo (w)(a) 1983 Promotional Comics: Rockets and Range Riders (a) 1957 for Richfield Oil; Tom Mix (a) 1982 for Ralston European Comics: Bravo for Adventure (w)(a) 1976, 1982-83; Special USA [France] (a) 1986; Superman [Germany] (a) c. 1984 Comics Studio/Shop: Hanna-Barbera Studio (a) 1978; Joe Kubert studio (a) 1949

Alternative Comics: ACE Comics The Cosmic Book (a) 1986, cover What Is… The Face 1984; Aardvark-Vanaheim [Canada] – Swords of Cerebus inside cover (a) 1982; Bill Spicer – Jon Fury (w)(a) 1973 in Wonderworld; Catalan Communications – Torpedo 1936 (w)(a) graphic album reprint 1984; Comico the Comic Company – Afterword and model sheets (w)(a) Space Ghost 1987; Continuity Comics – Torpedo 1936 (a) Animation: Cambria (director, character 1985 reprint; Dragon Lady Press designer, & creator, 1957–61—Clutch [Canada] – Bravo for Adventure reprint Cargo, Space Angel); Disney (story1987, covers (a) 1986-88, Oolala (a)(w) boarder, 1973—Robin Hood); Hanna1983; Eclipse Enterprises – various Barbera (character designer 1964-85 Josie reprints (a, some w) 1985-88; and the Pussycats, Fantastic Four, Dino Fantagraphics Books – Anything Goes!

Boy, Jonny Quest, Mighty Mightor, (w)(a) 1986; Prime Cuts (w)(a) reprint Bravo For Toth!

Scooby Doo, Space Ghost, Super Friends, 1987; Ken Pierce, Inc. – Introduction (w) Thundarr, Young Samson, Zandar, Doubtless one of the most personal of features to Toth was 1982 for Valkyrie! graphic album; Birdman, Herculoids); Pantomime (layout his “Bravo for Adventure,” which appeared at various Kitchen Sink Press – illustrated letter times, for various publishers, over the years. This page from artist, 1969-70—Hot Wheels, Sky 1981; NBM Publication (UK) – Lost in his 1987 introductory biography “Who Is Jesse Bravo?” was Hawks); Ruby-Spears (character designer, Time (a) graphic album reprint 1986 with reprinted in Manuel Auad’s Toth Black & White in 1999. pre-production, & layout artist, 1980-82, intro by artist; Pure Imagination Buried [©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

Thundarr); TMS (layout artist, 1987, Treasure (a)(p)(i) reprint 1986-87, Doc Bionic Six) Weird’s Thrill Book (a) c. 1986, Standard Comics (a)(p)(i) reprint c.

1985; Renegade Press – cover (a) 1986; Murder (w)(a) 1986; Support Performing Arts: Film storyboarder & designer Angry Red Planet, (column) 1986; S.Q. Productions – The Vanguard (w)(a) 1987; Wally 1958; Gene Kelly and Jack and the Beanstalk (TV, no date); Project X Wood – witzend (a) 1972, 1976; Western Wind Productions – Casey (live and animation sequences) Ruggles (a) reprint 1979 Commercial Art & Design: Boron Gas; Cal Dairy Association; Union 76 Sports Stars; You Were There/20th Century COMIC BOOK CREDITS Honors: Comics Creators Guild (UK) – Frank Bellamy Lifetime Achievement Award, 1995; Eisner Hall of Fame Award, 1991; Harvey Award – The Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, 1990; Inkpot Award (San Diego Comicon), 1981 Syndication: Casey Ruggles (d)(S) (ghost p&i) 1950 (2 months); Roy Rogers (d)(S) (ghost p&i) 1961 – both for United Feature Syndicate

(Mainstream US Publishers)

Archie Publications: covers (a) 1983; The Fox (w)(a) 1983; illustration (a) 1984; Red Circle Sorcery (a) 1974 Better [Standard] Publications: Adventures into Darkness (a) 195253; Battle (a) 1952; Best Romance (a) 1952; covers (a) 1952-53; Crime Files (a) 1952; Date with Danger (a) 1952; Fantastic Worlds (a) 1952; illustration (a) 1954; Intimate Love (a) 1953-54; Jet Fighters (p) 1952-53;

Alex Toth: Edge Of Genius Joe Yank (a) 1952-54; Lost Worlds (p) 1952; My True Love (p) 1952; New Romances (p) 1952-54; Out of the Shadows (p) 1952, 1954; Popular Romance (p) 1953-54; This Is War (p) 1952-53; Thrilling Romances (p) 1952-54; Today’s Romance (a) 1952; The Unseen (a) 1952-54; Who Is Next? (a) 1953 Charlton Comics: covers (a) 1972 for Real West; filler (a) 1946 in Yellowjacket; My Only Love (a) 1975 DC Comics: Adventure Comics (a) 1972, 1974, 1983; The Adventures of Alan Ladd (a) 1949-50; All-Star Comics (a) 1947; AllStar Western (p) 1951-52; Batman (a) 1974; Big Town (a) 1951-52; Black Canary (a) 1972; Blackhawk (p) 1982-83; Bob Kanigher’s Gallery of War (a) 1972-73; Challengers of the Unknown (p) 1983; covers (a) 1948-49, 1951-52; Dale Evans Comics (a) 1948-50; Danger Trail (p, some a) 1950-51; Dark Mansion (p) 1972; Dr. Mid-Nite (a) 1947; The Flash (1948); Flash and Atom (a) 1964; Gallery of War (a) 1972; Gang Busters (a) 1952; Girls’ Love Stories (p) 1949-50, 1963; Girls’ Romances (a) 1950; Green Lantern (p, some a) 1947-49; Hot Wheels (w)(a) 1970; House of Mystery (a) 1961-62, 1965, 1969, 1971; House of Secrets (a) 1961, 1969, 1974; illustration (a) 1990, 1995; Jimmy Wakely (p) 1949-52; Johnny Peril (p) 1952-53 [a.k.a. Just a Story]; Johnny Thunder [Western] (p, some a) 1948-52; Justice Society of America (p, some a) 1947-48; My Greatest Adventure (a) 1961, 1963-64; Mystery in Space (p) 1951-52; Our Army at War (a) 1971-73; Our Fighting Forces (a) 1971, 1973; Plop! (a) 1975; Rex the Wonder Dog (p) 1952; Rip Hunter – Time Master (a) 1962; Romance Trail (p) 1949-50; Roving Ranger (p) 1951-52; Roy Raymond – TV Detective (a) 1951 [a.k.a. Impossible but True]; Secret Hearts (a) 1949-50, 1954, 1966, 1970-71; Sgt. Rock (a) 1984; Sierra Smith (a) 1948-50; Sinister House of Secret Love (p) 1972; Star Spangled War Stories (a) 1972; Strange Adventures (p) 1951-52; Streak (1948); Super Friends (a) 1975;

Available Again—At Last!

13

Superman (p) 1982-83; Superman and Batman (p) 1982-83; Superman and Challengers of the Unknown (p) 1985; Weird War Tales (a) 197273; Weird Western Tales (a) 1972; The Witching Hour (a, some w) 1969-70; Wonder Dog of the Month (a) 1944-49; World’s Finest Comics (a) 1953 [spy tale]; Young Love (p, some a) 1969-70; Young Romance (p) 1969-70 Dell Publications: Chuck Wagon Charlie’s Tales (a) 1957; Clint and Mac (a) 1958; The Danny Thomas Show (a) 1961; Darby O’Gill and the Little People (a) 1959; The FBI Story (a) 1960); fillers (a) 1957-59; Flying A’s Range Rider (a) 57; The Frogmen (a) 1963; Frontier Doctor with Rex Allen (a) 1958; Gale Storm (a) 1960; Gene Autry (a) 1957; Gun Glory (a) 1957; Jace Pearson’s Tales of the Texas Rangers (a) 1957; Johnny Tremaine (a) 1958; The Land Unknown (a) 1957; The Lawman (a) 1960; The Lennon Sisters (a) 1958-59; Maverick (a) 1960; No Time for Sergeants (a) 1958; Oh, Susannah (a) 1960; Overland Stage (a) 1957; Paul Revere’s Ride (a) 1957; Queen of the West, Dale Evans (a) 1957; The Real McCoys (a) 1960; Rex Allen (a) 1957; The Rifleman (a) 196061; Rin Tin Tin (a) 1960; Rio Bravo (a) 1959; Roy Rogers (a) 1957-58; Sea Hunt (a) 1959; 77 Sunset Strip (a) 1960-61; Sugarfoot (a) 1959; Tarzan Jungle Annual (a) 1957; The Time Machine (a) 1960; Wagon Train (a) 1960; Wells Fargo (a) 1957; Western Roundup (a) 1957-58; The Wings of Eagles (a) 1957; Wyatt Earp (a) 1960; Zorro (a) 1958-60 Eastern Color Printing: Buster Crabbe (a) c. 1952; covers (a) 1948 for Sugar Bowl; Heroic Comics [a.k.a. New Heroic Comics] (a) 194548; illustrations (a) 1946, 1948; Juke Box (a) 1948; Personal Love (a) 1951; Randy (a) 1948; Spike Jones (a) c. 1946 EC Comics: Frontline Combat (a) 1952; Two-Fisted Tales (a) 1951 George W. Dougherty Publishing Col: Future World (a) 1946 Lev Gleason: Boy Loves Girl (p) 1954; Buster Crabbe (a) 1954; covers (a) 1954; Crime and Punishment (a) 1954 Magazine Village: True Crime Stories (a) 1949

The WHO’S WHO of Marvel/Timely: covers (a) 1978, 1991; fillers (a) 1981; Hanna-Barbera American Comic Books (1928-1999) features (a) 1978; Love Romances (p) 1955; Lovers (a) 1955; My Love FREE – online searchable database – FREE http://www.bailsprojects.com No password required

A quarter of a million records, covering the careers of people who have contributed to original comic books in the US. “It’s really a very nifty site.”

—Dr. Jerry G. Bails.

“You can say that again!”

—Roy Thomas.

Alex Toth’s cover art for the reprint comic Johnny Thunder #2 (April-May 1973). [©2006 DC Comics.]

Story (a) 1957; My Own Romance (a) 1957; Rawhide Kid (w)(p) 1965; The Savage Sword of Conan pin-ups (a) 1981, 1983; Space Ghost (a) 1978; TV Stars (a) 1978; Western Gunfighters (a) 1957; X-Men (p) 1965 Millar Publications: Big Daddy Roth (a) 1964-65 Petersen Publishing: Car-Toons (w)(a) 1965-66; Drag Cartoons (a) 1960-65; Hot Rod Cartoons (a) 1965-67, 1972; Surf-Toons cover (a) 1966 Seaboard Comics: Devilina (a) 1975; Sgt. Stryker’s Death Squad (a) 1975; Thrilling Adventure Stories (a) 1975; Warhawk (a) 1975 Skywald Publishing Co.: Rio Vegas (p) 1971 reprint St. John Publishing: Danny Dreams (a) 1954; Hollywood Romances (a) 1949; Nightmare (a) 1953 reprint Warren Publications: Blazing Combat (a, some w) 1965-66; Bravo for Adventure (w)(a) 1980; covers (paint) 1975-76; Creepy (a) 1965-66, 1973, 1975; Creepy Annual (a) 1971 reprint; Creepy (a) 1982 – special Toth reprint issue; Hacker (a) 1975; Hide from the Hacker (a) 1975; Pantha (i) 1980; Torpedo 1936 (a) 1982 reprint; Vampirella (i) 1980

Western Publishing: Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery (a) 1963; Colt .45 (a) 1963; The Twilight Zone (a) 1963 Ziff-Davis Comics: Romantic Marriage (a) 1951; Weird Thrillers (a) 1951

ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part two

“Let The Imagination Of The Audience Do The Rest” An Interview With Legendary Artist ALEX TOTH on Media Violence Interview Conducted by Michael Vance

A

Copyright 1978 Michael Lail lex Toth was my first, and you are among the first to know it.

In the early 1940s, Alex Toth had begun spending afternoons away from the High School of Industrial Art in New York City showing his portfolios to comic book editors, art directors, and artists. With Sheldon Mayer’s help, he landed page work at Funnies, Inc., and, at age 15, was hired to draw two- and three-page “filler” stories for Famous Funnies. It was a modest beginning for one of the best-known and most admired comic artists in the history of the industry.

By 1977, when I interviewed him, Alex Toth had worked for almost every major comic publisher over a thirty-year career, branching into advertising art, animation, and motion picture storyboards as his interests and techniques grew. His art was so distinctive that a Toth page needed no signature. I came to interview him at an Oklahoma City comic book convention as much as a student and admirer of his work as I was a journalist on assignment. I worked for a small daily newspaper in Seminole, OK, and I came to argue against censorship, and for the graphic portrayal of anything an artist chose to portray. I went away with another viewpoint and a number of questions that changed my approach to violence in my own work and in storytelling in general.

Alex won the argument hands-down. He won not because his views were logical, and not because I agreed with him on even major points of censorship. He won because he demands high

standards of content and quality of himself and of every artist. He won because his art proves that graphic is not always dynamic or dramatic. As is almost always the case when dealing with Toth, I came away the richer for the meeting.

I also came away poorer, and that’s the reason you are among the first to know that Toth was the first person I ever interviewed.

I published the interview in a copyrighted fanzine I published called Cryptoc (an anagram for “The Crypt of Comics”) with a circulation of only a few hundred. Then I went about the business of selling the interview to a paying market, and the first well-known comics-related magazine I approached bought the article. But they never paid for or published it. After several years of waiting, I resubmitted the article to a second magazine, Heavy Metal. They rejected the article because they felt it criticized their editorial stance, even though they are never mentioned in the interview. Toth, who was working with them at the time, never did so again and blamed me for the loss of employment. In no uncertain terms, he refused to give me his blessing to submit the article again. Of course, I, not he, owned the copyright. But because of my respect for his talent, I have held the article back until now. I’ve submitted it at this time because I feel it deserves to be republished.

I owe Alex Toth two debts of gratitude.

In addition to my learning a different approach to storytelling, he taught me a second lesson that day. Extraordinarily talented people are always the easiest ones to deal with. —Michael Vance.

Toth Strikes A Blow For Art Alex Toth in the 1970s (above)—and the type of “violence” he generally preferred to portray in his art (and to see in others’)—the prelude to or aftermath of a blow, rather than the blow itself.

From a 1983 “Fox” story drawn for Archie Comics’ action imprint, as seen in Toth Black & White (1999), edited and published by Manuel Auad, which is sadly (like all Manuel’s books done with Toth) out of print. The photo is from the DC-produced fanzine Amazing World of DC Comics #5 (1975). [Fox art ©2006 Archie Comics Publications, Inc.]

16

Alex Toth On Media Violence rolling ball, and that’s where Peter Lorre, the killer, has been lurking.

And the ball comes rolling out by itself, afterwards, and the girl does not reappear. Then you know that she’s been grabbed by Lorre, the killer. The audience’s imagination can do its worst in imagining what that man is doing to that child. It does not have to be shown.

A director named Val Lewton did the same thing with all the things that either he could not or would not show either because of budget or because of the movie code in the ’40s with his little low-budget mysteries and horror films. The Curse of the Cat People did it. Did you see that? It was the unseen in the night that created the horror. If you remember, there is another terrible scene: I detested the film Catch-22. It was one of the worst things I’ve seen. And one of the things I objected to most was when, up there in the bombardier’s nose, or rather, the nose-gunner’s area up there, a fellow gunner or crewman is hit, and we have this scene where all of his insides are outside now. It was terrible. And who needs that? I mean, how many times do we have to keep hitting that thing on the head that war is horrible? We know war is horrible. Who wants bloody war?

MV: One objection to media violence is that people can be influenced by seeing or reading violence to commit violence. What do you think of this?

TOTH: Yeah. There are a lot of minds that can be affected by what they see—who like that kind of film. First of all, they seek out those films. They get turned on by it. Whether it’s depicting rape, or whether it’s depicting killing or a particular kind of torture or brutality. But they’re not “running on the road,” I think.

MV: But can someone “normal” be influenced into taking his first step into this sort of violence through reading or seeing it?

The Doctor Recommends Exercise The artist defined action as “the good, clean fight of many years ago.”

Here’s another example of Toth action, from his “Dr. Mid-Nite” story in All-American Comics #88 (Aug. 1947). [©2006 DC Comics.]

MICHAEL VANCE: This is Alex Toth. We’re discussing violence as portrayed in media. Mr. Toth is involved in television, in graphic arts, and a little bit with motion pictures. What is your personal definition of violence?

ALEX TOTH: In the old days of motion pictures, if you had a fight scene, the hero knocked the villain down, and he stayed down, and if he didn’t stomp him that was action. Today, you knock a man down, you stomp him, you cut him open, shoot him, whatever, you run him over with a car, and that’s violence. And you zoom in tight (with the camera) for a shot of the blood streaming out of his wounds, whatever, or somebody’s eye hanging out by a bloody thread. That’s violence.

But action is the good, clean fight of many years ago.

MV: Is this clean, bloodless violence of television and older movies also harmful in a different way? This unrealistic portrayal of “painless” shootings, “bloodless” knifings, violence without hurt, may convince children that hitting brother over the head with a skillet has no real consequence.

TOTH: I’ve heard that argument. I don’t buy it, because I believe the audience’s imagination can create more of a horror scene than anything shown up there on the tube. On the big screen or the small. I don’t know if it was Hitchcock or some other director who said years ago that … oh, I believe it was Fritz Lang, talking about [his film] M, which was with Peter Lorre and had to do with a child molester/killer.

It showed a scene where a little girl walked into an alley chasing her

TOTH: It’s very possible. But the thing is, these are very negative things to demonstrate to people, and I don’t think that much film time or reading time… whether it’s a comic strip or it’s in a book… should be devoted to making too much of the violent scene, the scene of mayhem. I still think you can cut away from it with the camera at the proper point and let the imagination of the audience do the rest. But at least you have not depicted it clearly on the screen. Many years ago, someone could be shot, or walk into a dark room and you hear a scream after they enter the room. Lord knows what happened. But that excited your imagination. In a negative way, yes, because everyone had his own idea about what happened to that person in the room. Action is the clean fight scene, or the dirty fight… we always expected the dirty fight from the villain. You could expect anything from him and the audience would accept that as long as the hero won. He got up again despite what was done to him, and he won. But I think pandering to the lowest common denominator… and the thing is I don’t think that sex and violence should always be mentioned together. They are a separate and distinct thing. Now with violent sex, like rape or whatever, and that area where it’s just coupling—like two rutting animals—that’s a different story. But sex is a beautiful thing, and it could be depicted, and has been, in film in a beautiful way, in an erotic way, granted, because the whole thing is an erotic sensation. But I don’t like violent sex. I don’t think these two elements should be constantly coupled together when they’re talking about censorship, and they say “sex and violence,” “sex and violence.”

MV: How would you answer those who say that media violence is healthy catharsis – emotional release from watching an action?

Almost voyeurism. How can violence be cathartic without being graphic?

TOTH: Well, it used to come from the hero winning in the end. He could be knocked down, given all kinds of trouble, by the villain, throughout the story, whether it was a he or she, hero or heroine, but after taking all their lumps, they finally got up off the floor and they

“Let The Imagination Of The Audience Do The Rest”

17

Cathartic Violence—Super-Hero Style (Left:) Toth’s Green Lantern slugs The Icicle on the final page of the lead story in All-American Comics #92 (Dec. 1947). We may not see the actual blow struck— but the arching of the villain’s body says it all.

(Right:) This penciled panel from Superman Annual #9 (1983) gets a bit more graphic, showing Batman hurling himself feet-first into a criminal— or does it? Even here, the crook’s own body shields our view of the actual impact, yet its force is—dare we say it?—forcefully portrayed. With thanks to David “Hambone” Hamilton. For more art from this story, see pp. 47 & 52. [Both panels ©2006 DC Comics.]

made it at the end of the film. That’s the happy ending, which is no longer in vogue. That used to be a cathartic experience for the audience, because they empathized with the hero or heroine and suffered with them when they were taking their lumps… they were building up an anger against the villain or the force or whatever it was in the film or the story. When they finally came out on top in the end, that was a great lift. That was a catharsis of some kind. Now, that kind of catharsis is healthy. The other kind where one is exposed to the violence and they dwell on it, enjoy it because of an act the audience doesn’t have the courage to do themselves… that’s feeding something that shouldn’t be fed, I think. I’ve heard that rationale; I’m not convinced it’s true.

MV: Two examples of current movies that have brought this sort of healthy catharsis back into the theatre—Rocky and Star Wars.

Crowds have left theatres cheering.

MV: Do you think there is room for both sorts of catharsis?

TOTH: Sure. I think there will always be the other type of film being made, as long as there are producers and writer, who want to make them.

MV: Why the swing from extreme to extreme in the media? For years, we’ve had the anti-hero. Suddenly, the hero is making a comeback.

TOTH: You’ve had the anti-hero since World War II. We suddenly found ourselves in the era of psychological films. We suddenly started to psychoanalyze every damn thing… populating our movies with “sickies.” These were all negative statements. It really started in 1949 and 1950. The year of the start of the sick school.

MV: Do you think these films were made because of World War II?

TOTH: Thank God. I’ve heard that.

Gestapo Tactics

TOTH: I don’t know what it was. I don’t know. They were demoralizing films, and you came out of those theatres for years, and years, and years convinced that mankind is rotten, that man is not worth saving, that everything is hopeless. Very downbeat, depressing, horrible movies. But, you see, when the writers, producers, directors were attacked for making these films, they argued they were holding a mirror up to life, reflecting life. That’s not true. They were reflecting what their own sick, little minds thought would be a hell-of-a-great film to put out. All of those kooks in Hollywood are going to a shrink, have gone to one, or intend to go for five or seven years of analysis. They are over-paid, under-talented, very insecure people. These are the people writing, producing, and financing films, and justifying anything out of their psyche with “This is what the people want.” It just isn’t so. That’s their cop-out for making that kind of film.

The 1995 Kitchen Sink book Alex Toth (edited by Manuel Auad) contained the entirety of the Toth-drawn contents of a prose-and-illustrations booklet which the artist did in 1951, via an ad agency, for the National Committee for a Free Europe, Inc. This juxtaposition of text and art suggests the sadistic violence of the Nazi Gestapo during World War II without showing it. The woman’s pose and attitude are sufficient. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

MV: Would you say the low point of that was the Vietnam War? It seems we’re just coming out of that now….

18

Alex Toth On Media Violence not make it profitable for him to go on.

MV: Flint’s justification is that there are enough people buying his magazine.

TOTH: They made him a millionaire. Yes. MV: Don’t networks justify violence by ratings?

TOTH: Well… you can’t put on television what you can put in Hustler. We may well find that in television in ten years. Who knows?

MV: Do you believe that, if ratings are high, much self-policing goes on in the networks for specific popular shows?

TOTH: Probably not. Probably not.

MV: In that case, what can the people do? How can they influence a producer or director?

Like Cornered Rats Two men battle for their lives against a giant rat and friends in Standard’s Adventures into Darkness #8 (circa 1953), in a story penciled by Toth and inked by John Celardo. Although the final three panels shown are actually one drawing cut into three parts, the effect is still very much like the quick “cinematic” cuts of the so-called “MTV generation.” Repro’d from Greg Theakston’s publication Standard Comics (“1st Issue”), with thanks to GT. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

TOTH: Well, I have heard it repeatedly stated that the networks, the producers, and sponsors are very sensitive to letter-writing. If it’s an established campaign, though, where somebody mimeographs a form letter and has 5000 people sign it, that becomes a very obvious ploy, and they tend to ignore that. But if they are individually written letters, sincere letters that really show unhappiness with what is being put out, that does seem to have some effect. The networks are always running scared all the time anyway. They can pull the plug on a show drawing too much negative mail. However, there are not enough complimentary letters written by people pleased with a good product. There ought to be as much mail for good products as for shows people object to. If that were the case, networks would have a better barometer. It’s true that people look at the ratings of a show—and that’s it. I’ve heard that cop-out used for all kinds of crimes committed in the name of entertainment.

TOTH: No, the films stayed away from Vietnam as a subject matter except for The Green Berets. Now there’s a rash of Vietnam-based films. Three or four of them.

MV: I think it may have been the ’60s more than the Vietnam War, because there was a strong feeling against anything “establishment.”

TOTH: Yes. Yes. Tear it all down. Burn the barn. Throw the baby out with the bath water.

MV: Anytime you talk about violence in the media, you must also talk about censorship. Who decides what is violent and should be censored?

TOTH: We have networks and their continuity acceptance departments, and programming practices who are the ones that actually review written material, the scripts. Very often, they bird-dog productions to see that everything is being followed. They involve themselves in the corrective editing that has to be done to any film, whether it’s live-action or animation, for television. Every producer of film material, whether it’s a feature film for a theatre or film for television, ought to be responsible for self-policing, self-censorship.

Establishing their own bounds of good taste. I don’t think that they should abdicate that to any review board in TV or any governmental bureaucracy that could be built up around that sort of thing.

Responsibility should stay with the creators of these projects.

MV: Well, what do you do with the Larry Flints [Hustler magazine] who think that they are censoring themselves?

TOTH: That’s a terrible question to ask me. I don’t know. I would hope that there would be enough people not buying the magazine to

“Flying A” Stands For “Action” Dell/Western let Toth (and perhaps the writer) get a bit more graphic than usual in this powerful sequence from the story “Hidden Treasure” featuring a TV-licensed hero, “The Flying A’s Range Rider,” from Western Roundup #18 (April 1957). Don’t know about anybody else, but it sure made Ye Editor wish Toth had been commissioned to draw an adaptation of George Stevens’ 1953 film Shane! Repro’d from Pure Imagination’s Buried Treasure #3 (circa 1987). [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

“Let The Imagination Of The Audience Do The Rest”

19

In closing: In 1998, I wrote an overview of Alex Toth in my comics review column “Suspended Animation.” Following is a part of that column: “Less is more” never found a more dedicated advocate in comic books and strips than in artist Alex Toth. A true original whose style was never dominant in the field but is still frequently imitated by lesser artists, Toth stands as a giant in the history of the most popular art form in the world.

Adventure was his favorite genre, horror and Western his best palette, and a straight-forward honesty in his visual storytelling was his trademark. It is worse than sad that he is unknown or forgotten by a growing number of comics fans today.

Toth’s art was influenced by comic strip artists like Noel Sickles, Milton Caniff, and Roy Crane. These influences and Toth’s own talent produced a unique style similar to minimalism and impressionism in “fine” art. Characterized by design simplicity, heavy line, and carefully spotted blacks, no line was added to a panel unless it was absolutely necessary. This simplicity produced an art similar to photographic negatives. Direct and dynamic, it is full of movement, emotion, and fun. Carried to the nth degree, it has obviously influenced popular comic book artist and writer Frank Miller.

The above column should make it clear that I bore no malice toward Alex Toth. It is my hope that he rests in peace. He seemed to find so little of it when he was alive.

Toth And The Pirates A 1987 Toth tribute to Milton Caniff’s (and Noel Sickles’) classic Terry and the Pirates—probably the most influential adventure comic strip of the 1930s and ’40s, even ahead of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon. See more about Toth, Caniff, and Sickles (who’d influenced Caniff) on p. 5 of this issue. From Manuel Auad’s book Toth Black & White. [Art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth; Terry & others characters TM & ©2006 the respective trademark & copyright owners.]

Michael Vance is, among many other things, the author of the 1996 book Forbidden Adventures: The History of the American Comics Group, which was serialized over the course of Alter Ego #61-62.

If you’re viewing a digital version of this publication, PLEASE read this plea from the publisher!

MV: Let me play devil’s advocate. I am a viewer. I should have the right to see anything, anytime, anywhere I want.

his is COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, which is NOT INTENDED FOR FREE T DOWNLOADING ANYWHERE. If you’re a print subscriber, or you paid the modest fee we charge to download it at our website, you have our sincere

TOTH: Right. But not on television. The tube is right there in everybody’s living room. This is what has caused the great sensitivity and public pressure. They have had to set up some sort of censorship.

All right. Whatever you want to see you can see at the porno theatre down the block. We’ve all gone to a porno theatre. At least I have. On numerous occasions. Just to see what all of the hollering is about. Fine!

But I have to make a decision to leave my home and go to the theatre and pay to see whatever is on that screen. And pay dearly. But you can’t pipe that into the home because home is family—the center of the family. Since the tube has become a babysitter for children, the danger is Mother and Father cannot be there all the time to say, “No, turn that dial off!”—and kids are forever curious about things they may not understand yet. But they’re picqued by it.

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So whether it’s violence, or borderline sex on the tube, given the chance, kids watch. That forms values. I can see why, on the one hand, there must be controls established on what to show on the TV tube.

That should be left to the limitations of the good or bad taste of the producers of that product and the people that buy that product. It’s a responsibility shared by the creator, the producer, the network advisor, and the audience that votes yes or no on that product.

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ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part three

“Alex Toth Had It All!”

JOE KUBERT Remembers His Colorful Contemporary Interview Conducted by Jim Amash

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

lthough Joe Kubert entered the comic book field as a professional a few years before Alex Toth did, the art of the two young talents was often seen in the 1940s and ’50s sharing the same issue in All-Star Comics, Westerns, and sciencefiction titles.

him incredibly because of the work he did. I felt sorry for him, because here was a guy everybody wanted to work with, but for whatever reason, he just kind-of tied himself up. I asked Irwin, “How’s everything going?” He’d say, “Well, Alex hadn’t been feeling well,” and so on. So, as a last stab, so to speak, I wrote Alex a letter, asking how he was feeling and that it’d be nice to hear back. He didn’t respond.

JOE KUBERT: My relationship with Alex goes back to when he was maybe 16, 17 years old. I had a studio in New York where Carmine Infantino, Alex, and a whole bunch of guys got together to work. Alex was the young guy sitting in the corner. The rest of us were a year or two older, our eyes bugging out over the beautiful stuff he was drawing.

JIM AMASH: You weren’t the only one that happened to. Ah, who can explain it? Let’s go back to when you guys were young. What were your initial impressions of the young Alex Toth?

A

Eventually, I guess we, like most groups, kind-of physically grew apart, but we communicated and I got a bunch of beautifully handwritten cards with great drawings. Little by little, I heard less and less from him until, despite the fact that I tried a number of times to restore the communication, we lost touch. Within the last couple of months of his life, he did communicate with Irwin Hasen, who kept me informed on Alex’s situation.

You know, I’ve always liked the guy and admired

KUBERT: Alex was this tall, light-blond-haired, skinny, good-looking guy, maybe a year and a half younger than myself, but who was a wiz who drew like crazy. I don’t remember the details of why he wound up working up at this little studio we had put together at Brad Smith’s. We’d look over this guy’s shoulder, he never said a word, [mutual laughter] never talked to anybody, but he’d just sit there and you’d see that brush and pen going, and watch a picture grow in front of your eyes. The guy was just terrific. I think I met him at All-American Comics when Shelly Mayer was the editor, and all of us—me and Carmine and a bunch of other guys—kind-of gravitated towards one another. The guy who drew us together,

Joe Kubert in the 1990s—flanked by art he and Alex Toth were doing when Toth was “16, 17 years old”: (Left:) The splash page from Joe’s third “Hawkman” story, from Flash Comics #63 (March 1945). His first one saw print in the 1944 Big All-American Comic Book, now on view in the hardcover DC Comics Rarities, Vol. 1… his second in Flash #62, as seen in A/E #44. Joe, born in 1926, was around 18 at this time. Thanks to Al Dellinges for the photocopy. [©2006 DC Comics.]

(Right:) Alex Toth’s first definite credit is for Eastern Color’s “One Of Our Heroes Is... ‘Missing!’” in Heroic Comics #32 (Sept. 1945), which is signed “A. Toth.”

Thanks to Tim Barnes. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

“Alex Toth Had It All! ”

21 He did all his pencils linearly, and put the blacks in when he inked. That was astounding to us. [laughs] JA: So he worked from light to dark.

KUBERT: Absolutely. I think that’s the proper way to do it.

It’s a lot easier to make a lighter line dark than it is to make a darker line light. In his mind, he knew precisely where those blacks were going to go once he picked up his brush and inked.

His pencils were very clean; they weren’t smudged—he kept his paper real clean. And I say that because there were a lot of guys, you’d know what they had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, just by looking at the paper. [mutual laughter] JA: Did you ever see Alex use much reference?

KUBERT: He must have, but I never saw him do it.

“Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On” The first and last (5th) pages of the “Danny Dreams” story from Tor, Vol. 1, #3 (May 1954)—actually the 4th issue—as drawn by Toth for St. John Publishing Corporation. Like editors/packagers Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer, Toth depicted himself narrating the yarn. In each previous issue, the 20th-century boy had dreamed he was in a prehistoric world…only this time, he didn’t wake up at the end! [©2006 Joe Kubert.]

really, was Shelly. We were all working for him.

JA: Alex considered Shelly one of his most important mentors.

JA: His work evolved over the years, as you know. But he worked for you. When you were at St. John, he did “Danny’s Dreams” [in the Tor title].

KUBERT: Yeah, that shocked me. The originals that I received from him were not full-size. They were closer to print-size, which really surprised me because I had not seen any artist work that small before.

I’ve got to tell you that I was disappointed when I got the material. I’m sure Alex was probably working on other stuff and really didn’t put in the time that I felt he should have done. I don’t think it was his best work.

KUBERT: Our relationship with Shelly affected us because it hit us when we were so young. We were deeply into the process of trying to learn what this business was about. When I started working with Shelly, I was still a high school student. Alex came in a little later.

Those influences at that young and tender age had a much more impressive effect on us than things, perhaps, that came later. Alex admired anybody and everybody who had the kind of talent that he felt that person should have.

JA: I believe he had quit working for DC then. Did you call him up and ask him to work for you?

Alex stayed at the studio for just a couple of months or so. The funny part of it is that the only socializing we did was when we all came together in the studio to do our own work.

KUBERT: I would imagine that’s the way it worked, but I really don’t recall. I’m sure that I must have asked him to do the job, but I don’t recall the exact situation.

JA: I have two versions of how Alex was seen at this age. A couple of people said he was very nice, very friendly, very quiet; and then there’s the other side, that he was grumpy and could be difficult.

JA: Alex told me that Sol Harrison used to criticize his work a lot.

He’d say things like, “It’s very nice, Alex, but you don’t know what to leave out.” [mutual laughter] That made him strive for economy.

KUBERT: I never saw that side of him, and I don’t think there was that side of him. Very frankly, I don’t. He was... [sighs] and this is something that I’d learned later from other people who knew him a lot better than I: he had a problem, family-wise, and I’m really not sure of what the problem was. There was some kind of a problem with his mother, whom I may have met once or twice. I think his father was no longer available, but I’m really not sure.

KUBERT: I doubt that sort of suggestion would have pushed Alex to do anything, because Alex always struck me as the kind of a guy that, if you pushed him hard enough, he would go in exactly the opposite direction. [Jim laughs] Unless he agreed with it.

JA: How complete was Alex’s pencil work?

KUBERT: When he was doing “Johnny Thunder,” his pencils were pretty tight. But what astounded me was they did not contain blacks.

JA: Let’s flash forward to when he worked for you while you were an editor at DC Comics in the ’70s. Again, did he come to you, looking for work, or did you call him?

KUBERT: I don’t remember, but I imagine it was because I called him.

JA: Was there any problem about the fact that you were, at one point, Alex’s peer, and now you’re his boss?

22

Joe Kubert Remembers His Colorful Contemporary

KUBERT: No, not at all, and that’s true with every guy I’ve ever worked with. The fact that I was the editor only meant that I had the responsibility of the last word on the book. That’s all. I had the greatest respect for everyone who worked with me, and my hope was that they felt that I wasn’t pushing anything on them, that they were working with me rather than for me. Especially with Alex. I mean, we went way, way back.

JA: Alex was inking with markers by then.

KUBERT: I don’t recall. I know there was a lot of stuff done with markers, but it was hard to tell with his stuff. As you know, he was always experimenting with different kinds of markers to get a different line or for the black to retain itself. He was always looking to try new things.

JA: Do you want to talk about the 1969 “Enemy Ace” story?

KUBERT: Yes. Prior to that, Alex drew some filler stories which were some of the best ones Bob Kanigher ever wrote. Alex had requested doing an “Enemy Ace” story. He was the one who asked. That, I remember distinctly. He was very taken with what Bob was doing, in terms of writing. And he loved to draw airplanes, too.

He wanted to do an “Enemy Ace” story, and I said, “Fine, Alex.

That’s great.” But by this time, he had started getting a reputation for changing every script given to him. He would change pages, he would change sequences, and so on and so forth. For good or bad, that’s fine if he’s working with an editor who feels it’s okay for him to do that.

However, he had requested the story from Bob, whose work he admired to begin with—and this was all done on the phone when I spoke with him—I said, “Look, Alex. This thing was written by Bob. I went through it, I edited it, everything works really, really well. Don’t change anything. Do it just as it was written.” Alex said, “Fine.”

I got the story back. The whole story had been changed. The beginning, the middle, the end; it was not the same story. I just saw red when I saw it, especially after the understanding I thought we had. I packed up his work, sent it back, and wrote, “Alex, this is yours. This is not mine. I told you that you were not supposed to change anything in this story. Not only did you change it, you threw out the old story and did your own.” And I have a strange feeling that this incident contributed to the fact that there was some coldness between us.

JA: Probably so, because Alex did not like rejection.

KUBERT: We work in a profession where there is a hierarchy, as you well know. If you’re an artist working for an editor, that editor has the last say in what that work is going to be, simply because he’s respon-

A Pair Of Aces High Two masters of air-war comics at work: (Left:) A Kubert “Enemy Ace” page from Star Spangled War Stories #148 (Dec. 1969-Jan. 1970). A page later, he and Bob Kanigher make the reader feel all the horror of aerial warfare—when Von Hammer’s little dog mascot Schatzi falls from the plane during a “somersault.” Currently on view in The Enemy Ace Archives, Vol. 2. [©2006 DC Comics.]

(Right:) Toth drew a comic book adaptation of a World War I sequence from the 1950s TV series Air Power. In Kitchen Sink’s volume Alex Toth, the artist says he was “loaned a 16 mm print of the half-hour film and a table-top editor,” and “cranked film to and fro to ‘freeze frame’ shots that I’d then sketch into panels…. Never got another assignment quite like it, damn it! It was fun!” [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

“Alex Toth Had It All! ”

23

sible for it. If somebody gets his head handed to him, if he didn’t do the job properly in a book, the editor’s the first guy to go. So if I’m going to be blamed for something that is wrong in my book, I’m going to be the reason for that mistake, not somebody else doing something that I told them not to.

JA: Also, I’m sure that Bob Kanigher would not have liked having his scripts rewritten either.

KUBERT: Oh, boy. Well, that’s another thing that worked out rather well. Bob used to be my editor, and the hierarchy relationship was certainly there. When he was the boss, he had the last say, but Bob was professional enough to know that when I took over the editorial reins, I had the last say. We had a lot of arguments, pro and con, as to what should be done, but we both understood that, because it was my responsibility, I had the last word. I never, never had a problem with Bob Kanigher.

JA: If you had run Alex’s version, what do you think Kanigher’s reaction would have been?

Toth Was There Alex also drew this chapter heading for Air Power; it, too, was printed in the Kitchen Sink book. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

KUBERT: I don’t know and I really didn’t care, because that didn’t matter. The affront was not to Bob. The affront was to me—not to me personally, but to the guy who was editing the book. That’s why I felt bad that Alex became so cold and removed insofar as our relationship was concerned, because I thought we had a pretty healthy one for a long time. I certainly didn’t put him down personally and I always admired his work. I always will admire his work. It’s just something that was not acceptable at that time, that’s all.

Well, our relationship, on a social level, is fine. We’re friends and that would never change, but I’d never work with him again. I felt the same way about Alex.

JA: When you got packages from Alex, before the “Enemy Ace” incident, what was usually your reaction?

KUBERT: Oh, it was a joy to look at them. And if you think that I enjoyed sending back that other story that he did, I was not. It did not please me at all. I was not happy about doing that.

JA: Did you ever have a conversation with him about it after it was rejected?

JA: But if Alex had taken the rejection well, let’s just say, and had wanted to do more for you, would you have hired him?

KUBERT: Not that I remember.

KUBERT: Well, that’s a whole bunch of big “if’s,” but I would never have hesitated working with Alex. Never! The guy was terrific. But again, if he did another story for me and did it the same way that he did “Enemy Ace,” I’d send it back.

JA: Did he work for you afterwards?

KUBERT: I don’t think so. [NOTE: Actually, though that “Enemy Ace” tale had been slated for Star Spangled War Stories #144 (AprilMay 1969), a bit of 11th-hour research has turned up several Tothdrawn stories in Kubert-edited mags in the early 1970s. —Jim.] JA: When you got the story, did he ink it and letter it, too? Was it a complete job?

KUBERT: Yes. Incidentally, he never got paid for it, either.

JA: Had he changed Kanigher’s scripts before that incident?

KUBERT: I’m sure he did. Even when Bob was the editor and I was working for him, he gave me and others whom he had some faith and trust in, like Alex—he gave us a tacit okay that if, for instance, we felt that he wrote something that he envisioned being in one panel, and we felt it’d work better in two, we didn’t hesitate to make it a two-panel illustration. Or instead of a long shot, we wanted a close-up—there was never a problem with that.

My big objection, as far as the work that Alex handed in, was that it was a completely different story. I would have had no problem if he’d made some changes as I described—adding a panel or instead of having a particular page end with one panel, to put it on the other, or whatever, as long as the story and the context remained.

I would equate what happened with Alex with a situation with Russ Heath, whom I’ve known forever. Russ had been over to my house, I knew his children, I knew his wife, and our relationship was very good and healthy. Yet when Russ was doing “Sgt. Rock” and was consistently late with his work, I told him he’ll never work with me again.

JA: Until that story, you were the only “Enemy Ace” artist. Did you have any thought to what reader reaction might have been at suddenly seeing a very different style on an established character?

KUBERT: None whatsoever. And if it was heads and shoulders above anything that I would have done, it would have made me very happy.

There’s nothing that I like better than seeing somebody else’s great work, because it inspires me to do a little better than what I’m doing.

We both tried to tell a story effectively, and that, to me, is prime and I think it was prime with Alex. Our approaches to the work were completely different. He told stories with style, he told them effectively, clearly, with impact and drama, if it was called for. Humor, irony, I mean, Alex Toth had it all. He had it all and he could do it in such a way—you know, when you can communicate what would ordinarily be done in words and sentences with illustration, I think that’s what makes a good cartoonist. I think that’s what a cartoonist is supposed to do, and that was Alex. That was Alex’s work.

His work tended towards black-&-white illustration. It always did.

But why he might have used silhouettes more at one time or another, I don’t know. I know he’s one of the few guys who could do an entire 12-page story in silhouettes and still make it work.

JA: Which might be an interesting effect if somebody had the nerve to try it.

KUBERT: Oh, yeah. And Alex would have been the guy to try it. The only thing that bothered me about Alex was that he was a guy whom people were just clamoring to have him work—and, for whatever

24

Joe Kubert Remembers His Colorful Contemporary

reason, he just didn’t want to do the stuff, and that’s a shame.

As you know, you draw, you paint, and there’s a solace that you get from that. It’s a world that you’re able to create when you’re doing your own work, that pulls you away from everything. It’s like a lifesaver you’re caught on. You’re going down, but boy, this can pull you up because it pulls you out of everything.

JA: Did Alex ever ask to write a story on his own?

KUBERT: Not that I remember.

JA: Would you have let him?

KUBERT: I think so; he was good. I let Russ Heath write a story because he wanted to, and he did a great job. It was one of the best stories, I think, that came out of any of the war books. And I imagine that, if Alex had felt the compulsion to do a story on his own, I would have loved to have seen it. Absolutely.

JA: How was he on deadlines?

KUBERT: I think like the rest of us. [mutual laughter] And I include myself, believe me.

JA: [mutual laughter] When he did a story, he never sent pencils in— he always sent a completed job in, didn’t he?

KUBERT: With me, he did. I trusted him completely. Again, that’s why I was so disappointed when I got the “Enemy Ace” story.

JA: As an artist, what do you think his greatest strengths were? And if he had any weaknesses, what do you think they may have been?

KUBERT: Well, I can’t really speak about his weaknesses, because I don’t think he had any worth noting. What his strength was, and every good cartoonist that I know has it, is that he was able to take a story

that was birthed from somebody’s imagination and make it credible, make it believable, make people who are reading it believe that those things actually happened. In his storytelling, Alex maximized the sequential smoothness from panel-to-panel. He gave the impression that, despite the fact that these are frozen pictures, they are actually moving. Now that’s a damn good trick.

JA: And only a few people really manage it with great consistency.

Before the falling out over “Enemy Ace,” how much contact did you have with him via phone or letters?

KUBERT: Very little. I have a lot of those letters that he sent me at the time. But I’d get one, maybe, once a month or every month and a half, something like that.

JA: Your relationship, even though it was friendly, was more business than anything else, then.

KUBERT: Yeah, like as I say, we didn’t really socialize. I don’t even recall what those letters that I had gotten from him were about. I only recall that they were most interesting to look at, most interesting to examine, especially those that came in the form of illustrations, without any words at all.

JA: Well, his artwork certainly did speak for itself, didn’t it?

KUBERT: It sure did. Well put, Jim. Well put.

JA: Did you ever see anything in Alex’s work that you thought you might adapt into your own?

KUBERT: Maybe not consciously, but I’m sure that a lot of the stuff that Alex was doing, that I admired, I subconsciously absorbed and put into my work. Every artist does that. And I’m sure that a lot of the stuff that Alex was doing seeped into the stuff that I was doing, as well.

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ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part four

“This Guy Was A Driven Artist”

SY BARRY Talks About—What Else This Issue?—ALEX TOTH Interview Conducted by Jim Amash

S

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

y Barry, who was interviewed in depth in A/E #37, drew for DC in the 1950s, and in the 1960s became the artist of the long-running newspaper strip The Phantom.

JIM AMASH: What was your initial impression upon seeing Alex’s pencils?

SY BARRY: I was extremely impressed. I marveled at the clarity and the marvelous placement of blacks that Alex had a skill for.

He had an acute eye for design and composition, and I just was thrown for a loop every time I looked at his pencils. They were glorious pencils to ink. His pencil work was very clean and tight. I probably could have inked his roughs, because I had been in the business for a while, and some pencilers’ work was just roughs; I had to reinterpret them and give them the completed blacks and the finished drawing. So, having learned how to do that with other artists, it would have been easy, and a joy, inking Toth’s layouts, just his roughs.

JA: Did he shade in his black areas or did he just put an “X”?

BARRY: Oh, no. He shaded them in. As a matter of fact, what I would do is, I would take a kneaded eraser and knead down the page, erase down the page very lightly so I’d be picking up most of the graphite, and ink directly over his pencils. The ink wouldn’t take too well over the graphite, so you had to lighten them in order to put the blacks in comfortably.

JA: Did he pencil with a heavy lead? Or dig into the paper?

BARRY: I would say he used an HB. No, he didn’t dig into the paper. That’s another thing that impressed me; it’s almost as though his mind’s eye had seen that picture before he laid a single line down. I never saw him pencil, but I could just visualize the way he sat down at a page, ruled out the panels, and then saw these compositions in his mind’s eye, and just put them down so cleanly and with such sureness. It was incredible to see the finished product.

JA: Did you read the story first or did you just start inking?

BARRY: I read it, yes. I loved to see how he interpreted a story, and I had the script in front of me, as well. Usually, the inker needs the script, just to get an idea what the writer was writing about, and what was in the captions, and what was behind the scenes in the script. I read the dialogue and the captions in the lettered artwork itself and put it all together.

JA: Would Alex deviate from the script?

BARRY: Yes, many times, with a great deal of anxiety on the editor’s part. [Jim laughs] And many times, he had a good sense of story. Alex was a very bright guy, very well-informed and well-educated. He was a very pleasant guy to talk to, and we had a few somewhat intellectual conversations at lunch. On one occasion, Alex, Joe Giella, and I had lunch together. Alex was having another one of his little fits in the office, and we kind-of got him out of there and took him to lunch.

The Phantom Umpires Two artists who kept close watch on The Phantom: (Center & top right:) Sy Barry poses with his Phantom ring around the time of the 1996 film about the early costumed hero— with panels from his Sunday Phantom for March 24, 1968.

[Phantom art ©2006 King Features Syndicate.]

(Above:) Alex Toth’s own interpretation of The Ghost Who Walks, done for a fan or friend in 1974. Thanks to Al Dellinges.

[Phantom TM & ©2006 King Features Syndicate.]

26

Sy Barry Talks About––What Else This Issue?––Alex Toth

So Alex and I were having a little conversation, and were hoping that Joe would join in. Finally, after about ten minutes of conversation, Joe said, “You’re both full of crap.” [mutual laughter] You know, there’s a way of breaking up the seriousness of the conversation. Joe just wanted to get a little sense of humor in there. Alex and I just cracked up laughing. Alex really liked Joe. JA: When you said Alex had fits in the office... I know there was the problem he had with Julie Schwartz and the paycheck. [NOTE: See A/E #38 & #46. —Roy.] Were there other problems besides that?

BARRY: I think he wanted to get more covers to do, and he also had an idea of going beyond just doing pencils. He wanted to ink his own work, and in those days it wasn’t being done. But later on—I think he may have seen this in some foreign magazine—he would have loved to do them in semi-finished color, a realistic color. In other words, just a pen outline color. We saw some Italian magazines during the ’50s that were done almost photographically in full color. And he had a concept of doing things like that, and he wanted to do many more covers then, but the editors had other ideas for him. They needed him for the interior artwork.

Usually, we discussed our feelings about art, and what he was doing at that time in comparison to the artistic education he’d gotten. He felt some of the basics were good, but he felt there was a lot more that basic education could have offered and could have filled the young artists in with, such as a better concept of composition and design.

He felt that not enough of that was being done, and you know how well he executed composition and design.

He was incredible. And I loved it because I was learning from it. He was maybe a year or two years older than I was.

gray that were a little different, a little more unusual, a little more extreme and striking. He always wanted to get that feeling of striking black-&-white. You saw some of that in some of the stuff that he inked himself. It was even more extreme black-&-white.

JA: There were some differences in your styles. How did that affect your approach to inking him?

BARRY: I loved his line, yet I felt it was a little different than mine. I tried to give it a little more softness and a little more delicacy here and there, rather than a harsh, hard line. I think the delicacy against the strong, sharp blacks, that contrast, is what really set one thing against another. In fact, I don’t even think Toth recognized precisely what made my inking a little different than most other inkers on his work.

JA: Did you ever change how he spotted blacks? I’m just wondering if you modified very much.

BARRY: Yes, I did. Just very little, here and there. I would add a little more along the contour of a shape or leave a little more white than he did, just so the eye could see a little more white. After a few years of inking, I discovered what the black areas of inking does is accentuate the white areas. The reader’s eye looks at the white area, not at the black. The artist looks at the blacks. So you and I will look at blacks and see how interestingly someone will lay them in. But the real purpose of those blacks is to give the whites their shape and their form.

The more you chop up those whites, the more you cut into those whites, the more difficult it is to see the clarity of the object.

JA: Did the topic of conversation include other people’s work?

BARRY: Alex had a great respect for my brother Dan’s work. He was maybe three years younger than Dan. When Alex was a novice, he looked up to Dan because Dan had already established himself, but Alex always had his own idea of his own concepts and he really developed them. And I must say that his work had an entirely different technique and style and concept than Dan’s. I think you can recognize that, and we should all respect the differences between us. I mean, that’s what makes each of us recognizable.

BARRY: He didn’t put weights in for the holding lines themselves.

No, he basically used one weight.

Listen, he knew that inkers are professionals and it’s up to them to give the weights of the lines. How much can a penciler put in there without failing to leave some interpretation for the inker? If somebody didn’t ink his work with some professionalism and with some of his own thought and his own interpretation, then Alex held very little value for them.

JA: Did he ever offer his opinion of your inks over him?

JA: Your ink line was more organic than Alex’s. He seemed to be a little more geometrical and hardedged.

BARRY: Yes, it was. And as much as I recognized that, I still respected what he was trying to do. He was looking at the overall completed subject. He saw the work as a pattern, almost like going into a museum and seeing a painting. He saw areas of black and white and

JA: Did he use line weights on figures, or did you add them?

Quick As A Flash “Alex had a great respect for my brother Dan’s work,” recalls Sy. And why not—when Dan Barry was turning out stories like this “Johnny Quick” effort from Adventure Comics #144 (Sept. 1949), even before he became the artist of the classic Flash Gordon newspaper strip. This page repro’d from the 1990 DC hardcover The Greatest Golden Age Stories Ever Told. So why isn’t that book back in print? [©2006 DC Comics.]

BARRY: Sure. He said, “There’s something in there in your inking that defines you and separates you from most of the inking that’s being done on my work.” And I hadn’t really thought of that until he made that statement, and I had a tremendous amount of respect for that statement. I tried analyzing, over and over again, what I was doing that made it a little different, and I think it was that sensitivity of adding that bit of softness and delicacy here and there, in contrast to the strong, exciting, and dramatic blacks that he portrayed in the pencils. The contrast between the

“This Guy Was A Driven Artist”

27

From Sagebrush To Space Two by Alex Toth (pencils) & Sy Barry (inks), both ©2006 DC Comics: (Left:) A “Johnny Thunder” page from All-American Western #121 (Aug.-Sept. 1951). Repro’d from a scan of the original art, as retrieved by Dominic Bongo from the Heritage Comics Archives. (Right:) Page 2 of “Girl in the Golden Flower” from Strange Adventures #18 (March 1952); script by Robert Starr. The splashes of these stories were seen in Alter Ego #38’s tribute to DC editor Julius Schwartz.

two is what gave it an added element, another dimension.

JA: I want to get your opinion on something that Gil Kane had said about that time period. In the late ’40s and through much of the 1950s, Gil felt that DC penciling house style was either Alex Toth or Dan Barry-ish. Do you agree or disagree?

BARRY: I would say, first, Dan Barry’s interpretation was called for. I do agree with Gil, because Dan started working for them before Alex did. And suddenly, the editors were looking to get Dan to work on their books, particularly on Gang Busters, adventure stories, and characters like Vigilante. So the editors began requiring their artists to get some kind of interpretation that had Dan’s style in it.

When Toth came in, he was a whole new fresh concept, and I loved it. It was far different than my thinking and the way I developed. And it was so interesting to me. It really struck me, and I just felt that it probably just needed a couple little lighter touches to it to really make it a presentable style, according to my taste. Gil was correct when he said that Alex’s work was tremendously influential.

JA: Did Alex’s pencils influence the way you did your own art?

BARRY: You know, that’s a very, very good question. Because that was one of the things on the back burner that I was thinking about. I must admit that every time I ran into some kind of a problem in the way of designing a panel that had two or three elements in it... Alex had such a wonderful way of combining those things. He had this marvelous eye for keeping the design, yet solving complicated problems, and I would refer to him in my storytelling.

As much as I admired Dan’s storytelling, as there were few better storytellers, Dan tended to get very complicated when there was more than one action going on. The stuff got very heavy. One thing Toth had a genius for was taking three different actions in one panel and utilizing them in such a way that you could still read it, see it, and understand it, without confusing the reader. So every time I had that kind of a problem that was difficult to solve, I would just check again through the pages of the old comic books, and get reinvigorated. I’d think, “Gee, that’s a marvelous idea. What a nice concept that is,” and utilize it in a different way, but still utilize it for the composition I needed to draw. I must say I used his work very, very much. It may not have shown, but there were elements in his storytelling that I used and admired.

JA: When I asked you about Alex changing the scripts, were they minor changes or major ones?

BARRY: Oh, no, they were just minor changes. Maybe a bit of dialogue or throwing in a different figure—because sometimes, it didn’t read right and the editor totally missed it, so Alex would just do it himself without calling the editor. He didn’t feel he had to. Sometimes the editor would say, “Hey, why didn’t you call me about it? Why didn’t you tell me?” What does he have to tell him for? He wasn’t taking his authority away. This is the kind of crap that you had to deal with, with some of those infantile editors, you know. [Jim laughs] Really! They’re so worried about their job and worried about the competition between the editors, and recognition, and will their position be hindered in any way. Are they more vulnerable than the next guy, that kind of thing. And the artist is thrown in the middle of

28

Sy Barry Talks About––What Else This Issue?––Alex Toth

A Wonder Dog By Any Other Name Whatever Alex Toth may have thought of Gil Kane’s work, Ye Editor knows for a fact that Gil was a huge admirer of Alex’s art—even though the two artists’ personalities may have set each other’s teeth on edge. On occasion, Kane inherited features on which Toth had been the original artist—such as “Johnny Thunder” and the long-running The Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog (seen on p. 8): (Left:) Before Rex the Wonder Dog there was Streak the Wonder Dog—a German shepherd befriended by Alan (Green Lantern) Scott in the last year of that super-hero’s solo Golden Age run, and never drawn by anyone but Toth. Rex was really just Streak under the Witness Protection Program, with a blond-haired master who didn’t have a Power Ring. It was simpler for writer Robert Kanigher to make up a new pooch than to explain how Streak changed owners. From All-American Comics #99 (July 1948).

(Right:) Rex pulls a pair of stunts worthy of Rin Tin Tin in Rex #43 (Jan-Feb. 1959); pencils by Gil Kane, inks by Bernard Sachs. The splash of this tale appeared in A/E #40. See photo of Gil on p. 48. [Both pages ©2006 DC Comics.]

this. Alex had no patience for that and I don’t blame him. I didn’t have any patience for it, myself.

JA: Is there anything else you’d like to say about Alex?

BARRY: When I left DC around 1961, Alex faded out of my life because I became involved with The Phantom strip and was in a totally different area. I wasn’t seeing too many of my dear old comic book friends, and I was being introduced to more and more comic strip friends, so I kind of began to lose touch with the comic book artists.

Except for Joe Giella and a couple of other guys, I really lost touch with guys like Bernie Sachs and Alex.

Alex loved to talk about comics. He was a motor mouth when it came to art and artistic interpretation. Even if you didn’t ask him about it, he volunteered. I know that Alex would get a little bit bored with those long discourses of Gil Kane’s.

JA: Gil and Alex both were incredibly opinionated people. And they had opposite ideas on everything. Were you ever witness to any of that?

BARRY: There was one lunch I can remember when we were all together, along with Joe Giella. Joe held his hand over his mouth and chuckled at the two of them [Toth and Kane]. Later on, he said,

“Remember the time I told Alex that he was full of crap? And you and Alex burst out laughing? Well, that’s what I was thinking then, but I didn’t want to say it. I was covering my mouth because I didn’t want to say it.” [mutual laughter] Joe, my sweet Joe. He’s great. Right now, he’s at the San Diego convention, being honored for his work on the US postage stamps.

JA: That’s right. And he deserves it. Joe’s been overlooked.

BARRY: Yes, he has, but he’s getting his recognition now, generating a lot of fans behind him, and he’s really making up, I think, for a lot of lost time.

Getting back to Alex, I knew he had a very strong personality, and I knew he had a very strong ego, and was extremely super-sensitive, a very intense individual. But you know, that’s what made Alex. Maybe it’s those negatives that made such a genius out of him, because this guy was a driven artist. He had a burning lamp inside him that kept going and going, even through the worst periods, when he faced greatest difficulties. I mean, this guy always turned out the most incredible pieces of work and was always trying to change, trying to do something different. I must say he was just a brilliant and very, very dedicated artist. His personality had some flaws, but he had very few flaws in his ability to draw and to entertain people with his pictures.

ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part five

“Alex Was Into Everything” LEW SAYRE SCHWARTZ Has His Say On TOTH Interview Conducted by Jim Amash

A

lthough he also worked in comic strips, commercial art, and other fields over his long career, Lew Sayre Schwartz, who was interviewed in A/E #51, is particularly remembered by comic book fans as the principal ghost for Bob Kane on “Batman” from 1947-53.

JIM AMASH: How did you first get in touch with Alex?

LEW SAYRE SCHWARTZ: Alex, out of the blue, mailed me a copy of one of the Batman reprint books, which he beautifully inscribed to me—and I must say it was highechelon flattery— as an “esteemed colleague” in terms of doing “Batman.” It was a very sweet and very nice surprising gesture. I think Alex may have become aware of me because I was, at that point in my life, sending an occasional letter to a newsletter about Milton Caniff called Caniffites. I was well aware of Alex’s work. I had been writing a series of letters to a couple of guys who wrongly assailed Noel Sickles as never having made any contribution to Terry and the Pirates. Of course, that was of great interest to Alex because Sickles was one of his heroes.

And so I garnered, unbeknownst to me, a certain level of favor with Alex. I got in touch with him and we started a telephone relationship which lasted about six years. In between, I had produced a bunch of sort-of art deco postcards, so I would get Alex’s postcards covered with art and I would send one of mine back to him that way. We had a lot of fun with that.

Later on, I sent him a copy of the Caniff video that I had put together, and he was so delighted with it that he asked me to make some prints for his friends, of which you were one. And at that particular point, my equipment had broken down. I lived then on Cape

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris Dark And Stormy Knights Lew Sayre Schwartz and a panel (right center) from “The New Crimes of Two-Face!” in Batman #68 (Dec. 1950-Jan. 1951); inks

by Charles Paris—and it’s said Bob Kane worked on the Batman and Robin figures. Also seen are Alex Toth’s 1996 cover for the hardcover Batman Black & White, plus two initial pencil sketches therefrom… as printed in Auad Publishing’s Toth Black & White. [©2006 DC Comics.]

Cod, which meant that this very complex recording setup that I had needed some attention from Boston, so it took me two or three months before I could get around to doing it.

And Alex went ballistic because he didn’t get them in sufficient time and thought I was—I don’t know. Anyway, it strained our relationship, which saddened me a great deal because I valued him.

But it never interfered with my admiration for him. Toth carried the comic book business beyond its own innovation in many, many ways. He dipped into not just style, but visual happenings, so that every page he drew was a delight and innovative in design. He fiddled everywhere that he could reach.

And there were very few guys like that, you know.

We had long conversations; we used to talk to each other all the time and I loved it. One of the things that always inspired me, because I’m not too sure I could do it: when I would talk with Caniff, we could talk for an hour or more on the phone and Milt would be working. [laughs] It never interrupted the flow of his work, and I had the feeling Alex was that way. I never asked him, but I’m sure he was working away while we talked.

JA: Anything in your phone conversations that you think the readers might be interested in hearing about?

SCHWARTZ: He had a continuing disappointment in the business, artistically. He was a very generous guy.

Whenever he would talk about the comics, or acknowledge certain people, he was very good about naming names, [chuckles] and it was of prime interest to me that he was always willing to salute his colleagues.

30

Lew Sayre Schwartz Has His Say On Toth SCHWARTZ: No, and I think part of it—you know, I never met him. We never saw each other in person, but I think Alex was bedeviled by two things—something none of us know anything about in his youth; and the other thing was in his art. He was bedeviled to be the best that anybody could be, and then some.

By the same token, he was always willing to be disappointed with where the business was going; he sensed a deterioration of it. And actually, the truth is that my heroes were Alex’s heroes. My peers, such as they were, were the guys that were doing the great stuff and the adventurous stuff. We talked many times about Roy Crane, for example, and Crane happened to be—along with Caniff and a handful of people—the greatest innovator in the whole business. Think about it: Crane invented “Pop,” “Pow,” “Sock,” and “Slam.” Nobody did sound effects before Crane.

I did a tape interview with Crane and we talked about that. I asked him whatever possessed him to come up with sound on a flat surface, which is what he did. He had this almost cautious Southern drawl and very slowly said, “Well, I could show people what was happening, but I always wanted them to ‘hear’ it.” A line like that tickled the pants off Alex Toth, because that’s what Crane was about and that’s what Alex Toth was all about.

That innovation, just pushing it a little bit further than anybody else did. Alex was into everything. There wasn’t any subject that didn’t interest him. We loved the comics. Now, the comics do not suggest that the graphics become medical charts, okay? And that’s what’s happened to today’s comic books.

JA: Did he ever express to you what he thought of your “Batman”?

SCHWARTZ: [laughs] He couldn’t have been kinder, really. He accepted it as professional work, and I look back at some of the things that I did that I thought weren’t too bad. But I never had a very high regard for my artistic ability when it came to “Batman.” Some of the graphics were okay.

JA: Alex liked your graphics, then.

“It Was Easy” On an envelope sent to collector Al Dellinges in the 1970s, Toth perfectly caught the spirit of Captain Easy, the action hero of Roy Crane’s seminal adventure comic strip Wash Tubbs. See p. 5 for more on Toth and Crane. [Art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth; Captain Easy TM & ©2006 the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Alex was an illustrator. His focus went into design, like character, but except when he was fiddling around with those funny little airplanes, I wouldn’t put him in the cartoonist’s category. Do you think Alex was a humorist? No. Milton was, you see, and certainly Crane.

I was talking to Jerry Robinson about this a few weeks ago. Jerry called me—and, you know, I replaced Jerry with Bob Kane, so we always had a lot to say to each other. [mutual laughter] But beside all that, we agreed that we were both alive and aware at a great time in the history of the comics. And the fact that we could socialize with these guys, and get to know them.

JA: I agree that Alex didn’t have that in his work.

[Art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

Monthly!

The Original First-Person History!

Write to: Robin Snyder 3745 Canterbury Lane #81 Bellingham, WA 98225-1186

SCHWARTZ: Yeah, he apparently did, or he never would have sent me the book. The statement was, “Hey, you’re an equal.” I mean, that was the highest level of flattery that anybody could get from a guy like him.

ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part six

“Photographic Memory Plus”

JACK MENDELSOHN Reminisces About ALEX TOTH Interview Conducted by Jim Amash

J

ack Mendelsohn, longtime cartoonist for Dell, Quality, ZiffDavis, Archie, and DC, was also the writer/artist of the Jackie’s Diary newspaper comic strip. He wrote such cartoons as The Beatles and the Yellow Submarine movie, and many TV shows, including Carter Country and animated series.

JACK MENDELSOHN: The first time I met Alex was in New York around 1948, ’49. Freelance cartoonists always tried to find some cheap office space and split it between them. Alex was briefly one of the transients in this group, which kept changing personnel. You know, you take over the guy’s rent, and just move your drawing board in, and start working. At one time or another, Howard Post and Joe Kubert were there. I remember Frank Frazetta as being part of the crowd that would move in and out, always for brief periods of time. Maybe a guy would last a month or two months. It was where photographer Brad Smith had his studio. Brad would get these gorgeous women up there to pose nude for him. In those days, it was very shocking. This predated Playboy or anything else, and he would show us all these pictures, and we’d get all excited about seeing them. Yeah, Brad Smith was a character.

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris JIM AMASH: What was the young Alex Toth like?

MENDELSOHN: Alex was a grumpy old man, even when he was 19 years old. [Jim chuckles] I think he kind-of reveled in being one. I think he played to it. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I think he enjoyed being disgruntled and complaining, and being very, very negative about everything, the world in general and how the world was treating him.

JA: Any examples come to mind?

MENDELSOHN: Well, not in those days, because I kind-of gave him his space. It was like living with a grizzly bear; I didn’t want to cross him because he was very snappish. I’ll give you a more recent example from the early 1990s. When I commissioned him to do the artwork for Little Orphan Annie, I didn’t want to go to his smoke-filled house in Hollywood. He smoked five packs a day. He had such an enormous collection of books, which were stacked floor-to-ceiling, and he wouldn’t let any cleaning ladies in because he was afraid they’d move something, so everything had a half-inch layer of dust on it.

All-American Comics Goes To the Dogs—And To The Horses Jack Mendelsohn (above) met Alex Toth (top) “around 1948, ’49,” perhaps about the time the latter drew these two covers for All-American Comics #99 & #100 (July & August 1948)—the final Green Lantern cover for what had been the All-American group’s flagship title, and the debut of cowboy Johnny Thunder. With #103, the comic would be rechristened All-American Western. The splash of the #99 story can be seen on p. 28. [©2006 DC Comics.] Photo of Toth, taken at the 1985 AcmeCon, was snapped by Teresa R. Davidson, and is courtesy of her and Jim Amash; photo of Jack M. courtesy of the artist and his wife Carole.

32

Jack Mendelsohn Reminisces About Alex Toth fact, make the changes the second time around. Whether it was a dramatic—or melodramatic—gesture, whether he really was going to tear them or not, I don’t know. But he was so prolific that he probably would have torn them up and redrawn them.

In the late ’70s he was doing model sheets for a lot of Hanna-Barbera’s sciencefiction and action-adventures shows. And I remember that he had a drawing of a tank.

It was almost like those toys they make where a character would convert into a tank or an airplane. It wasn’t a Transformer, exactly, but it was some mechanical thing with all kinds of weaponry on it. I said, “This is great.” And Alex says, “Oh, yeah.

And this actually would work. This gun rises up and—” And I said, “Where do you find reference for this stuff?” Most cartoonists have swipe files, but he didn’t.

He said, “It’s all up in my head. I just visualize it. I know where every nut and bolt and screw works on anything mechanical. And I know if it’s in the wrong place, it wouldn’t work, so believe me, everything’s in the right place.”

Living High On The Hawk Toth’s Hawkman model for the animated Super Friends TV series in the late 1970s. He had previously drawn the Winged Wonder in a few issues of All-Star Comics (#38, #40, & the cover of #41). Thanks to David “Hambone” Hamilton. [Hawkman TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

And he would keep the drapes closed—it was like a cave—because he didn’t want the sunlight to damage any of his papers or books.

Altogether, it was a very gloomy place to be. I had given up smoking, so I was violently against cigarettes. The whole idea of going there turned me off, so I arranged to meet him in a restaurant in Toluca Lake to look at his first samples of the Annie artwork.

This restaurant was one of those places where you couldn’t smoke.

Alex fired up a cigarette and a waitress said, “You can’t smoke inside.”

He said, “What the hell do you mean I can’t smoke! Of course I can smoke.” And he started a whole to-do with them, so they finally moved us outside where he could smoke. It was uncomfortably hot outside, but that was the price I paid to be with Alex.

The Chicago Tribune-Media Syndicate had given Leonard Starr and me the rights to co-produce a Little Orphan Annie animated television series. Alex pulled out these beautiful color renderings of Annie, plus some new characters that I had developed for this format. We made Annie part of a group of other youngsters who were going to save the world from villainy. We were taking a recognized name and trying to merchandise it for today’s market. These were just color roughs. To me, they looked finished, but to him, they were just samples. There was a character in the original strip named Punjab, whom I modernized, made younger, and called him “Bungi.” I said, “Well, maybe with Bungi, you could change this.” Alex said, “Oh, you don’t like him, huh?” And he held up this stack of eight drawings and started to tear them in half.

I said, “Alex, what are you doing?” and grabbed them out of his hands. “Well, if you don’t like them, I’ll fix them. I’ll do it your way,” but he said it in a grumpy way. It wasn’t like, “Oh, I’ll be happy to do it.” He was resentful that I had any negative comment about them, or would even suggest they weren’t just right. They were just suggestions.

I won the tug-of-war and he carted them back to his place and did, in

He was like an engineer. He knew every strut on an airplane, where it went and where it led to, and what it supported. It was like photographic memory plus.

Everything was functional, and could work, the way he designed it. He was astounding.

JA: Any personal stories come to mind?

MENDELSOHN: Well, I know he didn’t have too much good to say about his ex-wife, who happened to be his third. She got his car, so he had the typical divorced guy’s bitterness about the laws here. But that’s all I can remember.

For some reason, he liked me. He didn’t like many people at HannaBarbera. We’d go to lunch together, and schmooze; I found him a fascinating guy. For a while, he was sending me these little lettered postcards that looked like they could be playing cards. And he was always dropping me notes about things.

He was a very generous person. I told him I was doing a new television version of Betty Boop, and the next thing I know, there’s a huge Fed-Ex’d package at my door containing the entire collection of Betty Boop cartoons. Alex went out and spent maybe a hundred bucks or so, and we were not that close of friends. I thought that was so sweet of him.

I knew his last wife, Guyla, who worked at Hanna-Barbera. Guyla was a very sweet lady. She changed his life; they’d go on trips. She made him a very outgoing guy who now could socialize with people and he just opened up. He blossomed under her demonstration of how you do it. But when she died, he became even worse than he was before. He rolled himself into a little ball.

Another thing that Alex reminded me of—and I didn’t remember— somewhere in the early ’50s, I went to Korea on the USO Cartoonists Tour to entertain the troops. Alex was stationed there, having been drafted by the Armed Services (he was a private). He looked us up and we all went out to dinner: Jerry Robinson, Alex, myself, and some

“Photographic Memory Plus”

33

other cartoonists who were in our group.

JA: Did you feel that Alex was not satisfied with his own work?

MENDELSOHN: Now that’s a very complex question. It’s really hard for me to say. He didn’t seem to have any vanity about his work. I mean, he didn’t brag or say, “I’m better than Caniff,” or “I’m better than this guy,” or anything like that. I think he was always jealous of the fact that guys like Frank Robbins, Milton Caniff, Noel Sickles, and others had so much more success than he did.

He didn’t want to acknowledge that it was his personality that kept him from having greater success.

It was almost like he wanted to pick a fight with people, like he did with in the restaurant, you know? He was very confrontational and would confront you if you challenged him in any way. I don’t know if it was machismo or what, but he was fired and rehired at HannaBarbera many times. Joe Barbera would call him into his office—Joe was something of a cartoonist himself—and he would give Alex notes and stuff. Alex would tell Joe off. “You know what the hell you’re talking about?”

And he’d storm out of the office. Joe, realizing he needed him, would call and they’d smooth things over again, and he’d come back and work. And then he would erupt again.

Toth At Twelve O’Clock Toth’s skill in drawing aircraft and the like is apparent in this late-1960s model sheet for an episode of the first Fantastic Four animated series. It was printed in the Kitchen Sink book Alex Toth. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

He resented authority figures and looked to confront them. What kept him from being totally out of work was his talent. It saved him every time, and I think he was aware that he was so good that they needed him. Joe would put up with any amount of insults from Alex because he needed him. Alex once told me that he could say anything to Joe Barbera, and he’d put up with it. But he didn’t see that as a virtue. He saw it, on Barbera’s part, as a kind of a weakness, that he would give in. I just think that if it wasn’t for his personality, he would have gone beyond Milton Caniff. If only he could have just been more diplomatic with people.

I lived in a place called Sherman Oaks in California, and my neighbor was writer/director Lawrence Kasdan. At that time, he was just making inroads with the Steven Spielberg people. He had worked on an Indiana Jones movie, and now had a lot of projects with them and he wanted to do some of his own. He caught the bug of storyboards from Spielberg because Spielberg used them all the time, you know. And so I called Kasdan, and I recommended Alex. He said, “Sure, I’d love to meet the guy. He is very talented.” So on their own, they arranged a meeting. I saw Kasdan one day and I said, “How did it work out with you and Alex Toth?” He says, “I couldn’t get along with the guy. I don’t know, I’m an easy-going guy, but I was getting such negative input from him and such sour reaction to anything I said. I’d really rather not work with a guy like that.” So it was embarrassing for all of us.

I thought I’d help Alex because he always talked about wanting to do movie storyboards, because it was big money, it had dignity, it challenged a lot of his creativity, and he dreamed of it. And I thought, “Hey, what an opportunity for Alex. My neighbor is a guy who’s now in charge of that.” But it just didn’t work out. Alex was really more talented than most of the guys who were very successful in that same realm of what he was doing.

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• Not seen in Vol. 1! Art from the unpublished ’40s JSA story “The Will of William Wilson”!

• Special portfolio of rare art from the 1963-1985 JLA-JSA Team-Ups & the 1970s All-Star Comics Revival—art by SEKOWSKY, DILLIN, STATON, WOOD, GIFFEN, ESTRADA, ADAMS, and more!

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All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

VOLUM

ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part seven

“He Was A True Genius In His Field” Artist SPARKY MOORE Relates His Own Close Encounters With TOTH

Interview Conducted by Jim Amash

S

parky Moore drew tons of comics pages for Dell, Gold Key, and Disney. He also drew model sheets and layouts for many Hanna-Barbera (Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, etc.) and Grantray-Lawrence (Captain America, Spider-Man) cartoons.

SPARKY MOORE: I first met Alex the first time he showed his work at Western Publishing (also known as Whitman) in Beverly Hills, around 1954. I was there the day Alex walked in with his samples. Don MacLaughlin was there, Chase Craig, myself, and maybe one or two other people. Everybody was totally impressed. He was taken on immediately, and went on to bigger and better things.

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris business. He was the reason Toth left Western Publishing. Chase got his position by simply outliving everybody else. He didn’t get it by talent. Everybody that’d had the job either quit or left. Chuck McKimson was an art director for a while along with Chase. Chase would come in and oversee everything simply because nobody told him not to. Tallender (I can’t remember his first name) was the head of the company. He was involved in the last blowup with Alex, who usually dealt with Chase.

Alex and I also worked for Don MacLaughlin, an art director who put together a bunch of little sports booklets with illustrations; he didn’t do any comics. Alex couldn’t do them all, so I did some. That

JIM AMASH: Do you remember what was in his portfolio?

MOORE: Only that it was comic book work, pencils and inks. His style was extremely unique, and he was much further along artistically than most of us. He wore a jacket coat and a regular shirt; I don’t remember that he was overly dressed, because most of us wore Levis and a regular shirt. The art directors all wore ties.

Alex was rather subdued, like any artist looking for work; he just put it up there for approval.

Knowing what I know now, I realize he was quite confident that unless these idiots didn’t know what they were looking at, they were going to hire him.

One of them was Chase Craig who, as time went on, was one of the most disliked men in the

Snow White & The “10 Pages of Doodles” Sparky Moore, flanked by his own art from the 1983 Sunday newspaper strip Walt Disney’s Treasury of Classic Tales— and by one of “10 pages of these ‘doodles’ [Alex Toth enclosed] in one of his letters. They were torn off a scratch pad.” Thanks to Sparky Moore. [Disney art ©2006 Disney Enterprises, Inc.; Toth art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

36

Sparky Moore Relates His Own Close Encounter With Toth only to speak to, but I knew Guyla pretty well because she was Bill Hanna’s private secretary. Alex’s children were teenagers when they came out to my place. Guyla had evidently been raised around livestock and she could ride a horse. She had a wonderful time, and Alex seemed to really enjoy himself, though he didn’t ride the horses.

JA: Let me back up to the Whitman days. Generally, did he get along with his editors?

MOORE: I wasn’t present in the room when he showed his stuff, because they gave you the courtesy of privacy, so if they had something uncomplimentary to say, it wasn’t broadcast.

JA: Would they have him make many changes?

MOORE: Not after the first time. [mutual laughter] Of course, Chase must have. Chase did eleven things wrong. The reason I know he did eleven things wrong is that, when the final blowup came, Toth marched down the hall with a sheet of paper in his hand, stopped at Chase Craig’s office, and said, “I’m going into Tallender’s office and read this list, and it all concerns you! If you want to hear what it is, then come along.”

So Chase did. They went into Tallender’s room, and Chase sat down, and Alex proceeded to tell Tallender A Zorro splash from Toth’s days with Western Publishing—and with editor Chase Craig, at whom in his own style that he was unhappy with Chase and the artist eventually exploded. As reprinted (with grey tones added) in Zorro: Volume One of thought he was an incompetent. He said he had eleven the Classic Adventures by Alex Toth, from Eclipse Books, 1988. [©2006 Disney Enterprises, Inc.] things that, in particular, he wanted to say. He read them all off, and then more or less told them to go was the time he blew up at Don MacLaughlin, which was not a smart screw themselves, and walked out. That was the end of his career with thing to do, because Don didn’t suffer fools gladly and if you jumped Western. in Don’s face, he’d jump right back at you.

Zorro Wasn’t The Only One Who Left His Mark

JA: Did Alex go in the offices very often?

MOORE: Well, he would go in as often as the rest of us in the beginning. We’d do a whole book in pencil, get it approved, then go home and ink. I don’t know if someone lettered Alex’s work before he inked it or whether Alex did his own lettering. His pencils were very complete. He was a very fast artist, kind-of a workaholic once he started a job. I remember one time he commented he’d been at the board for 22 straight hours. The other thing he would do is nearly complete a page, with maybe one or two panels left to do, and there’d be something about the page he didn’t like, so he’d just rip it up. I’d say, “What the hell did you do that for? Somebody’d like to have that or buy it.” “Naw, it’s crap. I don’t want anybody to know it.”

I didn’t get well acquainted with him until we worked at HannaBarbera. I got to work with him in the room sometimes and saw him quite often. One day we went to lunch and went to a movie. And he was muttering about being single; he hadn’t married Guyla yet. At one point, he was bringing a gun to work, which got everybody nervous.

We asked him why he did that, but he didn’t tell us why. [chuckles] He was pretty morose. Sometimes, he would be very quiet about the way he was feeling until he exploded, and then you didn’t have to worry.

He’d tell you everything. [mutual chuckling] JA: Did you spend much time with Alex?

MOORE: I did as time went on, to the point of his bringing his family out to where I lived because I had saddle horses. Alex married a receptionist at Whitman named Christine, a very attractive little lady, and they had four children. But the marriage didn’t last, and it was his last wife, Guyla, who kept him from imploding altogether. I knew Chris

The next time I saw him, Jonny Quest had started and HannaBarbera was looking for artists who drew the whole human figure, not just the little round-bottomed characters. An artist named Mel Keefer called me and said to come on in. He said they needed my kind of art, so I went in and discovered that Toth had shown up. They didn’t put him with the rest of us; they stuck him in a room by himself.

JA: Was that preventive medicine? [laughs] MOORE: Yeah, there you go. [chuckles] It kept the explosion where it wouldn’t hurt anybody when it went off. Joe Barbera called Alex “The Invisible Man” because some days you’d see him, some days you wouldn’t. For instance, he would drive in, and if his usual parking space was occupied, he’d turn around and go home. He wouldn’t come in and say, “Hey, there’s somebody in my parking space.” They’d call and ask why he wasn’t in, and he’d tell them, “Somebody took my parking space.”

Once he married Guyla, he didn’t come in at all. She just took him home the work and, as she told me, “I tell Alex just enough so that he knows what to do. But I don’t tell him anything about the office politics or anything like that.” She was a smart lady and he really loved her. In his later years, if you met him, within the first half hour of the conversation, he would inform you of how many days, months, and hours it had been since Guyla died. He got to the point where he didn’t leave his house. He had that four-holer Buick that sat [in his garage] and all four tires went flat because he never used it. And he never walked to the grocery store.

JA: Do you remember what the blowup he had with MacLaughlin was over?

“He Was A True Genius In His Field”

37

Toth Does Justice To The JLA & JSA Toth model sheets done in the 1970s for Hanna-Barbera’s Super Friends series, from scans sent by a regretfully unknown donor—juxtaposed (below) with the 1981 Justice Society of America illo we used as this issue’s cover. Because of our mag’s dimensions, we had to lop off Flash, Dr. Mid-Nite, and Wonder Woman— and Ye Editor wanted a couple of minor costume details added for consistency—so we made damn sure to print the entire drawing inside, just as Alex drew it a quarter of a century ago and as it saw print in Alex Toth Black & White. This was probably the first time Toth had drawn the JSA as a group since 1948—so why should he remember each and every crazy costume detail? Perhaps it’s because he was an admirer of 1940s Superman cover artist Fred Ray that he drew the so-called “Earth-Two ‘S’” on the Man of Steel. [Heroes TM & © 2006 DC Comics.]

MOORE: No, I don’t. MacLaughlin would look at your work and most of the time say, “Fine.” But sometimes, he’d say, “This isn’t fitting with what we were expecting,” or “Do this,” “Do that.” Whatever it was, Toth blew up at him, which was a mistake because MacLaughlin went right back at him. His one statement was, “I’m sick of looking at your goddamned simplified drawings where your hands look like a bunch of bananas.” [mutual laughter] Toth said to me later, kind-of like a chastised little boy, [weakly] “You think my hands look like bananas?” I said, “Well, Alex, you do have everything slimmed to a simplified form, and bananas look like fingers if you look at them right.”

He took it well. The fact that he had done something that he approved of that somebody else didn’t—someone whom he more or less respected—made him respect MacLaughlin, because MacLaughlin was a good art director and a competent artist in his own right. If he asked you for a change, there was generally a good reason, whereas Chase wouldn’t know decent art if you gave him a lecture on it.

Nobody had respected him at all. So when Toth lit into him, [chuckles] everybody applauded silently.

38

Sparky Moore Relates His Own Close Encounter With Toth

JA: Alex told me one of the reasons he quit was because he had asked for a raise. And when they’d give a raise, it was like a dollar a page, or something like that. The last raise they gave Alex was 50¢ a page, and that’s what made him blow up.

MOORE: Oh, yes. He was very aware of that sort of thing; he lived within himself so much, you know? It struck me that he would arrive at what he believed in, a plan or an idea or whatever, and so anything that didn’t conform to that was either an enemy or at least not a friend.

MOORE: Well, I can understand that. If they offered him 50¢, yeah, that would be an insult. So, yeah, if that’s what the final blow was, that would be typical of Alex.

JA: Guyla made him happy and turned his life around. Would you say he became more open, more friendly, when he married her?

JA: Did you socialize much with Alex while at Hanna-Barbera?

MOORE: Not all that much. I mean, we’d go to lunch together sometimes, and one afternoon we went to see Deep Throat. [laughs] As good as Alex was, I never heard him really knock anybody else’s work. He’d go around and look at a piece of work, and it might not be much, and he’d say, “Mm, okay.” Or he’d say, “Well, that’s kind-of nice, isn’t it?” Because he was so good, he did not rap other people, and I always admired him for that. You’ve got to admire a guy that tells you the truth all the time, even if it’s something you don’t want to hear.

There was one incident when Alex caught Iwao Takamoto whiting out his [Toth’s] signature on the model sheets. Oh, that did not go well. [laughs] That was throwing the match in the gasoline. But by that time, a lot of things were bothering him. For instance, I didn’t know, and I discovered accidentally [years later], that he was a great believer of Rush Limbaugh. One day, Alex told me he was convinced the Chinese and the Russians were secretly uniting with the idea of taking us over, and all this and that. It rather surprised me that a man who was so intelligent would get so immersed in these wild schemes, which I suppose is not unusual. You use your intelligence for whatever you want.

JA: Alex was a big believer in conspiracy theories.

MOORE: Oh, yeah. I’ve often wondered if perhaps this trickled down into his private life—that perhaps he felt anybody he wasn’t fully in favor of would be conspiring against him in some way.

JA: Sometimes even when he was in favor of them. [laughs] And he would end friendships over the smallest slight.

MOORE: Yes, he did, and she told me her secret was she told him just enough so that things didn’t bother him. He didn’t hear things that would set him off, and if this made him happy, then you could see why he’d want her around and want to be with her. Because while he’s with her, everything is fine.

JA: She didn’t suffer fools very gladly, either, did she?

MOORE: Oh, no. [chuckles] It always amazed me that she married him, because it’s like you’re stepping into the ring with an 800-pound gorilla, and are you able to control him? As callous as that sounds, you would have to control him in order to live with him. You couldn’t have him exploding two or three nights a week for any little thing that he didn’t like, you know? So she had to be a very clever lady, and she was.

JA: So why in the world was Takamoto whiting out Alex’s signature?

MOORE: He was hired by Hanna-Barbera and perhaps felt he was becoming a little king in his own right. A king where they already had a king and we didn’t need another one. Incidentally, Iwao’s still working and we’re the same age, 81. Anybody that brought a piece of work to him, he would sit there and add his own little lines to it so that when you looked at a dozen model sheets, all done by different people, they’d all have the same touch. Somebody at a later time could look at these and think the same guy did them all. A lot of the artists really resented it.

JA: I know Alex did.

MOORE: Oh, yes, absolutely. In fact, he told him, [chuckles] “Don’t you dare do any adding to my drawing.” So taking his signature off was enough to make Alex just blow up.

JA: Was Alex good on deadlines?

MOORE: Yes, he was; that was not one of his problems. The shows would run like 13 weeks, so there would be 13 separate stories a season, which meant they would need 13 separate villains and sub-characters.

They gave him a list of approved stories and he’d sit there and draw villains, which is really quite a fun job.

On the days he wouldn’t come in, Iwao would give me the list and check off the villains Alex had done. And then I would draw villains. When Alex came back, two or three of them were done. They’d give him the list back and he’d go on from there. I never had any conflict with him. I never had him come in and say, “Hey, I don’t like your villains and here’s how I think it should be done.”

That’s What Super Friends Are For A Toth storyboard for the 1970s Super Friends. Thanks to that sadly un-ID’d donor.

[Heroes TM & © 2006 DC Comics.]

I admired his intelligence and the fact that he was not a blowhard. If you didn’t know what he could do, you wouldn’t know it by his conversation, because he was not a showoff. He’d just do the work and you’d look and say, “Oh, my God, that’s beautiful.” But you wouldn’t hear it from him. You could talk to him about anything and he would talk intelligently about it and be quite knowledgeable.

JA: What did he like about you?

“He Was A True Genius In His Field”

39

MOORE: Well, I don’t know.

I get along with most people simply because if I disagree with you, it doesn’t bother me even a little bit even if your ideas are totally radical from mine. I don’t have to live your life. If it’s what you want to think, go right ahead. As long as you don’t literally kick me in the shins, I’m not going to get upset. I don’t give advice and usually, nobody wants to hear it and most of the time, they don’t take it anyway. So that way, you don’t build any resentment.

JA: Were you friends with him up until he passed away?

MOORE: I quit working for Disney in 1988 and he was still living in the little house behind the Hollywood Bowl. Do you remember the little window in the door? Well, I was warned that if you go up to the door and knock, he’d look out the window and he might say, “Hello, come in,” and he might say, “Get the hell out of here.”

So I went up to see him, and he invited me in and was very gracious.

But I noticed that he was living like a hermit. In the living room, all around the walls were various packages that fit the books he ordered.

Well, they were all sitting, still intact. Some of them had books out and obviously had been looked through and then stacked up, but it all looked like they were packed up like he was going to get rid of them or move or something.

I have a house on Catalina Island in Avalon, a block from the beach, and invited him to visit. He said, “My car doesn’t run any more,” and this and that. I said, “Why don’t you get the hell out of there? Go on over to my house in Catalina, and you can stay there as long as you want. You don’t need a car. You can walk to the grocery store, it’s just a couple blocks away.” He toyed with the idea for a while, but he finally said, “No, I can’t leave.” Why people think they’re in jail when they’re like that, I don’t know.

JA: Well, I think part of the reason is that he felt he was leaving Guyla if he left that house.

MOORE: Now that you mention that, it very well could be. That’s the last place he saw her and he could not leave.

JA: He told me more than once that he was sitting around, waiting to join her.

MOORE: Yeah, and frankly, I was always mildly surprised that he didn’t commit suicide.

JA: Did you keep in touch with him by phone after that?

MOORE: We corresponded. He was a great correspondent. But my last instructions on talking to him by phone were that I call, let it ring once and hang up, and then redial and he may or may not pick the phone up. Well, he never picked the phone up when I called, so….

JA: Any other Alex stories that come to mind that you want to tell?

MOORE: [chuckles] Every year, Joe Barbera went East to see the CBS executives with new shows they hoped to sell. He took sample splash posters and things like that. He was getting ready to go on one of these jaunts and needed some of the artwork touched up. He asked Alex and me to stay and work until we got these things done because he was leaving the next day.

We worked until around eleven o’clock that night. Joe came down

Rough Riders Of Two Eras A nice little cartoon by Toth from the envelope of a letter he sent to Sparky Moore in 1977, juxtaposed with a page from a 1948 “Sierra Smith” tale he drew for an issue of DC’s Dale Evans Comics. The latter is repro’d from a scan of the original art, courtesy of Steve Mitchell. [Cartoon ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth; Sierra Smith art ©2006 DC Comics.]

to egg us on, “Yeah, you’re doing fine.” [chuckles] Alex was sitting there, muttering by this time, and Joe would bring us pizza or coffee or anything we wanted. At one point, Joe said, “Well, come on, Alex, you’ve almost got it done. Is there anything I can get you?” Alex turned and said, “Yeah, can you get us a couple of blondes?” And Joe says, “Why, certainly I can. That’s no trouble at all. I’ll have them here in half an hour.” [mutual laughter] And Joe was serious, but Alex wasn’t! So Alex says, “Oh, Christ, no, no!” and turned back to his board. [mutual laughter] I thought, “Here you’re going to get yourself screwed up, going to ruin my marriage, because Joe’s perfectly serious.”

I didn’t doubt for a minute that Joe could have them there in half an hour.

JA: Did Alex talk a lot or keep quiet when he worked?

MOORE: No, he would chat. With me, he would; I don’t know if he did with anybody else. He was in an office for a short while with Tony Segroi, but that was the last time he shared an office. The time I shared an office with him was just for the one project that we had to get done, because we had to pass back and forth drawings or scraps or one thing or another. We would talk politics and other subjects.

Problems arose when he had to work with somebody. If the quality was bad, that bothered him. Once, two representatives of some Italian comics company came over, wanting him to work for them. They talked to him and he agreed to do it. Alex gets the first script and sits there and looks at it for a while, and picks up his pencil and writes on

40

Sparky Moore Relates His Own Close Encounter With Toth

it, “This thing is a bunch of [crap],” puts it in an envelope, and mails it back. That was the end of the love affair with the Italian comic book company. Except for that, he was very pleasant. If they’d sent the script and said, “Make any changes you think are necessary,” it might have worked. But to just say, “Here, do this,” and he felt it was a bunch of crap—no, he wouldn’t do it.

He had the good luck that most of us do not have, in that, I don’t care how bombastic he was, he was so good that he could go anywhere and get a job, especially if he had somebody like Guyla who said, “Now keep your damn mouth shut until we get the paycheck.” He could always work, whereas with most of us, it was not that easy. As far as I’m concerned, he was a true genius in his field, unlike Doug Wildey who thought he was and wasn’t.

I knew that Wildey didn’t know much when he was looking at a piece of Toth’s work one day and said, “Well, look at this thing. There’s practically nothing to it! Why does anybody think this is any good?” I said, “Doug, are you telling me you can’t see the simplicity of what he’s done and how well it comes across?” “No,” he says, “there’s no shading.” And I said, “There’s no educating a fool.” [mutual chuckling] The justice of it all is that Doug Wildey wound up running a little art shop in Las Vegas and Toth is world-famous.

A Rumble Of Thundarr A model sheet for the main characters of the Ruby-Spears animated series Thundarr the Barbarian, in the days before that company was subsumed into Hanna-Barbera.

Thundarr was a sort of post-Apocalyptic Saturday morning Conan, the brainchild of “Howard the Duck” creator Steve Gerber. The hairy guy, Ookla, took his name from UCLA— yeah, the University! [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

JA: But they got along okay, right?

MOORE: Coolly so. Toth’s comment on Doug Wildey was that

“Doug’s just as good as the scrap he happens to have at the time,” which was absolutely true. Doug Wildey never drew an original thing that I saw.

JA: I would imagine Alex was one of the better-paid people there, wasn’t he?

MOORE: Yes, I would imagine he was, because I know if they really wanted to keep you around, they did. They saw that you got an extra fifty or a hundred dollars a week.

JA: Do you have any idea of what Alex and Barbera used to fight about? Because he told me they used to fight a lot.

MOORE: Oh, probably on concepts of what they should put out. A lot of the stuff that he got upset about involved story content; the stories were either dumb or weren’t very imaginative. He wanted to see the same kind of imagination that he was putting into the art.

JA: Alex was hired and fired a million times by Joe Barbera.

MOORE: Oh, yeah! He wouldn’t say “I ain’t coming back” or anything like that. He’d just walk out. Well, anybody else, you assume, that’s the end of it, you know? But with Alex, they’d call him up as if nothing had happened after a few days. [mutual laughter] They’d just go on with the conversation as if there’d been no blowup, or just because it was a blowup didn’t mean you quit. Once, Joe asked Iwao, who was in charge of production and given a hard time by Alex about something, “Iwao, do we really need this guy?” And Iwao said, “Yeah, Joe. He’s worth the effort. We really need him.” So Joe put up with it.

Alex was a genius at what he did and I felt sorry that whatever fates there may be or gods would not let him enjoy it. And through no fault of his own, why... well, yeah, it was all his fault, but there’s no way he could control it. If something needed to be said, he said it, even if he was going to hang for it. He was a very honest man. I admired him.

Alex could have been even more famous than he was. But he would not allow himself, in those dark nights he spent staring into the void, to be happy. I’m glad I met him and knew him. And like I said, I liked him, and got along fine with him.

ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part eight

“It Was Worth The Journey” JIM AMASH On His Boisterous Friendship With ALEX TOTH

J

im Amash has been a comic book artist since 1992, and currently inks various “Archie” features and especially Sonic the Hedgehog. Oh, yeah—and he’s also associate editor of Alter Ego.

“Your Gauge Is Half Empty” I met Alex Toth in the fall of 1985, when he came to AcmeCon in Greensboro, North Carolina. The show was run

by Acme Comics. I was the co-manager of the shop and cochairman of the convention. Alex was everything you’d want in a major convention guest: funny, witty, extremely pleasant, and honest in his answers to fan questions, gracious almost to a fault. For instance, he knew the convention hotel was not treating us fairly. The last straw for him broke when he asked for some coffee, which arrived with a $60 price tag. Though I told him to forget about it, he immediately started sketching for the fans at $20 per drawing. He donated all of it to help pay for our expenses. He wouldn’t listen to any argument on the subject. He had made up his mind to help and that was the end of the subject.

Yankee Doodle Dandies Jim Amash (left) and Alex Toth outside the latter’s Hollywood home in 1992, in a photo taken by Jim’s cousin Sammy Salfity—juxtaposed with one of Toth’s “legendary” doodle sheets.

In this 2003 example, sent by John Moores, the artist runs the gamut: panels, figures, silhouettes, and face, faces, faces. What—no airplanes? [Art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

It was a one-day show, but Alex stayed for five and a half. When I called the hotel the morning after the show, they told me was that he was no longer in the room. I couldn’t understand why he had left without saying goodbye, until 10:30, when he called to ask about lunch. “Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m at the hotel. Where else would I be?” he said impatiently.

“The hotel said you checked out,” I replied. “I got another room, so you wouldn’t have to pay for it. It’s unfair for you to pay for my room just because I’m staying over. I’ll pay my own freight.” My dissension reached no further than “But Alex...” before he told me not to argue. “Okay, Alex, you’re our guest, so I’ll shut up.” Alex said, “Good. Now get over here so we can have lunch!” Of course, he paid, and guess who couldn’t win that argument, either? I said, “Just who is the host and who is the guest here?” Alex laughed and told me to forget about it.

On Tuesday, a small group of us took Alex to a local movie theatre that played old movies once a month. You should have seen Alex’s face during the viewing of The Thin Man. He was like a little kid seeing the movie for the first time, though this was maybe the 50th viewing (at least!) for him. The former guest, now host, paid for everyone’s admission and later for dinner, too. At dinner, Alex began dissecting what he had seen.

He complained about the quality of the print to the point of laughter, and cross-examined us about the details of the movie: did we notice the use of silhouettes, the lack of close-ups, etc., etc.

I drove him back to his hotel after dinner. Alex started complaining about the amount of gas in the tank. “Your tank is half empty. You should never let it fall below two-thirds of a tank. You get better gas mileage when the tank has a lot of gas in it. And what if you forget to keep it full and you run out of gas somewhere? Do you have a gas can in the car?” I told him I didn’t, but I had never run out of gas and always kept my eye on the gas gauge. When the gauge dipped below the halfway mark, Alex started complaining again. “Pull up at the next gas station and fill up.” I did, and Alex insisted on paying for the gas. I let him pay the bill because it was that important to him.

“I nagged you into it, so I’ll pay the bill. But from now on, you gotta keep a better eye on that gas gauge.”

42

Jim Amash On His Boisterous Friendship With Alex Toth

“Are You Still Speaking To Me?” From then on, we talked on the phone nearly every day, sometimes several times a day. We exchanged letters, too. Now, anyone who knows me knows how much I like to talk. Alex also had a reputation for verbosity, so you can imagine the phone bills that went along with being his friend. One person suggested I was crazy to talk to him so much because I’d get fewer letters and drawings that way. Well, maybe so, but I was looking at Alex as a friend, not someone from whom I could get free artwork and hand-lettered postcards.

His doodle sheets and postcards are legendary, and I do have my share of them. I also have lots of incomplete drawings, false starts for Zorro covers and other one-pagers, and pages of published art from Alex. One thing about Alex: he valued his work, and just because I was a good friend, I wasn’t going to get much of a discount. Which was fine, because I certainly never asked for one. I never asked him for a free drawing, either, though he once drew Captain Marvel for me when I suggested that both Alex and his fans missed out on something special because he’d never done any “Captain Marvel” stories.

The drawing came in a regular envelope, folded in thirds, drawn on yellow paper. He called me that night. “Are you still speaking to me?” he asked. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?” “Because I drew it on yellow paper.” “Yeah, I noticed that. Why did you do that?” Alex said with fake gruffness, “That way, you can’t sell it. It makes it less valuable.”

“Alex, you know I wouldn’t do that. Besides, this actually makes it more valuable.”

Alex said, “How?” I replied, “Well, how many drawings have you done on yellow paper? I could take out an ad in The Comics Buyer’s Guide and tout its rarity.” “Oh geezz.…” he started, until he heard me laughing, and then he started laughing, too. “You got me,” he said with slight disappointment. Alex admitted it was his contrary nature that caused him to use yellow paper. “Alex... you, contrary?” “Oh, shut up!” he laughed.

Craig Grant was an Acme Comics customer and my good friend.

Through me, he commissioned Alex to do a black-&-white tonal drawing of Space Ghost. When the drawing arrived, I discovered there were two smaller Space Ghost drawings in the package: one for me and one for mutual friend Teresa Davidson. When I asked about the extra drawings, Alex said, “I wanted Teresa to have one, and I knew if I did one for her, I’d have to do one for you, too.” It was typical Alex: gruffness hiding generous consideration of others. But he couldn’t play that gruffness out completely, because he was chuckling when he said it.

“This Is Your Favorite Manic-Depressive” Alex was deeply interested in the latest comic book news. “What’s selling in your shop?” “What’s so-and-so doing these days?” “How does it look?” “Send me a copy.” He always wanted to hear personal stories about people in the business, not out of nosiness, but out of curiosity. Alex hardly ever left his house or allowed anyone to invade his privacy. I sent him tons of books over the years; many were gifts and many he purchased. I tried to give him a shop discount, but he grunted, “How can you make any money if you’re doing that? I want to pay my own way.” Which he often did, though sometimes I’d argue, “For God’s sake, Alex, you give me stuff. I can occasionally do the same for you, you know.” “You can’t afford it,” he’d snort. “I know how little you make!” Sometimes I won those arguments and Alex gratefully accepted the gifts.

Because Alex willingly became housebound, I, like several others, wound up buying and mailing him “care packages.” I taped TV shows, old-time radio shows, and movies for him, bought him a telephone, boom box, food, and most importantly to Alex, cigarettes. He often bought books from me and had me mail them to his friends. He wanted to share the good stuff with his friends, some of whom couldn’t

Hooray For Heroes (Left:) In 1988 Eclipse Books issued two collections of Toth’s “Zorro” comics stories done for Dell in the 1950s when the Disney series was riding high on TV. This cover was drawn for one of those reprint volumes, but was unused. It first appeared in the 1995 Kitchen Sink book Alex Toth. [Art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth; Zorro is a trademark of Zorro Productions, Inc., or its successors in interest.]

(Right:) The Captain Marvel sketch Toth drew for Jim Amash. [Captain Marvel TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

“It Was Worth The Journey”

43

afford them on their own. Alex never asked for anything in return from those people. The sharing of books, magazines, and videotapes fueled discussions between Alex and his friends.

Some people complained that we enabled his chosen lifestyle. Perhaps that’s true, but I doubt anyone minded doing it. It made his life bearable, and my main concern was Alex’s happiness. He didn’t have enough of it in his life. Sometimes he’d call, answering my “hello” with “This is your favorite manic-depressive.” He said it with humor, all the while knowing it was an apt description. The only other thing I’ll say on this subject is that I worried about Alex, even though I knew he had other lifelines.

Alex used to ask how it was that I was almost always in a good mood. I had no real answer for him, except to say that I enjoy life and most of the people in it. He liked my laugh, and hearing it made him laugh and feel good. He called me when he needed cheering up, often late at night, sometimes even at 2 or 3 a.m. I’ve always been a night person, so it wasn’t like he was waking me up. He called me whenever he was lonely, or excited about something he had read or saw on television. We had many common The Shadow Nose interests. Alex was responsible for introducing some of Toth may have loved the radio Shadow, who clouded men’s minds… but when he drew those interests into my life, musicals being only one the character, he reverted to the pulp-mag version with a blazing .45 in hand. As seen in example. “What? You don’t like musicals? Why the hell Toth Black & White. [The Shadow TM & ©2006 Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./ not?” He launched into a long discourse about why he The Conde Nast Publications.] liked musicals, which prompted me to give them a try. I started with the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers vehicle Top “Alex, that’s going to run into a ton of money for you. Let’s try this: Hat and was immediately hooked. Alex’s reply: “Seeeeee. I toooold I’ll listen while I try to find him on the radio. If I find him, I’ll hang you they were good,” sounding very satisfied with his recommenup, so you won’t have a massive phone bill.” I did find Limbaugh, and dation. afterwards Alex called to discuss the program. He became a big fan of Limbaugh’s, and expected me to listen to his show every day so we We talked enthusiastically about everything imaginable with the could talk about it. Limbaugh’s politics were too conservative for me, exception of baseball. Alex never cared much for sports, though he, like and I realized he employed the same kind of spin he accused his most of America, followed the 1998 home run chase of Mark McGuire opponents of doing. It got to the point where I didn’t want to listen and Sammy Sosa. Once, when we were talking about some unpleasant anymore, but I knew that would tick Alex off. So I started challenging political happenings, he said, “I’m tired of talking about unhappy crap.

Limbaugh’s more outrageous statements, trying to shake Alex’s faith in Let’s talk about Jack Cole or Caniff or something.” I said, “Well, you him. That wasn’t working very well, until Limbaugh said one of the know the Atlanta Braves have finally put together a good baseball club dumbest things I’ve ever heard anyone say. and...” “Oh no!,” he screamed, “Anything but that damn baseball!” I started laughing and said, “Gotcha!” His response is not printable, but “Alex, I think the guy was just stupid today. He was railing against it was funny. I owed him that one, because he’d do the same thing to ‘tree huggers,’ claiming there are more trees in America today than me, cackling “Gotcha!” every time, always with humor. there were in 1776. Think about it for a moment. A majority of the country wasn’t industrialized in 1776. Nobody was cutting down trees Politics was a common topic for discussion. Alex was very conserfor highways, condos, or even whorehouses. And besides, how would vative and, looking back, I’m amazed we didn’t have more political anybody know how many trees there were in 1776? Nobody counted arguments. Sometimes I agreed with him and sometimes I didn’t. One them. It’s absolutely stupid!” Alex ended up agreeing with me, and surprising incident involved his reaction to Jesse Jackson’s 1988 speech from then on, while he continued to listen to Limbaugh, he started at the Democratic convention. Alex called me afterwards, virtually in paying closer attention to his statements, and his enthusiasm for the tears over how great he thought the speech was. “I thought you didn’t show seemed to dim a little. And it got me off the hook. I didn’t feel like Jesse Jackson.” “I usually don’t,” he replied, “But it was a helluva obligated to listen to Rush anymore, and I’ve avoided him since then. powerful speech. He really touched a nerve with me. Hell, if he ran for President right now, I’d vote for him.”

Alex considered himself to be an Independent and didn’t vote a straight party ticket. In 1992, he went crazy over Ross Perot. “That The time came when I heard Alex using new (to me) terms to little bantamweight’s in there slugging,” he gushed. “It’s damn well describe the feelings of voters in America. After a couple of weeks of about time someone started looking out for the little guy. At last there’s that, I asked where he got these new ideas. He had discovered a new someone out there who tells it like it is.” Despite a few later misgivings, radio talk show host named Rush Limbaugh. “He’s a conservative who Alex voted for Perot for President, feeling Bush and Clinton were not really sees what’s going on in the country. He does it with humor. It’s very good choices. ‘kidding on the square.’” Alex was irritated that I hadn’t heard of Limbaugh, because he wanted to discuss the show with me. I tried to find Limbaugh’s show on the radio, but couldn’t. One day, he called me at 12 noon, East Coast time. “I know it’s ‘golden time’ (meaning the Alex loved the radio shows of his younger days: The Shadow, Terry most expensive time of day to make a long distance call), but I want and the Pirates, Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy, I Love a you to hear Rush Limbaugh. I’m going to sit the phone by the radio Mystery, among others. One night he called me, sounding as excited as for the next three hours so you can hear this guy.”

“That Ought To Show The Bastards!”

44

Jim Amash On His Boisterous Friendship With Alex Toth

I ever heard him. “You won’t believe the night I had!” There was a local radio station that played old-time radio shows every evening, followed by a talk show. This night, Alex called in and told the host, “Have you ever noticed that the theme music of Little Orphan Annie is almost exactly like All in the Family’s?” The host hadn’t and invited Alex to sing the Annie song, which he did, followed by Alex’s singing the All in the Family song. The host kept Alex on the air for ten minutes (which is forever in talk radio circles), even holding him over during a commercial break, and they talked about the old days of radio and movies. Since I hadn’t heard the Annie theme song, Alex sang it for me. He wasn’t much of a singer, but his pure joy from singing was delightful and endearing. For Alex, it was 1940 again, and he was reveling in the memory of the escapist entertainment of his childhood.

Radio, comics, movies, and drawing were his early refuges from unhappy times, and the comfort they brought sustained him until the end of his life. When any of it fell beneath his standards, it pained him, and he complained like a wounded lover.

Speaking of complaints, he called one evening, asking if DC Comics had reprinted anything of his lately. I told him I didn’t think so, and he told me why he asked. “I can’t believe what DC did. They overnighted me a royalty check for $1.25. Overnighted!! Why the hell did they even bother sending me this piddling amount?” I explained to him DC had a royalty policy and they obviously had an efficient accounting system. “Efficient!? It cost them about five bucks to cut the check and maybe ten more to mail it to me. It makes no damn sense!” I tried to explain why this happened, when Alex cut in with, “I’m going to show them.

This check is good for 180 days, so I’m not going to cash it until the 180th day.

It’ll screw the hell out of their bookkeeping. That ought to show the bastards!”

Three months later, he said, “Today is the 90th day of me not cashing that DC check. I hope it’s driving them crazy.” At this point, he was showing more humor about the subject. Finally, on the 180th day, Alex called me, laughing and laughing, “I finally cashed that check today. I hope they learned their lesson.”

A couple of weeks later, he called me, yelling his head off. “They did it to me again! I can’t believe DC did it to me again! They sent me another royalty check. And this time it was for 75 cents!!” You can guess the rest of the conversation.

One night he called me about his phone bill. “I spent $250 this month, most of it on you! And bunky, you’re not worth it! And let me tell you why.” He then spent an hour or so railing about his phone bill, when he cheerfully said, “Well, I feel better now!” I said, “You won’t when you get the bill for this call,” and he growled that it was my “own damn fault,” uttered a few curse words, and hung up.

I sat there laughing, and he called back to say, rather meekly, “By the way, I forgot to tell you something...” and

another hour or so went by before that conversation was finished.

Most of that complaining was an act... an act he knew I enjoyed.

In case you haven’t already guessed, Alex often used humor to mask his feelings. He called it “kidding on the square.” It was his way of making displeasing subjects easier to deal with. He knew I could always tell when he really meant his kidding. When he couldn’t laugh something off, Alex sure let you know it. Shyness wasn’t exactly one of his better-known traits. The few times he was shy were charming and magnetic.

“I Have To Show You Something I’ve Had Since I Was A Kid” Alex was extremely interested in my art. He always wanted to see what I was doing. Alex often offered advice, rather gently, I thought, compared to some of the harsh critiques he was known to give. I asked why he wasn’t tougher on me and he said, “I was tough enough. I like your work. It has the ring of truth behind it. You do honest work.” I felt (and still feel) his feelings for me interfered with his criticism, which he denied. “Your draftsmanship isn’t as bad as you think it is, and anyway, you convey the proper mood. Your storytelling is direct and effective.” He taught me to demand more of myself, and to broaden my horizons. “Don’t settle for what you’re doing. You can always do better. Look, learn, and experience what’s out there.

Experiment with new tools, new ways of composition, different ways of expressing yourself.” He gave me books he thought would aid my progression. He was one of the most encouraging people in my life and was happy for me when I completed my MFA, when I exhibited my work in galleries and museums, and even more so when I broke into the comic book business as an inker. Once, when I was complaining about a penciler who had over-rendered a page to the point of obscuring its visual impact, Alex said, “If I was there, we’d break out some thick markers and show that guy how it should be done.” The thought of working side-by-side with Alex on comics never left me. More than once, we discussed my inking him, but I knew it wasn’t likely to happen.

I wish it had.

After The Fox Alex had a special fondness, it would seem, for the MLJ/Archie hero The Fox, who in turn bore a resemblance to DC’s Wildcat, another hero he said he would have liked to draw but never got a chance to. Pardon Ye Editor’s ignorance, but surely this splash page— which was seen in Toth Black & White—was never printed with that caption in an actual comic book? [The Fox TM & ©2006 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

I was one of the few people whom Alex invited to be a houseguest, and I took him up on it three times, each time for three days. The first time was in 1991. I went to the San Diego Comic Convention, spent three days with Jack and Roz Kirby, then off to Alex’s. He gave me a bear hug and said, “Let’s go have lunch and visit my mother.” He took me to his favorite Mexican restaurant. I didn’t know much about Mexican food, so Alex ordered both food and wine.

Once our glasses were full, he toasted me with a courtly “Welcome to California.”

“It Was Worth The Journey” After we visited his mother, we went grocery shopping. At one point, Alex considered buying a bottle of wine, but complained he had no one to help him drink it.

“You’re just not much of a drinker, kiddo.“ I reminded him I had just drunk a glass of wine with him.

“Oh, hell, then. We’ll get polluted together!”

He took me on a brief tour of Hollywood and Burbank. We drove by the Disney building and he remarked, “Have you ever seen such an ugly building in your life?

God, what an eyesore!” On the highway, he discussed how much cleaner the air was when he first moved to California. “See all that mist and fog? Behind it are mountains, which were plainly visible when I first came out here.”

45 on his face, saw me grinning, and doubled over laughing. It may have been the biggest laugh I ever got out of him.

“En Garde!”

Alex had set aside several movies he wanted us to watch, though he had already seen them countless times. After dinner, we viewed The Mark of Zorro. Every few minutes, he would pause the tape and discuss what was happening. “Look at the staging here. See how the director set the scene.” “Look at how he played with black and white to make up for the lack of color.”

“Notice how the camera leads your eye from one section of the screen to the other and then to the next shot.” “Watch what happens next and keep your eye focused on the upper right corner of the screen.”

Alex the educator didn’t want me to miss a thing. He wanted to teach me the mechanics of film and storytelling, and I got one hell of a lesson that evening. Once the movie was over, he rewound the tape and said, “Let’s watch it again, only this time, I’ll keep my mouth shut and let you watch it without my interference.”

Back at his house, we had barely sat down when he said, “I have to show you something I’ve had since I was a kid.” He turned around in his chair, reached into a drawer, searched for a moment before pulling out his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring. With childlike enthuBravo For Toth! siasm, he told me about all the Toth’s comics-format hero Jesse Bravo, star of his 1930s-set “Bravo for Ovaltine he had to drink to get that Adventure” series, was perhaps part Errol Flynn, part idealized Alex Toth. ring. The experience was still fresh The aftermath of our second This concept page appeared in the Kitchen Sink volume Alex Toth. in his mind as he described the viewing found Alex still on a high [©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.] anticipation of waiting for the ring note. He got up and said he was to arrive in the mail, and the pure going to the bathroom. I was sitting there in silence when I became joy he felt when it came. The expression on his face was the kind of aware that he was standing behind me. I turned around and in a look that must have been there the day he got the ring. I was sitting beautiful but scary bit of timing, Alex pounced in my direction with a next to a 63-year-old man, going on ten. In so many ways, the boy foil in his left hand, shouting “En Garde!” The tip of the foil nearly never left the man. touched my chin and I was glad I hadn’t moved an inch. Alex stood there in his best Errol Flynn impression, a Cheshire cat grin on his face.

Alex showed me around the house. Upstairs, I saw a studio room with little in it besides a wooden drafting table. The room had I inspected the foil and asked for another one so we could fence. He obviously gone unused for some years. I asked if he missed working at didn’t like the suggestion because he knew I had never held a foil in my that drawing table. Alex said he didn’t, because he had given up trying hand. “Alex, just take it easy with me, then.” He still refused, until I to draw stories. “When Guyla died, I died, and so did the reason for said, “Zorro wouldn’t turn me down,” and he blushingly acquiesced. using that room.” (He did continue to draw, but at his dining room We fenced for five minutes or so, until Alex’s fear of accidentally table). Guyla was Alex’s late wife, the last of four, and the greatest love hurting me overtook him and he called a halt to the match. It was a of his life, in my opinion. He never really recovered from her death. good thing he did, because I didn’t know what I was doing (though Alex was coaching me as we fenced), but I can forever say I fenced The sad look he gave towards that room did not go unnoticed by with Zorro. me. It disappeared once he brought out two portfolios, which he laid out on the den floor. One contained published work; the other unused Alex also took the opportunity to give me cartooning tips several art. He said everything was for sale except his Bravo For Adventure times during my visit. I’d ask him questions and he’d draw out the pages, his favorite comic book work. We spent a little time discussing solution, describing his reasons all the while. I would have loved to the storytelling aspects of Bravo. He let me go through the unpubhave those drawings, but I had the feeling I shouldn’t ask for them, so lished work, which was mainly rejected pages and not for sale, some they unfortunately ended up in the wastebasket. That disappointment finished, some not. One page was an unused splash for Archie Comics’ aside, these experiences proved to me that Alex would have made a Fox character. I couldn’t understand why Alex didn’t like it. He great teacher, had he been so inclined. couldn’t explain why, except that: “It just doesn’t work.” I still think he was wrong, but Alex was always severely critical of his work.

One habit of his I found very humorous involved his smoking. He smoked five packs of Saratogas a day (I should know because I was That first night proved to be one I will never forget. While he was always mailing them to him). He claimed he wasn’t a chain smoker cooking dinner, I asked what we were having and he said, “Chicken.” I because he never used the end of a spent one to light a new cigarette. said, “God, that’s so fowl!” Alex whipped around with a surprised look Instead, he gently crushed one out, then lit up another. Once he’d done

46

Jim Amash On His Boisterous Friendship With Alex Toth

that, he’d get up from his chair and empty the ashtray: “I hate the sight of a dirty ashtray.” 100 trips a day to the trashcan was his idea of exercise.

He also sucked on cough drops so that the taste of all those cigarettes didn’t ruin the taste in his mouth. And yes, I bought him countless packs of Halls cough drops, too.

My wife Heidi and I brought two cats into our home: Alex and Kirby (guess who they were named after?). Alex cried with joy when I told him we named a cat after him. He wanted pictures, of course, and always wanted to hear stories about his namesake. I soon discovered that the feline Alex was a lot like the real Alex Toth, and Alex loved that. After one of Alex’s kittenish antics, I told the human Alex, “This is the last time I name a cat after a Hungarian! He’s inherited your temperament and it’s all your fault!” “Yeah, go ahead and blame me. I’ve always been a bad influence,” he joked. “You should know that Hungarians are hot-blooded people,” which was an excuse he frequently employed, seriously and comically.

was bad. I felt he overreacted over a situation that was not of my making. However, the positive side of Alex Toth was monumental and encompassing in scope. That’s the side on which I’ve chosen to spend most of this article. It’s the side that made me wish the bad in him wasn’t there.

Alex confided much about his life to me.

Former wives, girlfriends, his often unhappy childhood, friendships, and more. He wanted me to understand him, but it sometimes bothered him that I knew so much. I believe this also contributed to our parting of the ways. “You know too much about me.” He wanted to be close to people, but that closeness frightened him at times. Alex was a loner whose occasional ambivalence about people complicated the relationships he held so dear. Alex, more than most, wanted and needed love from his friends.

Sadly, deep down, I don’t think he really liked himself. Reassurance of love was a vital component of his being, though he would never have admitted it. Demonstrations of appreciation and love were flowers of hope to a man who needed constant watering. He tried his best to manage relationships, but didn’t always accept his own culpability when problems arose. He struck back at major and minor hurts with roaring flames of anger. Like most of us, he was his own worst enemy. He knew it and it haunted him.

I did an interview with Alex that was supposed to be a representation of a typical conversation Shane Foley drew this homage to Toth’s between us. But Alex got a little uptight with the “Who Cares? I Do!” header, complete with idea, so it became more of a regular interview. “maskot” Alter Ego, for this issue’s letter Alex rewrote a bit of the text, removing a few section. But the latter got squeezed out, things I would have preferred to remain. He called so...! [Art ©2006 Shane Foley; Alter Ego He gave advice on personal matters with the me the day I got the rewritten manuscript. “Are TM & ©2006 Roy & Dann Thomas.] clarity of an experienced survivor. I avoided you still talking to me?” he asked both coyly and making several mistakes in my life because of him, and learned new seriously. “Of course I am.” “I was afraid you wouldn’t like me ways of dealing with certain situations. As noted, he could be rewriting you so much.” I told him it was fine (and it was). Alex was extremely generous to friends, often giving financial help to those in concerned because he had done similar things with others, causing need without being asked. I know of more than one person who some unhappiness. But the interview was a good one, and you can read avoided losing their lodgings because of Alex’s benevolence. He did it it in Comic Book Artist #11 (still available from TwoMorrows; my quietly, without fanfare. There was so much good in him that has gone only shameless plug for the day). unheralded, except in the hearts of those he rescued.

“My Bad Hungarian Temper”

Unfortunately, our friendship, like most with Alex, was not destined to last. My emotions involving all things Toth are mixed, and it would be dishonest of me to ignore the fact that Alex Toth could be an extremely difficult person. Family, friends, co-workers, or even those he confronted upon a first and only meeting... few were spared what Alex called “my bad Hungarian temper.” Friendship with Alex could be exhilarating, irritating, painful, joyful—a smoldering cauldron of ever-changing emotions cascading from a man who seldom tempered his reactions. There was no need for much of it, and while he unnecessarily hurt many people over the years, Alex’s own pain over those episodes was penetratingly deep.

Alex tried to forgive people who transgressed him, but he would never forget that transgression, whether legitimate or merely perceived.

Alex just couldn’t let go of past hurts, whether he be instigator or recipient. Unfortunately, that attitude just caused him more misery and broken friendships. Alex treasured friendships, but his adherence to the John Wayne-like philosophy “Never apologize, mister. It’s a sign of weakness” was, in my estimation, a greater weakness. There was a bit of John Wayne in Alex Toth, although he wasn’t a fan of the movie star and wouldn’t have liked the comparison. He once opined that “John Wayne was a decent actor until he started being ‘John Wayne’ in his movies.” Alex would rather have been Errol Flynn.

My experiences with Alex were mostly good ones; only the ending

Our relationship was one of mutual respect and affection. There were times when I was highly critical of things he said or did, and Alex never got mad at my dissent. There were a lot of people in Alex’s life who walked on eggshells for fear of losing his comradeship, but not me. He had a reputation for ending friendships over minor and at times petty disagreements, so I suspected it would eventually happen to me, too. However, true friendship demands honesty, and I wasn’t going to shrink back just because it was Alex Toth I was dealing with. I’m sorry our friendship didn’t last, but I knew that was the danger of getting close to him. Alex once said, in a candid moment, that he knew his attitude of “You love me on my terms or I won’t love you back” was unfair. He gave me his reason for that behavior, knowing I wasn’t the type to play that game. I am sorry that we ended up not talking the last few years of his life. I might have been able to do something about that, but chose not to do so.

I was told he liked my Alter Ego work. There were several interviews (especially the Kim Aamodt one) done with Alex in mind. I knew what he wanted to know and considered him a vital part of my audience. I know he liked my comic book inking, too. All things considered, I’ll be forever grateful for his friendship while we had it, and for the education he gave me on so many subjects. I think it’s fair to say he learned things from me, too. Except for the finale, we both gave as good as we got from each other. It was worth the journey.

ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part nine

1941 And All That

Why The Graphic Novel Version Of Stephen Spielberg’s 1979 Film Was Not Drawn By ALEX TOTH

by John Workman

I

n the 1970s John Workman served for two years in DC Comics’ production department before beginning a seven-year stint as the art director of Heavy Metal magazine. Since then, he has become known as an individualistic letterer for dozens of different comic book titles, and has also worked as editor, writer, designer, penciler, inker, and colorist for various comics features.

One of the greatest things that can happen to any human being is for that person to discover that he’s been wrong. It’s a liberating experience to find that a belief that one has held for minutes or for years has been incorrect. Acknowledging the error and setting aside the never-true information is a big part of our ability to learn. In the late 1960s, I learned that I had been incredibly wrong about the work of Alex Toth.

When Jim Warren began publication of the godawful-titled magazines Creepy and Eerie in 1965, I was delighted. It was as if the glorious EC Comics of the previous decade (of which I possessed but a few) had returned in a format that allowed the beautifully-rendered art of Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, Reed Crandall, George Evans, Wally Wood, Angelo Torres, Joe Orlando, and Gray Morrow to be seen in a way that typical letterpress color comics printed on pulp paper could not match. I was, however, perturbed by the one lesserquality artist that Warren seemed determined to use … Alex Toth. He didn’t seem to belong among the greats who were the backbone of the Creepy/Eerie art staff. And so I reluctantly read the Toth-illustrated stories and found that, although I liked those short tales, I’d have been happier if they’d been drawn by Wally Wood.

Those Wonderful Years 1941 & 1942 John Workman surrounded by two artistic images: (left) the printed cover of the 1941 graphic novel, as done by Stephen Bissette & Rick Veitch— and (right) a 1987 illo by Alex Toth of a World War II aerial dogfight, done as an homage to Milton Caniff’s work in the comic strip Terry and the Pirates, as printed in the Manuel Auad publication Toth Black & White.[1941 cover ©2006 Universal Studios & Columbia Pictures or their successors in interest; Toth art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

48

John Workman On Toth & Stephen Spielberg’s 1979 Film movie Alien. Our follow-up was to be a comics version of the Steven Spielberg comedy 1941. You’ll notice that I said “version” rather than “adaptation” in reference to both of those movies and the comics that they spawned. I’ve long believed that “adapting” a movie to comics form is an exercise in frustration. It’s much better if comics creators make use of the same source material that the filmmakers use… the script… and then boldly go off into the unique and wonderful unreal estate that can only be found in the land of comics.

And who better to make such a fantastic thing happen than Alex Toth? I took much delight in offering the unshackled freedom of doing something in comics form called 1941 to Toth. I wanted to make up for the people who’d looked over his shoulder for all of his career and told him what to do “Everything You Do, You Still Audition” and how to do it. I knew his feelings about the over-written Pages from two of the stories that led Workman to choose Toth as the artist—and even writer—of an “adaptation” of scripting of the Zorro material he’d 1941: Western’s TV-related series 77 Sunset Strip and DC’s “Eclipso” in House of Secrets #65 (March-April 1964), with script by Bob Haney. [©2006 Warner Bros. or successors in interest & DC Comics, respectively.] illustrated and how those unnecessary words had moved even those My ignorance of true quality took a sudden turn toward the light classic comics a bit toward the dull and pedestrian. Before the editors when comics-collecting compatriot Dave Eaton let me borrow a copy stopped him from doing so, Toth had stripped down the useless and of the 10th issue of Graphic Story Magazine. Among the wondrous redundant narrative elements and dialogue and turned the disparate stuff to be found within its pages was a truly compelling interview with pieces of writing and art into a beautifully-functioning unit.

Alex Toth. Reading the thoughts of Toth opened my eyes to the realities of working as a comics writer/artist and reinforced my ideas of Toth could do this, I knew, with 1941. He could take the not-verythe incredible possibilities of the medium. The truths that Toth good movie script (as opposed to the downright brilliant one for imparted to me by way of those words and pictures in GSM were just Alien), give it enough of a read to know what the story was about, and as important as the information that I’d gleaned from long-term studies then toss the useless mess out the window and sit down and draw and of the work of Carl Barks, Will Eisner, Jack Cole, Jim Steranko, write a comics story that made the movie look anemic and sickly. We Harvey Kurtzman, Lynd Ward, and so many others, and the obvious were in the center of a small window of opportunity between the time but necessary advice given to me in more direct ways by Stan Lee, Joe when comics editors were so in awe of the uncaring film companies Kubert, Carl Stamwitz, and Basil Wolverton. I had sat down as an that they slavishly followed what they mistakenly believed were ignorant doofus, read 17 pages of material related to a form of unspoken dictates and the contemporary attitude that allows the expression that I loved, and come out of the experience as a much wiser filmmaker’s marketing people to place a strangle hold on every aspect person who understood a bit of the genius of Alex Toth. of the creation of ancillary material. We were doing comics versions of films at a time when we could ignore the studios and their underlings.

I pulled from my collection and eagerly re-read such Toth-illusWe could play dumb and be smart and “forget” things and paint the trated comics as Dell’s Rio Bravo, The Real McCoys, and Darby film people into a time-constrained corner and flash an Iago smile and O’Gill, and Gold Key’s Twilight Zone. I looked again at the “Eclipso” maybe lie a little, all as a way of politely telling those characters to tales that Toth had drawn for DC’s House of Secrets and the buzz off.

“Atom/Flash” team-up from a 1964 issue of The Brave and the Bold, and at various science-fiction, mystery, and romance comics that Toth I wanted to give Toth the opportunity to create 64 pages of comics had done for different publishers in the 1950s. I went back again … material without any interference from outside sources. I wanted to let with a lot more reverence … to those great Warren stories that had him know that whatever he wrote and drew and gave to us, we would been created by Toth and Archie Goodwin. I had found a new artistic print. hero.

But I didn’t want to talk to him directly.

Ten years passed.

I had moved from my Washington state home to New York City and had become the art director of Heavy Metal magazine. Thanks to artist Walter Simonson and writer Archie Goodwin, HM’s book division had recently had a huge success with the comics version of the

Though I’d come to admire his artistry, the series of stories that I’d heard from so many people about the often mean-spirited eccentricities of Toth made me want to maintain a respectful distance from the man himself. So I talked about my decision to make use of Toth with Julie Simmons-Lynch, fellow HM staffer and sometime co-conspirator in our attempts to keep Heavy Metal magazine alive and vital. We arrived

1941 And All That at an agreement that made Julie HM’s contact with Toth. She would let him know of the total freedom that he would have in making a reality of our 1941.

Toth’s agreement to do the writing and art on 1941 made me incredibly happy. He said that he didn’t want to do the coloring on the book, so I had Julie let him know that I would probably be doing that part of the job and that I would follow any color indications that he made. I’d already done a color version of a black-&-white Toth-drawn “Question” page as a “sample” for Julie and publisher Len Mogel to look at. They were both totally ignorant of Toth’s work, and that page became their introduction to Alex Toth… and the visual explanation of why I wanted so much to have him write and draw for Heavy Metal Books.

We announced at a New York comics convention that Toth would be doing the writing and art on 1941. Then, as I later phrased it in a memo to the HM staff, “Alex Toth moved in mysterious ways.” In a communication with Julie, Toth declared that he was dropping out of the project. The only reason that he gave involved a reference to the old military phrase “hurry up and wait.”

I couldn’t understand why Toth had walked away from a project that gave him total freedom to create something that required only that he use the title and the bare bones of a less-than-stellar script and “show them how it’s done” by converting that lackluster combination into a glorious comic book that could be enjoyed on its own. A mystery came into being. Why would a person do such a thing?

Twenty-two years passed.

49

In a conversation with Comic Book Artist’s Jon Cooke, I mentioned the mystery of Toth’s walking away from the total freedom that every comics creator purported to want. In seeking to find an answer to that mystery, he went directly to Alex Toth. In a letter in the 15th issue of CBA, Toth cleared everything up by stating that he had been seriously unhappy with 1941’s script. He couldn’t remember whether it was the movie script or the script to the comics version.

Since the comics script was to be written by Toth, the words that perturbed him had to have been from the original movie script. His reaction to those words paralleled my own. When I read the initial script, I felt that the movie had no chance to succeed unless Steven Spielberg possessed the sort of comedic timing that came naturally to Jack Benny. Subsequent re-writings made the mediocre script even worse.

But none of this should have mattered. Toth didn’t have to slavishly follow the script. He needed only to give us something to print that used the settings and the time period and some of the characters from that lousy script. The intention was for him to do something in comics form under the title 1941 that would be so superior to the film version that people could eventually forget the movie and fondly remember Toth’s comic book.

But words had failed us. Communication had faltered. Because of my somewhat cowardly inability to face the possibility that one of my artistic heroes might turn out to be, in some messy human ways, a schmuck, I relied on an intermediary to pass on the news that Toth could create to his heart’s content and that we would print what he gave us. In some way, he never fully understood what he had been offered.

Creepy Combat Toth splash from a pair of Warren b&w comic mags, as reprinted in trade paperbacks. (Left:) Eerie but graphic storytelling from “A Grave Undertaking” in Creepy #5 (Oct. 1965). (Right:) A page from the Korean War story “The Edge!” in Blazing Combat #4 (July 1966), that title’s final issue. Both tales were scripted by Archie Goodwin, clearly one of Toth’s favorite comics writers.

[Creepy art ©2006 Harris Publications; Inc.; Blazing Combat art ©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

50

John Workman On Toth & Stephen Spielberg’s 1979 Film

Make Money, Not War In the published adaptation of the 1979 film 1941, an introductory page was drawn by Toth’s contemporary, friend, and onetime fellow “Green Lantern” artist Irwin Hasen and depicted director Stephen Spielberg reading either the script or screenplay, while someone (presumably the two Hollywood movie studios involved) dropped money on the project like Uncle Scrooge bombing Tra-La-La with bottle tops—probably a fairly accurate image of what actually happened re the expensive cinematic failure. The rest of the graphic novel was illustrated by Rick Veitch and Steve Bissette. [©2006 Universal Studios & Columbia Pictures or their successors in interest.]

Not too long after that, the newest and greatest HM editor, Ted White, showed me a package that he’d gotten from Toth. It contained Xerox copies of the entirety of Bravo for Adventure. We loved it and we were determined to run it in serial form in Heavy Metal, though it contained none of the usually-required fantasy or science-fictional elements. But Toth quickly pulled the submission back, and Bravo made its appearance in the US in Jim Warren’s Rook magazine. The reason there might have been money. HM’s page rates were notoriously low.

When we were working on the Heavy Metal theatrical movie, I suggested that Alex Toth would be a natural for some of the needed character design. Len Mogel, as co-producer of the film, offered my suggestion to the people at the animation studios and was told that, though they all recognized Toth’s genius, none of them was willing to put up with any direct involvement with the man.

When our 1941 appeared, it was brilliantly done by the young and wildly exuberant team of Rick Veitch and Steve Bissette, with additional contributions from John Totleben, Tom Yeates, Irwin Hasen, Steven Spielberg, Alan Asherman, Julie Simmons-Lynch, and me. The book was everything that I’d wanted, and it reached something of a mass audience and quickly did what the movie took a long time to accomplish… it made a profit. There’s a very long article… maybe even a whole book… in the so-funny-thatit-hurts story of the making of the 1941 book.

$200,000 PAID FOR ORIGINAL COMIC ART! COLLECTOR PAYING TOP DOLLAR FOR “ANY AND ALL” ORIGINAL COMIC BOOK AND COMIC STRIP ARTWORK FROM THE 1930S TO PRESENT! COVERS, PINUPS, PAGES, IT DOESN’T MATTER! 1 PAGE OR ENTIRE COLLECTIONS SOUGHT! CALL OR EMAIL ME ANYTIME!

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Alex Toth never wrote or drew anything for Heavy Metal. I wish that he had.

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ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part ten

“A.T.T.A. Boy Productions, Inc.” ALEX TOTH At DC & Marvel In The 1980s

by Terry Austin

T

erry Austin is a noted comic book inker, best remembered for his inking of Marshall Rogers’ “Batman” and John Byrne’s “X-Men.” And he’s still at it!

“Simply Put, I Hated [Toth’s Art]!!!”

I knew Alex Toth for almost exactly ten years, the ten years that comprised the decade of the 1980s. In that time, we became close friends, colleagues, collaborators, and maybe even crusaders. It was a benign relationship, unsullied by the dramatic bursts of temper that characterized his association with some others of his friends. And, in the end, I believe that we stopped communicating not as a result of any animus or ire, but simply because we ran out of things to say to one another....

My first real memory of encountering Alex through his work was his decidedly different take on The Atom and The Flash in the pages of The Brave and the Bold # 53. To a kid raised on the squeaky clean graphics of DC super-heroics, this gloomy burlesque arrived like an unforeseen blow from a sledgehammer! These accustomed icons of my youth now inhabited a bizarre world of dramatic light and shadow— the newly strange angularity of their once-familiar forms was actually affected by the light sources within the panels, sometimes reducing them to stark silhouettes! The Flash didn’t just run, he took mighty, straining strides; the Atom didn’t just gesture, he swept his arms wide in a half-bow like Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood. In short, these four-color symbols of niceness had become more real than

A.T.T.A. Boy! (Above:) One of two photos the camera-shy Terry Austin took of Alex Toth at the 1980 Houston comicon where they met. Alex is signing for Terry the original art to the “Super Margret” cover for a 1960s issue of Clothes magazine, which was printed in the Toth special in Comic Book Artist #11 (Jan. 2001), still available from TwoMorrows.

(Below left:) Toth’s pencils for the splash page from Superman Annual #9 (1983). Thanks to David “Hambone” Hamilton.

(Below right:) The splash lettered and inked. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Terry Austin. [Splash art ©2006 DC Comics.]

I had ever seen them before.

Simply put, I hated it!!!

Still, it was the kind of repulsion that held an undercurrent of fascination. I kept returning to that issue long after Brave and Bold had reverted to its customary artistic safe haven for the eyes of a 12-year-old.

And, in a few years, when Alex produced dazzling works, out of his own unique insight and imagination, at Warren Publications and in DC’s mystery and war titles, I was more than ready to accompany him on those artistic thrill rides, and inspired to seek out his earlier work at Dell, Standard, and elsewhere.

Raising Kane I met Alex in the summer of 1980 at a three-day comic book

52

Terry Austin On Alex Toth At DC & Marvel In The 1980s

Thunder On The Right— And On The Left Gil Kane, in a photo from FOOM Magazine #3 (Fall 1973)—flanked on the left by his Johnny Thunder cover pencils for All-American Western #122 (Oct.-Nov. 1951), and on the right by an undated Toth drawing of the hero he cocreated, from the 1995 volume Alex Toth. Thanks to Tom Horvitz for the photocopy of the Kane art. [Johnny Thunder TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

convention held in Houston, Texas. That Friday, I was more than a trifle intimidated at the prospect of meeting one of my idols in the flesh, but he couldn’t have been nicer. Dapper in dress and demeanor, and with graying hair and beard, he seemed pleased that someone wanted to talk art with him. When I later inquired if he had brought any artwork to sell, Alex ushered me upstairs to his room where he produced several manila envelopes full of his classic covers and stories.

I’m sure it won’t shock anyone to learn that I promptly, and without reservation, spent every cent that I’d brought with me for the entire three-day trip and missed the panel I was supposed to attend!

Gil Kane was another of the guests at that convention, and it became apparent that Friday afternoon that he and Alex had had a falling-out and hadn’t spoken in many years. As an admirer of both, I acted as something of a go-between to try to patch things up. By Saturday morning, the two men were warily circling each other like prizefighters entering the ring. By the afternoon, they were on speaking terms, and by that evening, they were the best of friends once again. Sunday morning, they promptly had another explosive disagreement, and by checkout time that afternoon, the feud was in full flower once more.

“There’s no talking to that Toth,” Gil raged, as I helped him carry his bags outside to a waiting cab, “He’s as stubborn, opinionated, and obstinate as ever!” Naturally, Alex said exactly the same thing about Gil (in the exact same words, my right hand to God!) when I helped him load his bags into a taxi an hour later. Amateur psychologists in the audience are free to draw their own conclusions from this....

Fortunately, Alex held no such reservations about my character, and asked me to write him when I returned home. In answer to that first letter, on August 14, 1980, he wrote, “What a delight to hear from you, ol’ son! You’re most welcome, indeed! I’ve thought of you often, since Houston, and mentioned you, to others, near as much! Good first impressions last long with me, and you rated highrank with me from the start—being an old curmudgeon/dinosaur, of (now) the ‘old school,’ I’ve met very few young men in our bizniz to whom I could relate, communicate with, have good vibes from, or give back to—your quiet, handsome self, and your expressiveness, plus your ability to listen to my ravings, and your demonstrated talent; all added up to positive marks in my book!” Gulp! Having been positively reviewed

by Mr. Toth, I set off on a communication with him that would last out the ensuing decade.

I lost no time in commissioning a drawing from my new friend of Black Canary, a character I’d never paid much attention to, until Alex had demonstrated how a dynamic graphic approach could breathe new life and energy into a seemingly run of the mill super-heroine in Adventure Comics # 418 and 419. The piece, when it arrived, was simply spectacular, and I, in my naïve but heartfelt gratitude and enthusiasm, wrote him: “A thousand thanks!” and proceeded to write underneath it “Thank you” exactly one thousand times. If fate (and Roy T.) are kind, Alex’s postcarded rejoinder is reproduced nearby....

Marvel Mix-Up Alex and I spoke on the telephone regularly at first, but when he wrote in March of 1981, “I’m not wild about phones, hate ’em in fact, but hell, no one in NYC writes letters anymore! I prefer pen to paper than paying for Ma Bell’s spurious services, costly as they are!” I seldom called him again, except once, memorably, when a friend of his asked me to phone him immediately, as Alex (who suffered from bouts of depression from time to time) was alluding to doing himself in. I warily phoned, only to find Alex in the most cheerful state of mind imaginable!

We next arranged to meet at the 1981 San Diego Convention. This was a trip that seemed to make Alex a little nervous, as he would be seeing his sons there, as well. One afternoon at the show, Alex came and found me. “Come on,” he said, “we’re going for pie!” Once at the restaurant, I quickly realized that I was there to function as a sort of buffer between Alex, the absent father, and his somewhat unfamiliar offspring. So, I was heartened, some years later, when he wrote proudly to me of “my son Eric, auto design stylist, in Holland Michigan,” and of being anxious to go and visit him.

Following the convention, I returned to New York, and excitedly carried word to the Marvel offices of Alex’s willingness to work.

Louise Jones, more commonly known as Weezie (whom Alex would come to adore), immediately commissioned a “Solomon Kane” story

“A.T.T.A. Boy Productions, Inc.”

53 disappointing all my colleagues and friends! Hmmm....”

He also wrote late in 1981 that he was “still shuckin’ for H & B, tho’ out of my home now, as of last week—it could end at any moment, or last ’til March— re the projects, and my temper!”

Having heard tales of Alex’s behavior in Hanna-Barbara’s offices, I had to wonder if the decision for him to work at home was an entirely voluntary one.

Seventh Heaven With Superman Annual #9

One Picture Is Worth A Thousand (Actually 2000) Words (Left:) The drawing of Black Canary which Alex did for Terry soon after they met. You can see it larger in the Toth special in Comic Book Artist #11.

[Black Canary TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

(Right:) Terry reports that he scribbled “Thank you!” exactly one thousand times in a letter he sent in gratitude. Alex’s “postcarded rejoinder” was a bit briefer. [Art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

for Alex to draw for the black-&-white magazine The Savage Sword of Conan. A more perfect combination of dour Puritan and ink-dark artist I couldn’t imagine! Alex informed me on the telephone that he had done seven or eight versions of the splash page that he judged fell short of the mark, and would try once more, before giving up and returning the script. When Weezie informed me that he had, indeed, sent back the script, I instantly wrote to Alex to ask him for copies of his self-rejected endeavors, figuring that I could learn more from seeing which artistic roads the master had traveled, only to turn back, then many a year in some art class. Alex shot back, “As for my Kane cabals, sorry, all of ’em torn up, gone, zip, finis!” Alex, who was his own toughest critic, held himself to standards undreamt-of by ordinary mortals. This, unfortunately, made him his own worst enemy at times. And, no doubt, deprived the rest of us of additional Tothian masterworks!

This would be the beginning of a torturous year long period in which he wrote often of letting people down; in an October 1981 letter, “had to disappoint Archie Goodwin a few months ago, returning a good [Roger] Stern script—but one that needed more editing of copy,” and “I’ve also slipped in getting more ‘Conan’ frontispieces to Louise—I truly seem to be doing little other than

Toth Comes To Koth One of several Conan illustrations Toth did for The Savage Sword of Conan, under new editor Louise Jones. Ye Editor can’t help wondering if Alex would’ve done one for Roy, who edited the mag through the end of 1980, after the minor “dust-up” they’d had in the early ’70s. He’d like to think so—’cause he’d have been honored to feature Toth art in the mag, just as Weezie was. Koth, for them as don’t know, is a kingdom in Robert E. Howard’s fictional Hyborian Age, the setting of his Conan stories. [©2006 Conan Properties International, LLC.]

Happily, 1982 saw an upswing in Alex’s spirit and his attitudes towards work. He wrote me in June, joking, “Just occurred to me we share the same initials, tho’ reversed—now if we were a P.I. team we could call it ‘A.T.T.A. Boy Productions, Inc.! Wot?” and, in the same letter, “Penciled two 9 page ‘Challengers’ origin strips and

54

Terry Austin On Alex Toth At DC & Marvel In The 1980s

Through Rain, Through Snow, Through Sleet…

A quartet of early-’80s postcards (address side only) which Alex sent to Terry. [©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

am on a 30 page ‘Super/Bat/Man’ job, by [Elliot] Maggin, (good script!) for DC—will do pencils only for the time being and will not do rewrite corrections, as was my wont—thus I hope to behave myself and just enjoy drawing/telling stories to suit DC’s need—the change’ll do me good, I’m certain! Dick Giordano/Joe Orlando (and Julie Schwartz!) were the fellas who made me welcome again!”

I’m guessing that it must have been sometime in July when my phone rang and my old friend and mentor Dick Giordano, now editorin-chief at DC, offered me the chance to ink Alex’s “Superman/Batman” story, which was eventually published as Superman Annual #9 (with a cover by Gil Kane, ironically enough).

Alex wrote, on August 11th, “Up all night on last penciled pages of the 30 p. ‘Super/Bat/Man’ epic for Julie Schwartz—express mailed it this AM and, coincidently, hours later, Julie phoned to ask of work’s status—happy to hear it’s all done—and also told me you were set to ink it—or did he say you’d ink the ‘Challengers’? Hell, I was, and am still punchy from the long grind. I’m not sure what’s what—but would like to know how this all happened? As they told us in the Army, never volunteer—you must have heard! Anyhoo, pore critter, you’ll have lots of heavy lead on paper, 30 pages worth, to fight through—it seems I’ve either got to gouge into paper heavily, or, if penciling for me, float over it too lightly—both are a pain—as you’ll agree!”

Now, over the years, many a wide-eyed penciler or inker has asked me, in tones of wonderment, what the experience of inking Alex Toth’s pencils was like. This was the method I employed (but I don’t recommend it!): First, arrange to have your mother rushed to the Cleveland Clinic and admitted for quadruple heart bypass surgery.

Next, have your father drop you off at the hotel across the street from the Clinic and strand you there for the next 30 days. No sooner did I have Alex’s pages in hand than that’s exactly what happened to me!

Alone in Cleveland, Ohio, and with nowhere to go, I would arise in the morning and place the wobbly hotel table in the middle of the room, then drag the dimly-watted floor lamp over next to it. I would then proceed to ink a page until visiting hours at the Clinic began, when I would walk across the street and stay with Mom until visiting hours ended, then trudge back across the street and ink that page until I fell asleep. For a solid month! Strangely, I was so absorbed in the life-

and-death situation happening across the street that I completely bypassed my normal bout of nerves at potentially butchering the work of one of my artistic idols! Fortunately, Mom survived, the job was finished ahead of deadline, and my Dad returned to get her home and me on a plane back to New York.

I barely had time to grab some clean clothes before leaving for a comic book convention in San Francisco. I took the completed job along to show Julie and Alex, who were also guests at the show. I don’t remember Julie’s reaction (probably relief that the job was finished), but Alex was wildly enthusiastic and beamed with pride. I remember thinking, on the plane ride home, that perhaps Alex might have just been being polite, so as not to hurt my feelings, but then I quickly remembered that Alex just wasn’t wired that way—not no way, not no how!

Confirmation quickly came in November, in his next letter, “Was glad to see your great ink job of our ‘Super/Bat/Man’ epic—really fine work, ol’ son! You kept to a firm, bold outline and enhanced the lot to a faretheewell! Hope we do it again!” And, again, in a December letter, “Re our Super/Bat/Man epic, you flattered my work indeed! Did my heavy lead work impede you? By the way, did you outline with pen? If so, what pen? I’m still dazzled by your rich black ink!” You know, sometimes, life is good!!!

But, enough about me… ahem! In that same November missive, Alex evidenced more remarkable enthusiasm about his new working process: “It is a recent event that I, through penciling for DC for this brief time, have come upon a new and bolder method of drawing the figures/designing shapes, etc, to suit their own needs—more so than for my own stories, I find—so it’s been a discovery—one I enjoyed—and it could only happen as it did, by getting out of my self-dug rut, and adapting to DC material—it’s been a while since I’ve drawn superjocks in wild action sequences—quite ‘new’ (again!) to this old croc’! Life, I suppose, is just that, rediscovery of what’s been there all the while— reinventing the wheel, so to speak! Lot’s of fun! Keeps one perking, wot?”

Sadly, it wasn’t to last….

“A.T.T.A. Boy Productions, Inc.”

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The Green Team Three pages (one a double-page spread) from what Terry calls “the A.T.T.A. Boy Team’s ill-fated Green Lantern #171.” He writes that he “did some restoration work on this page upon its return. This is the original dialogue from the unpublished version of the story, wherein Hal almost kills an entire alien race over a misunderstanding, and causes this alien’s death.” [©2006 DC Comics.]

“I Wanted To Draw The Jungle!”

Heartened by Alex’s new optimism, his friends got busy lining up new projects for him. At DC, Editor Ernie Colón readied a Green Lantern story for Alex, while Weezie Jones commissioned an Indiana Jones script for the A.T.T.A. Boy team at Marvel.

Alex managed to finish the Green Lantern pencils in early 1983, “twixt flu bouts and depression about status quo all ’round me.” Good ol’ Dick Giordano called me to say that Alex had lettered my name underneath his in the art credits on the splash page; did I want the job?

What a thrill to ink Alex’s uniquely designed lettering of my name under that familiar Toth boxed signature! To accommodate Alex’s new bolder shape approach, I decided to switch to markers for this story, and the results just aren’t as pleasing to me all these years later.

Ultimately, the “GL” story was judged to be unpublishable as written, and our panels were photostatted, chopped, cropped, shifted around and the pages reordered in an attempt to salvage the art in service to a different story, before seeing print as Green Lantern # 171 (behind the now customary Gil Kane cover). By now, Alex had had enough of DC. Although complimentary of my “bold inks indeed!

Fine!” as he wrote in June, “By the by, the ‘GL’ job was my last. Not a flippin’ word/call/script etc. from DC since then—March! Silent treatment—so screw ’em! They are too odd a bunch to fuss with—no courtesy or professionalism re communication—or the truth! All along, I was told they ‘loved’ every job—so? Zip, zero, zilch, nothing!”

And as for our issue of Indiana Jones: when Weezie sent him the script that she had tailor-written for Alex with all the things that he loved to draw—1930s New York City, bi-planes, gangsters, vintage automobiles, guns and boats—he grumpily returned it, saying, “I wanted to draw the jungle!”

The good times were over. The irascible Alex had returned in full force. He would now consistently invent roadblocks on the fly to keep

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Terry Austin On Alex Toth At DC & Marvel In The 1980s

from having to accept any scripts sent his way.... Alex once agreed to draw a story for an editor/friend of mine only after giving him a stern lecture on how to comport himself like the editors that Alex admired in the old days: tough, uncompromising, inflexible, exercising an iron hand of control over the talent. When Alex phoned to say that he had received the script and would have to totally rewrite and restructure it before beginning, the editor told him no, he would have to draw it as written. Naturally, Alex cursed him soundly, saying that he couldn’t work with such an unyielding martinet, and returned the script torn into tiny pieces.

“I Tried” Although, for the remainder of the decade, I would pepper my letters to Alex with questions about working in the glory days of comics and the colleagues he had known, he would mostly ignore my inquiries in order to deliver terse lectures on drawing and painting that were so far over my head that I might as well have been standing in a hole. In 1989, we briefly teamed with P. Craig Russell, John Byrne, Howard Chaykin and others, to fight a cretinous publisher, who fraudulently took out ads claiming that we were working for his nascent comic book company, and the publication where the ads appeared.

As the years ticked by, Alex’s letters became composed of increasingly bitter diatribes against the “unwholesome” state of the comics industry, the “pack of jackals” on the editorial side of things, and the artists and writers whom he characterized as “pretenders to a craft they cannot fathom the right and wrong of! Too cocky and full of

themselves to learn it—or admit to not knowing enough about!” In his last letter to me, dated December 17, 1990, he decried the lack of fun in modern comics and stated, “Just lately it occurred to me that the comic book is truly dead—it just hasn’t had the good sense to fall down!”

As one of the perpetrators who were keeping the perceived corpse in an ambulatory state, I didn’t feel that Alex was inviting me to participate in a two-sided conversation any longer, but that my new role was to serve as a sounding board for his pent-up rage and frustration.

He concluded that last-ever letter to me by saying, “Well, I give up—gave up a long time ago! Thanks for the kudos—I tried—best!

Alex” I’m extremely grateful to have known Alex and to have shared the path with one of the incontrovertible geniuses of our medium during a time, however fleetingly, that he seemed genuinely happy and professionally energized, and hope that he has finally found a measure of the contentment and tranquility that eluded him in life.

My thoughts turn back to the close of that first letter that he wrote to me on August 14th, 1980: “Happy I made a good impression, too, Terry, tho’ I lose more friends than I make, being a grumpy old fart— spouting off at a world not of my choice—tilting at endless windmills, as I do—quite soured at life, my own failings and ennui, directionless, full of ideas, but pooped out, don’t follow through, so I expectorate, idly, and curse the coming darkness, all out of candles!”

Be at peace, ol’ sire!

Batman And Bravo (Left:) What Terry says is “the page that I’m proudest of” from their Superman Annual #9 collaboration: “I sweated about how to best order the grey tones/areas in the smoke screen to show depth and maintain visual interest. I think I pulled it off!” So do we, Terry. [©2006 DC Comics.]

(Right:) An abandoned layout for an unrealized “Bravo for Adventure.” [©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part eleven

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Peers And Friends And Admirers Talk About— Even To—The Late Great Artist

lex Toth was respected by his fans, his peers, his friends— even, for the most part, by those he might have considered his enemies (although, in the course of preparing this issue, I never ran across anyone who would have placed himself on that list, whatever disputes they might have had with the artist personally or professionally). A number of pros and collectors have expressed their feelings about Toth to me over the past few months.

This section is devoted to those letters and e-mails, though it is far from complete. It begins with a longer reminiscence from one who was a contemporary and longtime friend of Toth’s—a man whose work Alex consistently said he admired and was influenced by when he came into the business in the mid-1940s—and ends with a letter to Alex Toth that, in a sense, speaks for us all. —Roy.

Alex Toth and I met at DC Comics in 1946. We were kids, all of us.

Even Sheldon Mayer, our editor, was a kid. Shelly would, without provocation, leap atop his desk, brandishing his T-Square, and shout “En Garde!”

The youngest of us was Alex Toth. A like-minded fan of Roy Crane and Noel Sickles, I’m proud to say that Shelly Mayer claimed to have hired him, based on Alex’s claim of being a fan of my own simple style of cartooning! Go figure….

Irwin Hasen [Irwin Hasen became a professional comic book artist in the early 1940s, drawing “Green Lantern,” and a major “Justice Society” artist as well by 1947. In 1953 he became the first and only artist of the long-running Dondi newspaper comic strip—and he and Toth were always friends, albeit in later years only from a distance, because Irwin prefers to use the phone, while Toth was a letterwriter. Recently, with Dan Makara, Irwin published a small book of notes he received over the years from Alex Toth. Below is his introduction to the book; it is ©2006 Irwin Hasen.]

Manhattan Memories The first page of Toth’s nostalgic notes to Irwin Hasen about the good ol’ days in New York—juxtaposed with Green Lantern going into action in an opera house in the distinctly similar Gotham City in Comic Cavalcade #27 (June-July 1948). The notes were forwarded by Irwin’s good buddy Dan Makara, who also informed us of a humorous incident from a while back. It seems Irwin lost his wallet while attending a Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC, and “had trouble at the airport without his ID. Someone let him borrow Jerry Bails’ book that had a picture & bio of Irwin.

They let him on, no problem! He got a kick out of that!” [Toth material ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth; GL art ©2006 DC Comics.]

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Peers & Friends Talk About The Late Great Artist

IT Was Sixty Years Ago Today…

Irwin remembers his first meeting with Alex Toth, in 1946. [©2006 Irwin Hasen.]

I fondly recall this kid, dressed in knickers, showing up at my West Side studio bearing a pot of his mother’s Hungarian goulash and a stack of his latest work, wanting to be critiqued.

Alex developed rapidly and soon became a top comic book artist. We lost touch when Alex decided to leave New York for LA and work for Hanna-Barbera doing animation storyboards. I never saw my friend again, but for 30 years he never stopped writing. It was always a delight to receive one of his letters or postcards, exquisitely hand-lettered, jammed front and back, crowded with cogent and unsettling appraisals of the human condition. Like lava from a volcano, his thoughts echoed his own personal angst. He became hermetically sealed in his own torment, yet never relinquished his own dogma of critique… Simplicity!

And that is the true sense of any cartoonist’s being. That is why I loved, respected, and admired this Don Quixote who, with his pen, never stopped tilting at windmills.

July 2006

Batman And The Brothers Naydel Dan Makara also forwarded, on Irwin’s behalf, these two examples of Toth artistry: (Above:) Alex sent Irwin this note about the change in the Batman logo he had suggested to DC some time earlier. Well, at least the world got another moody Batman drawing out of it! [Batman TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

(Left:) This is a truly amazing page, and an important bit of comics history: Toth’s take on the Naydel (also spelled Nadle) brothers—Larry, who edited DC’s humor comics for years beginning in the 1940s, and Marty, who drew “The Flash,” “Justice Society of America,” and “McSnurtle the Turtle” (in Funny Stuff) for several years… complete with portraits! [©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

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Manuel Auad [Manuel Aud has published several books of Toth art.]

My friendship with Alex lasted over 25 years, but then it came to an abrupt end. I first became aware of his work when I came across his story in Crime and Punishment #66. It was love at first sight. Thinking back on it now, it feels like an old fading postcard from the past. After all these years, I have a mental trunk full of postcards recording my friendship with Alex.

One of my favorites commemorates the occasion when I finally got to meet him during the early 1970s. My wife and I were going to Los Angeles for the first time, so I wrote and asked him if I could stop by for a few minutes. He wrote back with five words: “Call me when get here.” Which I did. He said I could come over the next day.

As I climbed up those interminable steps all the way up the hill and knocked on the font door, I really didn’t know what to expect. Soon enough, a big bearded menacing-looking man stared at me and asked who I was and what did I want. After I explained who and what, he hesitated for a moment, then gruffly said, “Well, you’re already here, so you might as well come in.” With that, I expected to last five minutes with him. Four hours later, I drive back to our hotel with an original page from his Dell adaptation of the movie The Land Unknown, which I have to this day.

Bravo And Bernet Sadly, Manuel Auad’s wonderful 1999 tome Toth Black & White, like his several other publications featuring the artist’s work, is out of print, with such treasures as the 1985 drawing at left of his hero Jesse Bravo—but Manuel’s still in the publishing game, as the ad below (for a book featuring the work of Jordi Bernet, a European artist Toth admired) clearly demonstrates. [Toth art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth; Bernet art ©2006]

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Peers & Friends Talk About The Late Great Artist

Double-Spaced Toth These later drawings of the TV-animation heroes Space Ghost and Space Angel appeared in Manuel Auad’s Toth Black & White. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

Another “postcard” would represent the day my wife and I were vacationing in Hawaii, when out of nowhere I bumped into Alex, who it turned out was also vacationing with Guyla and his sons Eric and Damian. We all took a tour around Pearl Harbor by boat and sailed past the USS Arizona Memorial. That evening, Alex and I met at the hotel cafeteria and talked till 2:00 a.m., when we were literally “shooed” away by the cleaning woman. That was the night Alex developed the idea for the story “Kui.” Overall, it was a wonderful chance encounter.

For all the years I knew Alex, I can’t really say I heard him laugh out loud. I guess he didn’t find too many things funny.

Except for one time when he was telling me about one of his visits to Irwin Hasen’s studio, during which Irwin got a phone call from his mother. Apparently she enjoyed talking to her son. But what Alex remembers is that Irwin would go “Uh huh” once in a while. Or, “Sure Ma”…

“Okay”… “Yeah”… “Okay”… and so on.

After a few minutes of this, he would put the phone down and continue with the conversation he and Alex were having. A few minutes later, Irwin would pick the phone up again and go: “Sure, Ma”…

“Okay”… “Uh-huh”… and repeat the process all over again. Alex laughed so hard relating this story that he had tears running down his face.

This particular “postcard” from the past

has always been a mystery to me: During one of my visits to his house, he had just finished all the pages of Bravo for Adventure. He wanted me to see it and placed it on top of the kitchen table. It was a scorching hot day. My throat was parched and I needed a glass of water. Alex graciously handed me a cool glass, and as we stood there viewing each page, he suddenly stops me and says, “If you spill one drop on any of those pages, I’ll kill you!” And to this day, I often wonder if he really meant it.

I’m not going to try and analyze Alex as others have done, because that would be presumptuous of me. All I can say is, when they created Alex Toth, they broke the mold.

Will Murray [Besides being a collector of and expert on comics and pulp magazines, and a writer on fantasy films, Will Murray has written a Doc Savage book, among his many other accomplishments.]

Thinkin’ About Things A Toth model sheet for the 1960s Fantastic Four animated TV series. [The Thing TM & ©Marvel Characters, Inc.; storyboard ©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

My fascination with the work of Alex Toth goes all the way back to the ’60s TV shows Clutch Cargo and Space Angel. I loved his animated Fantastic Four, as well as Space Ghost. Like Doug Wildey, he was one of that rare breed who shuttled back and forth between TV animation and comic books.

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Fly, Tiger, Fly! Over the last year or two, I kept bumping into Alex Toth in the most improbable places.

The splash of the “Warhawk” story “Chennault Must Die” mentioned by Will Murray. Art by Toth, script by Archie Goodwin, from Savage Combat Tales #2 (1975) . [©2006 Seaboard-Atlas or its successors in interest.]

In Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, for example. That 2004 CGI extravaganza was inspired by a host of comic book artists, its creators told me.

Giants like Wally Wood and Jack Kirby, among others. Production designer Kevin Conran singled out Alex Toth specifically.

Even if he hadn’t, there’s a huge clue in the film strongly suggesting that it owes a large conceptual debt to Toth.

cross my mind as I watched The Juggernaut chase Kitty Pryde through a succession of walls with pre-punched holes in them. Nor did I connect Toth with The X-Men in any way.

Yet it was both fitting and ironic that Alex Toth should pass away over Memorial Day weekend. Why? Because, as I later realized, Toth worked on The X-Men #12, which introduced The Juggernaut to the Marvel Universe. It was a wonderfully moody piece of storytelling, and a sad turn of events when Toth walked away from that title. He would have made it soar.

While you’re wracking your brain over that, I’ll tell you about the next time I bumped into Alex. It was only a year after Sky Captain came out. I was in Vancouver on the set of the Fantastic Four film. After touring the Baxter Building and other standing sets, I was led into the art department. The first thing that greeted me was a giant blowup of the Fab Four.

Not a Kirby drawing, either. It was an FF model sheet done for the 1967 HannaBarbera Fantastic Four cartoon. Toth’s distinctive style made it instantly recognizable.

I wasn’t thinking of Toth last December when I was back in Vancouver on the set of X-Men 3: The Last Stand. He probably didn’t

Would Alex Toth have cared that a character he helped bring into the world had been part of a box-office smash that Memorial Day weekend? Probably not.

But that and other examples of how his work infiltrated Hollywood show how influential this superlative artist was.

And let’s not forget that when Frank Miller acknowledged his inspirations at the end of his 2005 film Sin City, Alex Toth was prominent among them.

So how did Toth influence Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow?

Simple. Sky Captain flew an all-black P-40 Warhawk. Back in 1975, Toth drew for Atlas-Seaboard’s Savage Combat Tales #2 an evocative tale called “Chennault Must Die.” It featured a mysterious pilot of the Burma air war of World War II. This Flying Tiger also flew an all-black Curtiss P-40.

Coincidence? I think not. Here is what Kevin Conran told me about the influence of specific comics artists on that project: “There are guys

X – The Unknown Perhaps one of the oddest combos in the history of comics was X-Men #12’s teaming of layout by Jack Kirby, penciling by Alex Toth, and inking by Vince Colletta. One has to wonder what the feature would have looked like if Toth had stuck around long enough to take over full art chores—or even just full penciling! Ironically, though, he only got to draw a single clear shot of the ominous Juggernaut in the issue’s final panel. Script for this July 1965 classic by Stan Lee. [©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Peers & Friends Talk About The Late Great Artist

like Will Eisner, Alex Toth, and Alex Raymond. The way that they set up an image graphically. Their use of black and white—particularly Toth. Because this movie was originally intended to be black-&-white.

And I don’t think anyone ever utilized the simplicity of black-&-white as well as that guy. He did more with less than anybody I’d ever seen.”

If you could fit it onto a headstone, that last sentence belongs over Alex Toth’s final resting place. R.I.P.

Michael Allred

Several days passed and I mustered up the courage to give Mr. Toth a call. I later found out that Alex rarely answered the phone, but in this case, he did. He answered with an obvious suspicious tone in his voice, but I immediately introduced myself and asked if he’d received a package from me. He had, and his tone immediately changed from weariness to enthusiasm. Not just about my specific work, but from what he gathered to be my appreciation of artists we both admired, like Roy Crane and the EC crew.

With his friendly tone, I was encouraged to ask him if he’d be willing or interested in doing a Madman drawing for me which I would

[Michael Allred is a professional artist and writer, and the creator of the comic book series Madman, among other things.]

In 1993 I was talking to an art dealer friend about how much I loved the work of Alex Toth, and what a gigantic inspiration his work was for me. He told me he had Toth’s address and phone number and that I should send Alex some of my work.

Needless to say, this was a terrifying prospect for me. Alex Toth’s reputation as a notorious crank was well known to me, as well as his merciless critiques of artists far more established and talented than I. Still, I had nothing to lose and sent him a package of all my Madman work up to that time.

Mad About Toth This graphically moody drawing by Madman creator/artist Michael Allred reveals Toth’s influence. [Batman TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Mad About Madman (Right & below:) The two drawings of Allred’s hero Madman done by Toth. [Madman TM & ©2006 Michael Allred; art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

TOTH timonials use as a trading card and a back cover pin-up. To my crazed glee he told me he’d already sent me a drawing of my Madman character, but that he’d be happy to send another to fill both uses. Heck, yeah!

Alex and I stayed in touch for the next few years. I even visited him at his secret hideout above the Hollywood Bowl once.

But, like many of Alex’s cronies, a ridiculous misunderstanding put me on the “outs” with him. But I never held it against him.

His support and mentorship were like winning the creative lottery.

It’s always sad when stellar talent passes away, but with such a wealth of work left behind for us to enjoy, his legacy is locked in for infinite inspiration.

Tony Tallarico [Tony Tallarico has been a professional comics artist since 1952, drawing for Charlton, Dell, Harvey, Classics Illustrated, et al.

We’re printed his hand-lettered missive at right as it came to us:]

Tallarico Sends Toth (Above:) The Toth “Sierra Smith” page from Dale Evans Comics #7 (Sept.-Oct. 1949), repro’d here from a photocopy of the original art.

(Right:) Tony Tallarico sent this second photocopy of a page of original Toth art when dropping Ye Editor a line recently to mention that he’d just received the Pioneer Award from Temple University College of Arts and Sciences for Lifetime Achievement in the comics and book industries “in recognition of creating the first comic book to star an African-American—Lobo, 1966, Dell Comics.” The “Johnny Thunder” page is from All-American Comics #109 (Aug.-Sept. 1950).

[Art ©2006 DC Comics.]

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Peers & Friends Talk About The Late Great Artist

Clifford Meth [Clifford Meth is a comics collector and professional writer.]

I had a very nice experience with Alex. I was a fan of his—as we all were—and I mentioned this to [artist] Gray Morrow about ten years ago. Gray said, “Why don’t you send Alex one of your stories?” I was just starting out at the time and was, frankly, a little intimidated

by Alex, but I took a chance. In my letter, I asked Alex if he was available for a single spot illustration. Alex sent me one of his famous postcards that week. It read: Sept. 7, 1997 Received “Linda” tome— You write character dialogue like O’Hara and string words together so effortlessly, kiddo—kudos to you! I’m poleaxed to focus on what and where to doodle a fitting ill—truly flumauxed, Cliff—Seem a shoehorning job of a needless item into a perfect wordpicture… Love good writing—the stuff so rare in comics and animation, my two vexing venues… I’m ossified, I’m sure, by actually reading top story work and an invite to pictorialize it— Last good script material handed me was 20 years ago. I’ll try.

Alex A week later, I received the drawing. When I called to thank Alex and ask him what I owed him, he said it was a gift.

I’d always heard stories about what a tough, gruff old guy Alex was. But all I received was encouragement and warmth.

David Cook [David Cook is a comics collector and college professor… as well as clearly something of an artist in his own right.]

Sounds great that Alter Ego will do a Toth tribute. There are some pieces that I did as collaborations with Alex posted into the web site: http://www.tothfans.com/gallery.asp?index=24&Folder=Alex_Toth_ One_Man_Show. Alex did a line drawing with a Faber-Castell Pitt brush pen, then challenged me to add gray tones in Photoshop; then he inked on top of my gray tones. We took it two steps further—he went over that with color pencils and I translated his “color guide” into a Photoshop file. It’s all in that “One Man Show” gallery. I colored that for him so Bill Black could use in America’s Greatest Comics.

Don Juan For The Road The Don Juan drawing penciled by Alex Toth & inked by David Cook. [©2006 Estate of Alex Toth & David Cook.]

I also sent Alex a doodle of an idea and he sent me back a much better pencil and said, “Finish it!” When I did, he said, “done good, bunky.”

He sent me the attached “Don Juan”/Errol Flynn unfinished and challenged me to ink it.

If your issue is all pros and not any friends (isn’t a college professor a professional?), I understand and that’s good. Alex would be proud. I thought I would identify myself, though.

Paul Power [Paul Power is an artist who knew Alex Toth for many years, and conducted an interview with him that will see print ere long. He sent the recent photo at left, and a few passing comments which we were honored to receive.]

I just wanted to let you know that I acted & drew the storyboards on The Rundown. That was the film that Alex liked that starred Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He could see Dwayne as Captain Marvel. I agree with Alex. Dwayne could play the good Captain very, very well. I believe a film is being written as I write!

Alex Toth At Twilight Artist Paul Power sent this photo of himself (at right) and Alex. This picture was taken during Toth’s final months. [Photos ©2006 Paul Power.]

The Rundown is a real adventure comic strip movie. I drew my shots with Alex Toth and Milt Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates in mind.

I think it shows! Check this film out. That one and La Bamba are two of my favorite films among those that I worked on.

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Al Dellinges [Al Dellinges is a collector and fan-publisher who for some years corresponded regularly with Alex Toth.]

Toth, Sickles, And Flynn, Together At Last I’ve been a Toth fan since the late 1940s, but it was many years before I had the chance to meet him. In 1977, I did a book on Joe Kubert, and the printer who did the book for me at his shop in Redwood City, California, Bill Sheridan, was also publishing a fanzine of his own, with the help of Jim Ivey, called CartooNews. I found that one of them, #4, contained a 5-pager on how the artist Alex Toth worked. Upon seeing this article, I managed to talk Sheridan into doing an entire book on Toth (under the logo of Feature Associates, which Bill had ties to).

This gave me a chance to contact Toth, and we soon became good friends, and the book went over very well. Toth, lots of his fans, and even his mother loved it; in fact, she wrote me a 3-page letter describing her pleasure with it, and how proud she was of her son. Alex was also delighted with his mother’s approval, and he sent me a drawing of himself showing how elated he was about it.

Later that year, Alex spoke to me about his latest project, Jesse Bravo/Bravo for Adventure, that he wanted to self-publish. But he felt uncomfortable about sending his original artwork of the Bravo strip about, or even leaving his originals (about 100 of them) at a photocopy shop overnight to have Photostats done.

By this time, Sheridan and I had become partners in the print shop, and I’d learned the mechanics involved in the printing process (camera work, running the presses, stuff like that). So I suggested that Alex consider bringing his Bravo material up to the shop, where’d we’d shoot the “stats” together, and he could supervise the whole thing. Well, that suited Alex just fine, and he flew up to San Jose, where I picked him up and we proceeded to the shop in Redwood City.

The two of us had a great time making Photostats of his originals. I was a bit surprised that his original artwork was so small; each page measured about 10" by 12". But we were able to shoot two pages at a time. As we did it, he’d explain how he’d white out some of the panels and change them a bit.

Anyway, I talked him into staying over at my place in Millbrae for a few days, and we had a great time. We even got into a few arguments about the size of Errol Flynn’s nose. I thought it was too big, Alex didn’t… ha ha ha.

Alex got along well with my second-oldest cousin Larry, until Larry told Toth how great he thought Frank Frazetta was. Even so, Alex drew a nice head shot of Bravo for him.

We spoke a lot about his family, his wives, stories that inspired him to work on, and his two favorite people, Noel Sickles and Errol Flynn. I can just see Alex now, most happy to finally be with the two guys who inspired his work so much—oh, and his mother, too!

Postcards From The Edge (Of California) (Top of page:) The postcard (front and back) that Toth sent Al Dellinges some years back after Alex’s mother expressed her approval of Al’s book on her son’s art. (Right:) The cover of The Art of Alex Toth, edited by Al D. [Postcard art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth; other art ©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

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Peers & Friends Talk About The Late Great Artist

Luca Biagini [Luca Biagini is an actor in Italy who has appeared in various films, and was a longtime correspondent of Alex Toth’s. It seems appropriate to close this tribute to Toth with the imaginary letter to Alex which Luca sent us by e-mail.]

Dear Alex, I hope you can read this letter wherever you are. I’ll miss a lot our long discussions on our beloved old movies: do you remember? You liked Vittorio De Sica and I liked more Fellini. I often think of your deep grief when you told me that Marcello Mastroianni was dead. We are becoming two persons who think too often of the past.

Do you remember how you liked the last works of Hugo Pratt? I continued to send you books and magazines with his stories, and you told me about your meetings with him in Paris and Barcelona. I am sure you have met him again where you are now!

Good luck, old beloved friend.

I miss you so much.

A strong hug from your “testa dura” (as you called me).

Ciao, Luca P.S.: I often dream that you are flying in a Curtiss P-40 in some hidden skies. It was your secret wish.

“I Often Dream That You Are Flying…In Some Hidden Skies” (Right:) A Toth page—complete with P-40s/Flying Tigers in an aerial dogfight with Japanese Zeros—in the story “Burma Sky” from Our Fighting Forces #146 (Dec. 1973-Jan. 1974). With thanks to Bob Cherry. [©2006 DC Comics.]

(Bottom right:) Luca Biagini once received from Toth this homage drawing of Scorchy Smith, the aviator hero of Noel Sickles’ 1930s comic strip. [Scorchy Smith TM & ©2006 the respective trademark & copyright holders; Art ©Estate of Alex Toth.]

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A Colorful Christmas 2006— In Glorious Black-&-White I

Another Year’s Worth of Holiday Hellos Sent By Comics Pros & Fans

NTRO-HO-HO-HO yet again! For a fourth year in a row, we proudly present some season’s greetings we’ve received (in one way or another), courtesy of various A/E readers and the creators themselves. Of course, the card is often from the spouse as much as from the artist…!

Creig Flessel Creig Flessel, late-1930s DC cover artist, the second illustrator of the “Sandman” feature in Adventure Comics, and the co-creator of “The Shining Knight,” sent this pic of himself and the missus to collector Craig Delich in 1997. Do yourself a favor and glom onto the great Sandman illos

by CF in The All-Star Companion, Vol. 2, just out! [©2006 Creig Flessel.]

Mart Nodell The original artist creator of the Golden Age Green Lantern and his wife Carrie sent this drawing of his co-creation (done with scripter Bill Finger) to Craig Delich a few years back. The fabulous Carrie passed away a couple of years ago, but her memory lives on in the minds of all who met her. [Green Lantern TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Dave & Jill Bennett Dave, a West Coast animator, is a former colleague of artist Jim Davis, who figured prominently in A/E #61's coverage of the American Comics Group.

Clearly, the Bennetts are owned by a trio of cats. [©2006 Dave Bennett.]

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Another Year’s Worth Of Holiday Hellos Sent By Comic Pros & Fans

Sheldon “Shelly” Moldoff (Left:) Sheldon created Super Deer for a card from himself and his late beloved wife Shirley in 1996. Shirley is remembered by all who met her at comicons in North Carolina and Florida. Courtesy of Craig Delich. [©2006 Sheldon Moldoff.]

(Below:) Shelly did this 1997 card in the form of a 1940s Flash Comics cover featuring Hawkman, the halcyon hero he drew from 1940-45. Too bad DC never did a story to go with this one! [Hawkman & Flash TM & ©2006 DC Comics; other art ©2006 Sheldon Moldoff.]

Esteban Maroto Spanish illustrator and cartoonist Esteban Maroto likewise made a name for himself in US comics, beginning in the 1970s at Warren. He even basically designed Red Sonja's “iron bikini”—a Christmas present to all guys, right? [©2006 Esteban Maroto.]

Michael T. Gilbert MTG and wife Janet (who writes Disney comics) got caught short in 2003 when Hanukkah fell in late November instead of December. [©2006 Michael T. Gilbert.]

A Colorful Christmas 2006––In Glorious Black-&-White

69

Jim Amash Jim was buried under a combination of Archie, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Alter Ego last Christmas, but he and wife Heidi still managed to send Roy & Dann this somewhat personalized card. [©2006 Jim Amash.]

Jack & Carole Bender Winslow Mortimer Among many other things, the late Win Mortimer is remembered for his 1940s covers featuring Superman and Batman (as well as stories about both). Circa 1955-60, he also drew the newspaper comic strip David Crane for some time, as per this Christmas card. R. Dewey Cassell, who sent us this one, says it was done during that period. [Characters TM & ©2006 the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Jack and his wife currently co-write, and Jack draws, the long-running daily comic strip Alley Oop—one of the all-time great features.

[Alley Oop TM & ©2006 NEA, Inc.]

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Another Year’s Worth Of Holiday Hellos Sent By Comic Pros & Fans

Frank Brunner Frank & Kisara Brunner sent this card in 2000. Incidentally, Frank is still accepting art commissions (pencils, inks, or paintings) for covers, splash panels, or pin-up re-creations… and ideas for new art are welcomed. There’s a $150 minimum. You can visit his website at www.frankbrunner.net. [Batman TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Al Rio Pro artist Al Rio’s ads have been appearing in Alter Ego for a while now, so we’re overjoyed to present this pair of Supergirl drawings done by him for Christmas cards—one partly finished in pencil, the other inked and colored (though not here, alas). With thanks to Al and to Bruce Canavan. See Al’s ad on p. 40.

[Supergirl TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Steve Leialoha Gracias to Stephan Friedt for e-mailing us a copy of this 1978 card, and to Steve L. himself for permission to repro it—but we’re a little uncertain as to the precise name of the particular duck drawn here—and maybe that’s exactly the way Steve wanted it! [©2006 Steve Leialoha.]

A Colorful Christmas 2006––In Glorious Black-&-White

71

Alex Wright The computer whiz behind last year’s celebrated “1943 Pin-up Calendar” (and that cover with Veronica Lake as Liberty Belle) has done it again—another calender, that is, only this time with Marvel instead of DC heroines. It got crowded out of this issue, but we figure including it in the January 2007 Alter Ego (#64) will still give everybody plenty of time to enjoy it. Meanwhile, Alex sent these Christmas greetings from the Tigress of The Young AllStars, a.k.a. The Huntress, Wildcat’s ever-feminine foe. Funny, she looks a lot like Gene Tierney to us! [Tigress/Huntress TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Joe Giella This Christmas card by Joe (in the vein of his seminal work inking Gil Kane’s Green Lantern in the 1960s) was sent to us by R. Dewey Cassell, and is shown by permission of Dewey and Joe. [Green Lantern TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Roy & Dann Thomas (Left:) Gonzo the aracari (1988[?]-2006). Rest in peace, little muse. Roy’s office will never be the same without you.

(Right:) The Thomases’ 2005 Christmas card featured the trouble twins, recent arrivals Electra and Orestes (who have since taken the secret identities of Angel-Dog and Lug). Both photos by Dann Thomas.

(Above left & center:) Dell’s first two John Carter of Mars comics from 1952. The second featured a line-drawing cover by Jesse Marsh. (Above right:) Two years earlier, Manning drew this proposed cover, inspired by Burroughs’ fifth novel, The Chessmen of Mars. [Dell covers ©2006 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.; John Carter & related characters TM & ©2006 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.; above-right art ©2006 Estate of Russ Manning.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

Russ Manning: The Lost Works!

by Michael T. Gilbert Edgar Rice Burroughs created such fantasy icons as Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, and Carson of Venus. In doing so, he also helped to launch Russ Manning’s career.

As a teenager, the young cartoonist honed his skills creating Burroughs-inspired illustrations for science-fiction and fantasy fanzines, examples of which were published Alter Ego #58 and #59.

Manning’s first professional job appeared in Dell’s Tarzan #39, coverdated Dec. 1952. It featured “Brothers of the Spear,” a groundbreaking 6-page feature starring two African friends, one white and one black.

The series had been created a year earlier by writer Gaylord DuBois and artist Jesse Marsh, but Manning quickly made the strip his own, drawing it for almost fifteen years.

In 1965, Manning took over the Tarzan lead feature, after illness forced Marsh to give up the strip.

Two years later, Manning hit the big time when he was chosen to write and illustrate the Tarzan syndicated strip. But Manning’s work on Tarzan goes back even further.

(Above:) We don’t know whether this stunning John Carter illo was part of Manning’s samples, but it’s a beauty! [Art © 2006 Estate of Russ Manning; characters TM & ©2006 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.] (Right:) Russ Manning art from a “Brothers of the Spear” backup in Dell’s Tarzan. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

(Below & on next 2 1/2 pages:) Manning’s John Carter of Mars samples. [©2006 Estate of Russ Manning; characters TM & ©2006 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

Russ Manning: The Lost Works!

75 According to Burroughs expert Bill Hillman: “Manning’s first two ’Tarzan’ stories appeared in Western’s giveaway March of Comics #114 (1954) and #144 (1956). Curiously, ‘Tarzan and the Horns of Kudu’ which appeared in the #114 issue had been drawn two years earlier for a Tarzan 3-D comic that had been shelved.”

If so, then “Horns of Kudu” may have been Manning’s first professional work, though published years later.

Both that and Manning’s first “Brothers of the Spear” story were drawn in 1952, so who knows which one was finished first?

However, Manning almost made his first pro sale two years earlier, illustrating another famous Burroughs creation—until a twist of fate ruined his chances.

Bad Timing!

According to Bill & Sue-On Hillman’s ERBzine website, Manning learned sometime in 1950 that Dell was thinking about publishing a John Carter of Mars comic, and drew some sample pages. For those unfamiliar with the character, John Carter first appeared in 1912, in the pulp magazine All-Story, in a serialized Edgar Rice Burroughs story later published (in 1917) as the novel A Princess of Mars. Carter was a former Civil War captain who traveled to Barsoom (the locals’ name for Mars) by means of astral projection, and proved himself a great warrior there.

Unfortunately, the Korean War messed up Manning’s plans big-time.

His National Guard unit was activated before he could submit his samples, and Russ was shipped to Japan. For the next two years, he worked as a mapmaker and also drew cartoons for the base newspaper. By the time he was discharged in 1952, the John Carter project had been assigned to Dell’s regular Tarzan artist, Jesse Marsh.

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

The two were friends, and in 1952 Marsh helped him land a job with the Los Angeles office of Western Publishing, despite the fact that Russ had been turned down three times in six months by Tom McKimson, their West Coast art director. Manning drew his first “Brothers of the Spear” for them, beginning a long run that ended with #156 in Feb. 1966.

But Manning was far from a onetrick pony, working only on Burroughs-related comics. In fact, Dell kept him busy with many other projects, including adaptations of movies and TV shows, as well as Magnus - Robot Fighter, a sci-fi comic book hero of the ’60s. He also gained fame in 1979 when he became the first artist on the popular Star Wars comic strip. But time and again Manning returned to Burroughs for inspiration.

John Carter Of The Comics!

John Carter’s checkered comic book history begins in May 1939, when Dell’s The Funnies reprinted a series of his newspaper comics, including strips drawn by John Coleman Burroughs, son of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The series began in The Funnies #30, and ended in issue #56.

By contrast, Dell’s John Carter of Mars comic lasted a mere three issues in 1952 and 1953, as part of Dell’s Four Color Comics series (issues #375, 437, and 488). Gold Key reprinted these in 1963 and 1964.

Interestingly, it appears Dell was considering publishing a fourth John Carter issue in 1954. The indicia on the Chessmen of Mars inside-cover mockup sample reprinted on the following page lists it as Four Color Comics #528.

Instead, the issue as published featured Dale Evans. The Frazetta-ish Chessmen samples, though unsigned, are believed to have been drawn by Russ Manning, three or four years after the first batch.

Carter next appeared as a back-up series in DC’s Tarzan after Gold Key lost their license. This version premiered in Tarzan #207 (April 1972). A few months later, John Carter astralprojected himself into DC’s Weird Worlds comic. Despite some handsome art mostly by Murphy Anderson and scripts by Marv Wolfman, both series were short-lived.

Russ Manning: The Lost Works!

77

Marvel had greater success in the 1970s with its John Carter, Warlord of Mars series originally by the same Marv Wolfman and penciler Gil Kane. That one lasted an impressive 28 issues, plus three annuals, from 1977 to 1979.

Rough Edges And All...

To our knowledge, these Russ Manning sample strips have never before seen print.

While the artist’s rough edges are readily apparent, so too is his raw talent. The first samples, reminiscent of Hal Foster, display lively action, great backgrounds, and solid storytelling. If the characters seem a bit awkward in spots, or if a few faces appear a bit off, that’s to be expected. After all, Russ was just starting out.

Perhaps it was fortunate that Manning missed out on that John Carter job and had two more years to hone his already-considerable skills. Still, it’s hard not to look at these samples and wonder… “What If?” What if Manning had gotten his dream job?

Perhaps his slicker style would have proved more appropriate to the material than Jesse

(Left:) Manning’s proposed inside cover for Dell’s never-completed Chessmen of Mars comic. [Art ©2006 Estate of Russ Manning; John Carter and other ERB characters TM & ©2006 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.] (Below:) The planned Chessmen comic never appeared, being replaced by this Dale Evans comic. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

Marsh’s rough-hewn art, and Dell’s John Carter comics might have lasted longer. Then again, it’s just as likely that Dell would have gone with Marsh anyway, after deciding Manning still wasn’t quite ready.

We’ll never know.

What we do know is that many of Russ Manning’s remaining years were devoted to bringing Burroughs’ characters to glorious four-color life. And although Manning succumbed to cancer on December 1, 1981, at age 52, the fans have never forgotten him. In July 2006, the Eisner Awards voters inducted Russ Manning into their comic book Hall of Fame.

It was an honor richly deserved.

Our sincere thanks to “Reliable” Ray Cuthbert and Bill Hillman, who provided these scans. Russ Manning fans will definitely want to visit Bill & Sue-On Hillman’s incredible ERBzine website at: www.erbzine.com/mag8/0830.html ’Til next time...

Check out Michael's new website at www.michaeltgilbert.com or at www.mrmonster.com

(Above & left:) Chessmen of Mars sample pages drawn by Russ Manning, possibly inspired by the art of Wally Wood and Frank Frazetta. [Art ©2006 Estate of Russ Manning; John Carter of Mars & related characters TM & ©2006 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

Russ Manning, drawn by fellow cartoonist Milton Caniff, creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon. [©2006 Estate of Milton Caniff.]

[Art ©2006 Rubén Procopio.]

80 I don’t recall any specific effort on my part being involved, but after a series of events of the following weeks, when I boarded a train for my home in the South, one of the permanent assignments I carried was … The Phantom Eagle! In Wow Comics! Editor: Mercedes Shull!

You couldn’t have wanted a better arrangement. I don’t know just when it was that Mercy had joined the Fawcett ranks, but it was a good day for the company … and for all who were so fortunate as to work with such a sincere, unemotional, unpretentious professional.

By

[Art & logo ©2006 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel © & TM 2006 DC Comics]

[FCA EDITORS NOTE: From 1941-53, Marcus D. Swayze was a top artist for Fawcett Publications. The very first Mary Marvel character sketches came from Marc’s drawing table, and he illustrated her earliest adventures, including the classic origin story, “Captain Marvel Introduces Mary Marvel (Captain Marvel Adventures #18, Dec. ’42); but he was primarily hired by Fawcett Publications to illustrate Captain Marvel stories and covers for Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures. He also wrote many Captain Marvel scripts, and continued to do so while in the military.

After leaving the service in 1944, he made an arrangement with Fawcett to produce art and stories for them on a freelance basis out of his Louisiana home. There he created both art and story for The Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics, in addition to drawing the Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip for Bell Syndicate (created by his friend and mentor Russell Keaton). After the cancellation of Wow, Swayze produced artwork for Fawcett’s top-selling line of romance comics, including Sweethearts and Life Story. After the company ceased publishing comics, Marc moved over to Charlton Publications, where he ended his comics career in the mid-’50s. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been FCA’s most popular feature since his first column appeared in FCA #54, 1996. Last issue Marc explained why his sketches contain “a lotta lines.” In this installment he speaks of his first encounter with Wow Comics, and with the “title panel” as a marketing device. —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

And so pretty.

No matter how deeply one becomes involved in the creative side of comics … at some time or other the thoughts turn to that other … the commercial … the marketing … the business side of the game. I had, from the beginning, given occasional thought to that vague creature out there … that I took as important to us … the reader. The mental image was a kid … about Billy’s age … Batson, that is … at a newsstand, an open comic book from the rack in his hands, a sales clerk scowling impatiently in the background.

The problem, made so clear in that scene, left a feeling of guilt … of indifference … an ignored responsibility. How could that kid be convinced to turn loose of his dime and make the sales clerk happy?

Assuming that the circumstances did not allow time for detailed reading, what within those pages could be commanding such rapt attention?

It had to be a title panel.

A glance over the title panels nearby showed a majority to be crowded at the top of the page, jammed with various elements, some

Fawcett’s Wow Comics #1, dated Winter 1940, displayed a line-up of “Mr. Scarlet, Atom Blake, Diamond Jack, Rick O’Shay, and others!” Sounds like an interesting cast of characters … that may have come from the pen of scripter Bill Parker.

But I never knew any of those guys. My first encounters with Wow Comics were drawing the cover and story art of Mary Marvel in issue #9, and the cover for #10.

Back in issue #6, Wow had introduced two new wartime characters: Commando Yank and The Phantom Eagle. From the beginning, Commando Yank got top billing on the Wow covers, both in prominence and placement, even over Mr. Scarlet.

The Phantom Eagle? Consistently a smallish, goggled figure just beyond the elbow of Commando Yank.

When I strode into the Fawcett editorial offices following my Army discharge, the first desk I approached was that of Mercedes Shull. Mercy … everyone called her that … and a more appropriate monicker never existed … was holding an art page of … The Phantom Eagle.

Fawcett Brain Trust Wow Comics editor Mercedes Shull, shown with (left to right) Tom Naughton, Otto Binder, John Beardsley, and (with pipe) comics dept. executive editor Rod Reed. This photo appeared in the trade periodical The Fawcett Distributor (May 1942).

We Didn’t Know... It Was The Golden Age!

81 absolutely unessential. Not much urge to read further.

Wasn’t the title panel more important that that?

It was a revelation. I never saw the title panel in the same light again. In a few moments of contemplation … there was a new purpose … a new definition for the term “title panel” … a role for it in that “other side of the game” … the marketing side.

The mental scene of the kid with the dime returned.

By way of well-prepared, thoughtful title panels, the comic book he held could be made to shout back at him: “Buy me! Take me home with you!”

Pilgrim’s Progress Marc writes: “To be more effective at the market, the title panels needed simplicity, space, and action! I began a program to eliminate the Phoenix Squadron pictures, reduce and/or divide the legend business, and enlarge, by rearranging the early story pages—for 2/3 of the page, or sometimes all.” You can see his progress between the title (or splash) page from Wow Comics #36 (May 1945) at left, and the one for #57 (Aug. 1947), at right. Art on both by Swayze. Restored art from Wow #57 courtesy of Eric Schumacher. Thanks to Bob Hughes. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

And, after all, isn’t that what marketing is all about?

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A Christmas For Freddy Freeman Article by John G. Pierce

Edited By P.C. Hamerlinck

erry Christmas! Day of gifts and jollity, light hearts and friendly faces, when the whole world is brightened with the cheery glow of kindness and good fellowship... Have you ever wondered what kind of a day this is for your hero, Captain Marvel Jr.? Well, we can only give you part of the answer, for this story is chiefly concerned with Freddy Freedman’s Christmas!”

his sparse pantry to find something to have for dinner. Pulling out a can of what looks like beans, and some milk, Freddy comments that “This is all I can afford. But I’m not complaining. Not on Christmas Eve.” As Freddy sits having his dinner, such as it is, he thinks, “But sometimes I wish somebody wanted or needed me—just as I am. There will always be work for Captain Marvel Jr. to do. Why isn’t there anyplace where I’m needed, too?” (One might wonder why Freddy had to spend a holiday alone, rather than with his extended family of Billy and Mary Batson. But such considerations seldom entered into the adventures.

While they teamed together in “Marvel Family” tales, and had occasional crossover stories, on the whole, Captain Marvel, CM Jr., and Mary Marvel were treated as separate characters. I doubt such matters as that lack of continuity—or even the idea of minors living on their own—actually bothered many Golden Age readers. And that may have been for the better. While there is a great deal to be said for continuity, and certainly it can provide all sorts of story springboards, it can also bog down a story unnecessarily. While logic and realism can be good things, they often don’t mix well with super-hero stories.)

“M

And with this introductory text, accompanied by a splash panel of Junior in harness, pulling Santa Claus’ sleigh (Rudolph and the boys must’ve had the night off), we have the beginning of the story entitled “Freddy Freeman’s Xmas.” (Yes, the introductory text used the word “Christmas” while the story’s actual title used “Xmas,” instead. Alas, over the years, some folks have been deluded into thinking that “Xmas” represents some inferior form of the word “Christmas,” or is used by those who want to separate Christ from Christmas. In actuality, the “X” in “Xmas” comes from the Greek letter Chi, which looks like an X, and which was the first letter of “Christos,” the Greek word which we know as “Christ.” It was not unusual in the early centuries of the Christian Church for the letters Chi Rho, i.e., CR, to be used as an abbreviated form of “Christos.” So shortening “Christmas” to “Xmas” is no more derogatory than referring to the Justice Society of America as simply “the JSA.”) In the opening panels of the tale, a small boy, out Christmas shopping with his mother, sees Captain Marvel Jr. flying overhead (a bit of rarity since the Fawcett tales more typically had the Marvels seen in their alter egos first, rather than their costumed identities). “He’s coming back from the tour of the city hospitals that he makes every Xmas! I’ve heard about that,” comments the mother, to which her son responds that “It’d be worth getting sick to meet him!”

The camera then follows Junior to “a lonely attic room,” where he lives alone as “the crippled orphan Freddy Freeman,” who looks over

Suddenly, a knock at Freddy’s door brings a Mrs. Fotheringham to ask a favor of the boy, as “Everyone else is too busy on Christmas Eve.” She asks Freddy to come to the orphanage to help look after the children. Freddy is more than glad to be able to help.

Later, at the orphanage, Freddy notices one young fellow apparently not having any fun. “You’d better smile! What will Santa Claus think if he finds you looking so gloomy?” Freddy admonishes the young man, who responds, “He won’t even know about it. Because he isn’t coming.

Santa Claus never comes here. I guess he’s just like everybody else. He doesn’t care what happens to orphans like us.…” Freddy’s attempts to convince the boy that “Santa doesn’t play favorites” fall on deaf ears … meaning, of course, that it is time for Captain Marvel Jr. to take a hand.

Junior flies to find a Santa Claus, but when he does descend to a streetside bell-ringing St. Nick, the fellow takes off running. Junior overtakes him and unmasks him as “my old friend Lightfingers Louie,” who insists that he is now on the level, and then faints.

Sensing that “he’ll be in no mood to listen to me,” Junior says his magic words and changes back to Freddy, who explains the need for a Santa Claus to a recovered Louie.

“That’s the best offer I ever had in me life! But what good is Santa Claus without presents?” wonders the reformed criminal. “Da mob would never forgive me if I didn’t tell ’em about this. They’ll be glad to chip in to buy presents!”

Meanwhile, Freddy observes that “Captain Marvel Jr. couldn’t do it! But I did! Seems as though I am needed sometimes after all.…” Thus, we see, as so many times throughout the Marvel Family saga, a need for the secret identity, an implicit answer to the question, “Why would Junior spend most of his time with a physical handicap when he didn’t really have to do so?” Alongside, of course, the need for reader identification. (Though some readers and writers today view the secret identity as an outmoded convention, there are those of us who persistently maintain that it is a vital component of most super-heroes.)

The Ghost of Christmas’ Future Bud Thompson’s splash panel for “Freddy Freeman’s Xmas!” Incidentally, Thompson— the major “Captain Marvel Jr.” artist after the departure of Mac Raboy—is the subject of a feature article in the very next issue FCA. [©2006 DC Comics.]

Louie takes Freddy to a place which a sign on the wall refers to as “The X Krooks Klub,” where “Honesty is the best policy.” Of course, another, smaller, sign warns patrons

A Christmas For Freddy Freeman

83

in Santa. But overall, that’s a minor glitch in the storytelling.)

Seeing the boys’ happiness with their newly-acquired toys, John begins having his own feelings of repentance. Meanwhile, Junior answers the door, to find Lightfingers Louie and some of the others.

“Hard John conked me and stole my costume! We’re gonna fix his wagon! A guy who’d try to steal kids’ toys on Xmas ain’t no gentleman!” But Junior claims the privilege of dealing with Hard John.

Suddenly, one boy’s plane flies out the window, and as he dives to catch it, he begins to fall. Hard John leaps to save the lad, but is pulled out the window himself by the boy’s weight. Junior saves them both.

Junior, admiring John’s courage, accepts his confession and indulges his wish not to be exposed to the kids. Some boys urge “Santa” to stay and sing a Christmas carol with them, and so, to the background strains of “Silent Night,” Junior, realizing that no one was hurt, that Hard John has learned his lesson, and that “It’s time for Freddy Freeman to begin enjoying his Christmas,” says the magic words and changes.

We Always Thought Santa Claus Came In Through The Window A dramatic scene from the story. Art by Bud Thompson. [©2006 DC Comics.]

to “Watch your hat and coat.” Louie proves his adeptness at fundraising by passing the hat and ordering his fellow former felons to “Give till it hurts.” One ex-thug, shedding huge tears, comments that “I was an orphan once, meself ... Sniff!” But there is one holdout—a crook named Hard John, who will give “Not a red cent! I don’t go for that sentimental drip!”

“Where’s Capt. Marvel Jr.? Isn’t he going to take me to jail?” asks John.

“Take Santa Claus to jail—on Christmas Eve? Don’t be silly! He’s sorry he couldn’t stay to celebrate, too!”

As the clock strikes midnight, Freddy, Mrs. Fotheringham, “Santa,” and the boys turn to the camera, and in a bit of Golden Age charm which would be laughed at today, wish “all our friends a Merry Xmas!

From the bottom of our hearts!” To which John adds, “And a Happy New Year, too!”

The other “X Krooks,” however, aren’t about to stand for that, so they turn Hard John upside-down and shake the change out of his pockets, while Louie paraphrases a Bible verse: “Blessed is he who giveth!” Hard John’s response is a little less Biblical: “&!!??!#”

So, with Christmas celebrated, at least two lives (Hard John and the cynical orphan boy) are changed for the better … along with Freddy having found himself needed, in more ways than one.

Back on his feet, John threatens revenge, while Louie and Freddy make plans to purchase gifts. Louie dismisses any concerns about Hard John by saying that “He can’t get used to going straight! He still thinks he’s gotta act tough!” Freddy, however, is not so easily convinced.

“Freddy Freeman’s Xmas” was drawn by Bud Thompson, edited by Wendell Crowley, and written by an unknown scripter (though Otto Binder is always a good guess), and appeared in Captain Marvel Jr. #46, dated February 1947.

A short time later, when Louie (still dressed as Santa) returns with a sack full of gifts, he is slugged by Hard John, who dons the Santa garb.

“No one will notice me leaving! Then I’ll trade in all this junk for cash!” Yes, a man in a Santa suit on Christmas Eve might not be inconspicuous, but of course what John probably means is that the other ex-felons, if they were to see him leave, would mistake him for Louie.

[John G. Pierce can’t help but note that he was born in February 1947.]

Freddy, however, spots the figure, and assuming it to be Louie, changes to Junior, who grabs the disguised John and his bag and transports them by air to the orphanage, where the kids are about to be sent to bed.

The cynical kid seen earlier comments that “Santa Claus didn’t show up! But I don’t care ’cause I knew he wouldn’t!”

Imagine everyone’s surprise, then, when Junior and “Santa” make an appearance in the window. Suddenly reformed, the kid confesses his former lack of belief in Santa Claus, adding, “I was an awful dope, wasn’t I?” (Actually, this is a bit inconsistent, for a lack of belief in Santa Claus was not the issue with this kid; rather, he had believed that Santa simply would not visit the orphanage. Now, he repents of disbelieving

From 1958 to 1969, Don Glut [best known today for writing the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back] made amateur movies, mostly in the horror and science fiction genres.

These films became legendary by being featured in such magazines as Famous Monsters of Filmland.

ALEX TOTH: Tribute To A Titan part twelve

More Toth Testimonials FCA’s Own Tribute To ALEX TOTH

T

he following short memorials to the late great artist have been assembled by P.C. Hamerlinck—beginning with his own. Each contributor’s name precedes his comments:

P.C. Hamerlinck Editor of FCA “Jack Binder was an S.O.B. to me!”

Alex Toth dug deep into his memory in one of our postcard exchanges wherein I quizzed him about the early 1940s ... when an inexperienced 15-year-old with a new but thin portfolio in hand was making the rounds after school around New York City to various comic book publishers. While dropping by

the offices of Fawcett Publications—and after a split-second “hello” to C.C. Beck and Pete Costanza—Toth nervously sat with Jack Binder, who reviewed the kid’s crude samples. “After his slashing critique, I went home, ripped up my drawings in anger, re-did everything ... better.

So, in perverse logic, Binder helped start my career.”

Toth always felt warm respect for Beck, and once declared to Beck that “ol’ Captain Marvel was, and still is, somewhere in comic strip heaven, the best damned comic hero ever— editorially and graphically!” Both artists understood economy of concept and execution. Both artists outwardly and vehemently denounced any vulgarization of their beloved art form.

“By their works, ye shall know them.”

Michael Uslan Film Producer; Former Comics Writer “It was thirty years ago today…” that I had the honor of writing a comic book story illustrated by Alex Toth. The man turned it into a lesson for me on visual storytelling and graphic design. I never learned so much from a collaboration with an artist.

Thanks to the efforts of Bob Layton, Alex and I had the sweet task of being the first to continue the adventures of “The Question” following Steve Ditko and his original Charlton run.

The Marvels Of Alex Toth (Above:) Toth cover for P.C. Hamerlinck’s FCA #57 (Winter 1997).

(Top center:) This previously-unpublished figure of Captain Marvel, says longtime Toth correspondent Al Dellinges, who provided it to us, is from “one of 700 doodle pages Toth gave Manuel [Auad] for their proposed doodle book.” The originals were returned to Alex when the project fell apart. [Captain Marvel TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Preacher’s Son’s Admirer (Left:) Toth’s introduction to Preacher’s Son, C.C. Beck’s privately circulated autobiography. [©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

More Toth Testimonials

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current and past efforts. His work was everywhere… romance comics, horror, super-heroes, a Ralston Tom Mix giveaway, Zorro reprints, and numerous other books. His 1983 story “Taps” (from Bop #1) was so fantastic I later secured one-time rights to publish the five-page story in FCA #35 (1986). His appreciation of our attention to “Taps” was expressed in the first of many postcards we would receive from him over the years.

In 1989 Toth responded generously to our request for an FCA cover commemorating the life of C.C. Beck.

In 1992, after I read one of his Zorro tales to my children, my daughter Rosalynda was so taken by the story and art that I dashed off a quick note to Toth telling of her excitement. His reply was a drawing of Zorro with a word balloon reading, “Peek-Aboo, I see you, Rosalynda! I’m sneaking up on the bad guys—make believe you don’t see me!—Touché !” This poignant act made Toth more than just a name on a comic page, but a human person of flesh and blood!

A Fair Exchange—In Fact, An Excellent One Alex Toth provided the drawing of 1933-45 President Franklin D. Roosevelt for a Beck-written article from FCA/SOB #4, a.k.a. FCA #15 (Oct.-Nov. 1980). In exchange, Beck sent Toth a Captain Tootsie painting he’d done, featuring the candy-scarfing hero he’d drawn in 1940s comic book ads. A pen-&-ink version of the Tootsie art was printed in P.C. Hamerlinck’s 2001 TwoMorrows volume The Fawcett Companion. [©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

Toth’s cards over the years always touched on comics, but occasionally personal information would be shared. He remarked in 1984 that his wife had just returned from the hospital. In 1985 we learned his wife had died and we sent our sympathy. His reply—“My wife Guyla’s passing has left an unfillable hole in my life—and I’m not certain I want to even try to fill it. Nothing, no one, can ease the ache, nor the loneliness of life without my Kansas girl’s immitigable warm giggle to brighten my days”—touched me like no letter I have ever received. (Little did I know at the time I would lament in a similar fashion on the passing of my wife Teresa in 1997.)

Alex taught me how best to bring a comic book tale to life. As a writer, I could only sit back, marvel, and hold on for the ride. The piece was an homage to Ditko and represents perhaps the finest use of blacks since Milt Caniff, yet Toth made it all his own. (Keep an eye out for it when DC Comics releases Action Heroes Archives, Vol. 3.)

He was the master storyteller and belongs in the same class as Will Eisner and Jack Kirby. Thank you, Alex, for so much of what I enjoyed growing up: Johnny Thunder, Zorro, Space Angel, Space Ghost, Super Friends, Black Canary, Atom & The Flash, and The Question.

Jerry Ordway Artist & Writer I really started to love Toth’s work when I was in my teens. I had started picking up the Warren monster magazines and saw the amazing stuff that he did in grey tones, Craftint paper, you name it. I always loved the way he told a story, and how he composed a panel, whether for a shadow effect or for white space, and wish I had the clarity in my work that he had in his. He was an outspoken critic of comics, but clearly he loved them, and their potential. He’d earned his right to criticize, with the terrific body of work he left for us. I will always find something there to inspire me.

Bill Harper Former Editor of FCA I began corresponding with Toth in 1983, after reading his story “The Fox” in Red Circle’s The Black Hood #3. My appreciation for Toth’s comic art and panel design grew; thus I began seeking out his

A Toth Testimonial Of Another Kind The cover done by Toth for FCA & ME, TOO! #10, a.k.a. FCA #46 (Fall 1989), to mark the passing of C.C. Beck. [Art ©2006 Alex Toth; Captain Marvel TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

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FCA’s Own Tribute To Alex Toth

Toth responded in 1997 to Teresa’s health problems with some most helpful information that we began looking into, but by October her battle with cancer was over … and strangely, so were the cards from Toth. (Prior to her passing, we had discontinued both FCA and Pow-Wow [Straight Arrow] newsletters; P.C. Hamerlinck took over as editor of FCA in 1995, which now continues in the pages of Alter Ego.)

John G. Pierce Collector and Comics Historian

A “Mix-ed” Blessing

Toth displayed a vast interest in a variety of subjects, which added to the richness of his comics stories. His continued interest in design heightened the effectiveness of his storytelling. He is considered by many as a major talent in the world of comics and an originator worthy of imitation … but to our family, he is remembered for his human traits of love, compassion, generosity and honesty.

(Above:) A Toth “Tom Mix” postcard sketch, done for Bill & Teresa Harper. [©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

Alex Toth wrote to me January 1990 in response to the first letter I’d sent him. Picking up on a suggestion made in a letter to me by the late A. J. Hanley, in which he’d stated that “Toth the Thinker” might be the person who could handle Captain Marvel by bringing a “strong illustrative feel” while maintaining some of the needed simplicity, I had passed the idea along to Alex: “Yes, I’d have loved miming Maestro C. C.’s Big Red Cheese, only if he couldn’t/wouldn’t do it—and would’ve tried to keep the original spirit, character, intent—and time frame!—to

“Peekaboo, I See You, Rosalynda!”

(Left:) Toth Zorro drawing done for Rosalynda Harper, 1982.

[Art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth; Zorro TM & ©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

Walt Grogan Comics Collector; www.marvelfamily.com Mike Sekowsky. Kurt Schaffenberger. Curt Swan. Gil Kane.

Alex Toth. These five were among the first artists whose respective styles I could easily recognize as I grew up. Toth’s art stood apart and was much easier to discern than the others’, primarily due to his heavy inks. It took a while for me to warm to Toth because his style was so different from the others, but I soon grew to love it (primarily through the reprints in DC’s 100 Page Super-Spectaculars). It wasn’t long before I recognized his simple yet elegant art style and sense of design in many of the cartoon shows that consumed my Saturday mornings. My only real disappointment? That Toth’s Captain Marvel didn’t make the cut for Super Friends.

Bill Fugate Artist Whenever I start thinking about Alex Toth’s work I always end up remembering the Hot Wheels comic he did for DC. What if I’d been working for DC back then and they’d stuck me with that? All those cars ... I get a little suicidal just thinking about it.

Did somebody at DC really hate this guy? No … most likely they knew that if anyone could pull it off, Toth could, because he was really good at drawing cars. I think the guy could’ve drawn a comic about putting grass seed on your lawn and made it seem exciting.

There Be Legends (Above:) Pre-production art by Toth for the two NBC-TV Legends of the Superheroes live-action specials from 1978. [Art ©2006 DC Comics.]

More Toth Testimonials

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Here, Too! Another Toth conceptual design for the NBC-TV Legends specials—this one featuring the villains, with Dr. Sivana as the ringleader. Mr. Atom and King Kull ultimately didn’t make the cut. [©2006 DC Comics.]

make it work! Not ‘update’ the beleaguered strip, having noted DC’s horrors: Shadow, Plastic Man, Tarzan, Wonder Woman, plus many other great old heroes... But, too, only if I could’ve written it, as I wished I could’ve done both until five or more years ago, when my wife died. Most of me went with her, and I just stopped. Couldn’t write anymore, drew only occasional covers. That, too, stopped last year.…”

He went on to comment about his “Green Lantern” stories from early in his career, which in the minds of many fans was some of his best work: “I never clicked with GL, nor he with me … I was very … clumsy, lumpen, just awful at it … His costume [was] a pain to draw as well.”

In a letter to C.C. Beck in 1975, Toth clearly had already become disenchanted and frustrated working in the comics industry: “I don’t write more than a very few original stories, thus relying on scripts sent me by editors at National, Warren, etc. I grumble and throw up at the insanities and stupid violence and detestable characters that fill their pages—and try to clean it up as I transpose to art—but it’s still outrageous crap! At 47, with 30 odd (very) years at it, I feel jaded, defeated, disgusted with the whole bloody mess! There are many old vets like me, and you, who are too! … I was outraged by the way you were treated at National.”

Toth felt that DC management of the early ’70s was quite inept, as evidenced by further comments he made to Beck: “They buy The Shadow and … murder it! They buy Captain Marvel, and have the good sense to hire you, miracle of miracles, which we all applauded; but they spoil it all ... and blow the book! Ditto what they did to Plastic Man and Blackhawk. They buy a silk purse, only to convert it into a sow’s ear. … [The] Shadow and [Captain] Marvel were rife for quality, specialized art, script, editorial, promotional and format, treatment. But they ran it into the ground. Tarzan … the sufferer of the same inept handling. It began well, but now ….”

Toth was a man who was, first and foremost, a fan who valued good comics writing and art, yet who was never as satisfied with his own efforts as the rest of us were.

Cattin’ Around Toth drew this illo of Wildcat and his sidekick Stretch Skinner for fan John G. Pierce in 1990. Sadly, Toth never got a chance to draw a Wildcat story for the comics themselves. [©2006 DC Comics.]

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FCA’s Own Tribute To Alex Toth

Zorikh Lequidre Collector; Currently writing a book about Captain Marvel; www.captainmarvelculture.com There are many who speak about Toth’s mastery of line, simplicity of drawing, the clear readability of his layouts … his impact on the world of animated cartoons … the creativity of his war and adventure stories … his knowledge and appreciation of the great illustrators … and his thorough research into whatever topic he was drawing or designing. But for me, the greatest triumph of his art was his ability to draw me into the world of these illustrations and make me want more.

Ron Frantz Alternative Comics Publisher, 1980s I remember meeting Toth in December of 1977 at the airport in Oklahoma City. The meeting started out on a very rough footing. Toth had accepted an invitation to attend our annual Wintercon as its guest of honor. That particular year I had the pleasure of serving as a cochairman of the convention with Robert Brown and Bruce Shults.

While Shults remained behind to keep an eye on the festivities, Brown and I left the convention in the late afternoon to pick up Toth at the airport. To make a long story short, we were inexcusably late. When Brown and I finally arrived (in a madcap manner that would have done justice to the Marx Bros.), we heard a loud message blaring over the airport’s loudspeaker requesting that we meet Toth at the information desk. Putting in mildly, he was not the least bit happy. Viewing us as if we were a pair of practicing ingrates, I think he was about one heartbeat away from saying to hell with us and catching the next plane back to L.A. Under the circumstances, I can’t say that I would have blamed him. After offering some manner of a beleaguered apology for our tardiness, we managed to smooth things over just a bit. Of course, a few drinks in the airport bar seemed to help.

My first impression of Toth was that he was something of a hard-nosed character, but underneath that tough outer shell he was as warm and friendly as a man could be. I appreciated the fact that, unlike many of his colleagues, he didn’t act like a star-struck celebrity. During the next three days, Toth and I spent quite a bit of time socializing in the hotel bar. Among other things, I discovered that we were both fans of artist Ogden Whitney. One thing that stands

Thundering Six-Guns A “must” for Toth fans: Toth and Bill Black collaborated on the cover of AC Comics’ America’s Greatest Comics #10 (2004). It was an all-Toth issue, in terms of both stories and articles. The newlyreleased AGC #16 is another all-Toth issue. For the best in Golden Age comics reprints, see AC’s website at accomics.com.

[Art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

out in my memory is Toth’s sense of generosity. Whereas most comic book artists would sell their original art, Toth literally gave away several dozen pages of art during the course of the convention.

After the convention, Toth and I corresponded for several years. I later came to realize that he had been instrumental in my becoming an independent comic book publisher in the late ’80s (thanks to his introducing me to some of his friends in the industry, including Pete Morisi and Pat Boyette). From there, things simply blossomed, including publishing a Toth illustration that adorned the cover of What Is... The FACE #3.

He’ll never be forgotten, at least not by me.

What’s In A Face?

Ace Comics’ Who Is… The Face #33, with cover by Toth. Thanks to Ron Frantz. [Art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth.]

More Toth Testimonials

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Rubén Procopio My relationship with my dear friend Alex Toth evolved from that of an admirer and mentor to being true friends. It became not about the art anymore, but about life’s everyday truths and challenges.

We all had that moment when you first discovered his work, and it stopped you in your tracks. You realized that you had just discovered gold. My experience happened in the ’70s as a teenager while unearthing a pile of old folders at an old-vintage book store in downtown Burbank.

Calling On Toth There they were: copies of Toth’s Rubén Procopio drew (and annotated) these illos especially for this issue. [©2006 Rubén Procopio.] model sheets from his Hanna-Barbera days! I remember saying to myself, down to its simplest form, yet he made it his own.

“Ah, that’s the guy who did the description of the animation process in Fast forward from the bookstore to 25 years later … by which time DC’s Limited Collector’s Edition featuring the Super Friends!” (which I had a successful animation career. A series of books and reprints had been one of reasons that as a youth I decided to become an started coming out on the man. My interest was piqued even more, and animator). I realized then that the man had not only done this, but now my curiosity turned to “Where is this man, and why haven’t I much more, and there began my lifelong quest to see and learn everyseen more of his work in years?” A mutual friend of ours, Tom thing and anything I could about him.

DeRosier, a fellow animation colleague (at the time we were working at I had many influences at the time, but all I could see was the way he the Disney Animation studio in Florida), was just as fanatical about did it and how it should be done, period! His work represented a Toth and told me that he had corresponded with the artist for several culmination of all the best artists’ work up to that point, condensed years. Tom gave me Toth’s address and suggested that I look him up

With Super Friends Like These...

Over Land, Over Sea…

First page of Toth’s “How-to” feature for DC’s Limited Collector’s Edition of “Super Friends,” done in collaboration with fellow animator Bob Foster. [©2006 DC Comics.]

The original Blackhawk art for the cover of Action Comics Weekly #616 (Sept. 6, 1988), courtesy of Rubén Procopio. Thanks also to Ray Bottorff, Jr., & the Grand Comic Book Database. [©2006 DC Comics.]

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FCA’s Own Tribute To Alex Toth

What A Tangled Web We Weave…

Aquaman gets tangled in seaweed in this Toth Super Friends storyboard. [©2006 DC Comics.]

when I was in California. About a year later I relocated back to my hometown in Burbank, and once settled in I started my search for this mysterious man.

The Mask Of The Red Death In 2004, Toth drew this pin-up of one of Rubén’s characters, The Crimson Mask. [Art ©2006 Estate of Alex Toth; Crimson Mask TM & ©2006 Rubén Procopio.]

I realized he lived literally only a few miles away, so one day I took a chance We quickly gained trust in our conversations, and and went to see him. I was a nervous our visits lasted for hours. Sometimes he would come wreck, walking up what seemed like an at you with full force and your hair would be left eternity of stairs at his Hollywood Hills singed … but if you were still standing after the home. When I finally reached the front smoke cleared and didn’t react or run away, he door, every window was locked, every realized you were sincere and genuine. You earned his shade was drawn; the place looked eerie The Way They Were respect and trust; in turn, you could also be critical and a bit abandoned. I somehow found Rubén Procopio (left) and Alex Toth, Dec. 2003. and he took it. Alex had a “bullseye” approach of the courage to knock. Slowly the door With thanks to Rubén. honesty, accuracy, and integrity, and demanded the opened and there he was: a handsome, same of others. white-haired, well-aged man with a stern look, who said something like “Yes, may I help you?” I proceeded to explain that I was Tom’s friend, In the early years we talked a lot about art and anything related to that he had given me his address, that I worked in animation, that I was art. He introduced me to all his favorite artists. And he always sent me big fan .… A thousand things just poured out of my mouth. I thought I home with something, and I would always leave him with something had won him over. Instead, I got, “Sorry, I don’t receive unannounced … a custom we kept to his last days. I’d walk away from our visits visitors!” and he closed the door. I was left just standing there. I walked lifted with hope, reminded of what being an artist meant, and inspired back down that eternity of stairs, determined more than ever to get to to be the best artist I could be. know the man.

I figured I’d start fresh and write him a letter; besides, he wouldn’t remember my name, and I didn’t need to mention our little encounter.

It was a long letter. I added some drawings to describe the text and sent it along with some goodies. To my surprise and delight he wrote me back a very gracious postcard filled with gratitude, answered my questions, and away we went, back and forth for a year or so. Many times I had written offering to treat him to lunch. The answer was always the same: “No, kiddo, I live an odd lifestyle, just in my Batcave and the world I have made for myself.” Then one day he wrote: “Why don’t you come over and visit some Saturday afternoon … instead of going out, how about if you bring something over?” Finally! He had once described to me that he was like a crab: when you first approached him he would move back and side to side until he got to know you better. Not only was he a crab, but he turned out to be like a turtle, too: hard on the outside but a softie on the inside.

He had charm and, like his writing, his conversations were particular to him and his character. He used old sayings hearkening back to the ’40s and ’50s. Slowly but surely, as our routine became a way of life and our affection for each other deepened, our discussions evolved from shop talk to everyday situations … our families, world events, and most importantly special intimate personal experiences we had in common. We became confidants and family. Ultimately, I’d get phone messages from him like: “So, it’s been a while. When are you going to come over for a visit, kiddo?”

I miss our visits, our banter, the times we watched a movie or shared dinner together. I’ll treasure many memories of having known one of the greatest comic book artists … and one of the greatest friends I ever had. He lived a full life, and he did it his way.

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• Unused Cockrum character designs and pages from an UNUSED STORY! • New cover by DAVE COCKRUM and JOE RUBINSTEIN, introduction by JIM SHOOTER, and more!

Collects the best material from the hardto-find LEGION OUTPOST fanzine, including rare interviews and articles from creators such as DAVE COCKRUM, CARY BATES, and JIM SHOOTER, plus neverbefore-seen artwork by COCKRUM, MIKE GRELL, JIMMY JANES and others! It also features a previously unpublished interview with KEITH GIFFEN originally intended for the never-published LEGION OUTPOST #11, plus other new material! And it sports a rarely-seen classic 1970s cover by Legion fan favorite artist DAVE COCKRUM! (160-page trade paperback) $22 US

ALL-STAR COMPANION VOL. 1 ROY THOMAS has assembled the most thorough look ever taken at All-Star Comics: • Covers by MURPHY ANDERSON! • Issue-by-issue coverage of ALL—STAR COMICS #1—57, the original JLA—JSA teamups, & the ‘70s ALL—STAR REVIVAL! • Art from an unpublished 1945 JSA story!

• Looks at FOUR “LOST” ALL—STAR issues!

• Rare art by BURNLEY, DILLIN, KIRBY, INFANTINO, KANE, KUBERT, ORDWAY, ROSS, WOOD and more!!

The history of a character as old as Superman, from 1939 to his tragic fate in DC Comics’ hit INFINITE CRISIS series, and beyond! Reprints the first appearance of The Blue Beetle from 1939’s MYSTERY MEN COMICS #1, plus interviews with WILL EISNER, JOE SIMON, JOE GILL, ROY THOMAS, GEOFF JOHNS, CULLY HAMNER, KEITH GIFFEN, LEN WEIN, and others, never-before-seen Blue Beetle designs by ALEX ROSS and ALAN WEISS, as well as artwork by EISNER, CHARLES NICHOLAS, JACK KIRBY, STEVE DITKO, KEVIN MAGUIRE, and more!

(128-page Trade Paperback) $21 US

(208-page Trade Paperback) $26 US

(224-page Trade Paperback) $29 US

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS COMPANION

COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION, VOL. 3 Reprinting the Eisner Award-winning COMIC BOOK ARTIST #7 and #8 (‘70s Marvel and ‘80s independents), featuring a new MICHAEL T. GILBERT cover, plus interviews with GILBERT, RUDE, GULACY, GERBER, DON SIMPSON, CHAYKIN, SCOTT McCLOUD, BUCKLER, BYRNE, DENIS KITCHEN, plus a NEW SECTION featuring over 30 pages of previouslyEach lists PUBLISHED COMICS WORK in unseen stuff! Edited by JON B. COOKE. detail, plus ILLOS, UNPUBLISHED WORK, and more. Filled with rare and unseen art!

(224-page trade paperback) $29 US (68/100 Pages) $8 US EACH

WALLY WOOD & JACK KIRBY CHECKLISTS

The definitive book on WALLACE WOOD’s super-team of the 1960s, featuring interviews with Woody and other creators involved in the T-Agents over the years, plus rare and unseen art, including a rare 28-page story drawn by PAUL GULACY, UNPUBLISHED STORIES

by GULACY, PARIS CULLINS, and others, and a JERRY ORDWAY cover.

Edited by CBA’s JON B. COOKE. (192-page trade paperback) $29 US

Prices include US Postage. Outside the US, ADD PER ITEM: Magazines & DVDs, $2 ($7 Airmail) • Softcover books, $3 ($10 Airmail) • Hardcover books, $6 ($15 Airmail)

COMICS ABOVE GROUND SEE HOW YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS MAKE A LIVING OUTSIDE COMICS

HERO GETS GIRL!

THE LIFE & ART OF KURT SCHAFFENBERGER MARK VOGER’s biography of the artist of LOIS LANE & CAPTAIN MARVEL! • Covers KURT’S LIFE AND CAREER from the 1940s to his passing in 2002!

• Features NEVER-SEEN PHOTOS & ILLUSTRATIONS from his files!

• Includes recollections by ANDERSON, EISNER, INFANTINO, KUBERT, ALEX ROSS, MORT WALKER and others!

(128-page Trade Paperback) $19 US

SECRETS IN THE SHADOWS: GENE COLAN The ultimate retrospective on COLAN, with rare drawings, photos, and art from his nearly 60-year career, plus a comprehensive overview of Gene’s glory days at Marvel Comics! MARV WOLFMAN, DON MCGREGOR and other writers share script samples and anecdotes of their Colan collaborations, while TOM PALMER, STEVE LEIALOHA and others show how they approached the daunting task of inking Colan’s famously nuanced penciled pages! Plus there’s a NEW PORTFOLIO of never-before-seen collaborations between Gene and such masters as JOHN BYRNE, MICHAEL KALUTA and GEORGE PÉREZ, and all-new artwork created specifically for this book by Gene! Available in Softcover and Deluxe Hardcover (limited to 1000 copies, with 16 extra black-and-white pages and 8 extra color pages)!

COMICS ABOVE GROUND features top comics pros discussing their inspirations and training, and how they apply it in “Mainstream Media,” including Conceptual Illustration, Video Game Development, Children’s Books, Novels, Design, Illustration, Fine Art, Storyboards, Animation, Movies & more! Written by DURWIN TALON (author of the top-selling PANEL DISCUSSIONS), this book features creators sharing their perspectives and their work in comics and their “other professions,” with career overviews, neverbefore-seen art, and interviews! Featuring: • BRUCE TIMM • LOUISE SIMONSON • BERNIE WRIGHTSON • DAVE DORMAN • ADAM HUGHES • GREG RUCKA & MORE! (168-page Trade Paperback) $24 US

COMIC BOOKS & OTHER NECESSITIES OF LIFE WERTHAM WAS RIGHT! SUPERHEROES IN MY PANTS! Each collects MARK EVANIER’S best essays and commentaries, plus new essays and illustrations by SERGIO ARAGONÉS! (200-page Trade Paperbacks) $17 US EACH ALL THREE BOOKS: $34 US

THE DARK AGE Documents the ‘80s and ‘90s era of comics, from THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN to the “polybagged premium” craze, the DEATH OF SUPERMAN, renegade superheroes SPAWN, PITT, BLOODSHOT, CYBERFORCE, & more! Interviews with TODD McFARLANE, DAVE GIBBONS, JIM LEE, KEVIN SMITH, ALEX ROSS, MIKE MIGNOLA, ERIK LARSEN, J. O’BARR, DAVID LAPHAM, JOE QUESADA, MIKE ALLRED and others, plus a color section!

Written by MARK VOGER, with photos by KATHY VOGLESONG. (168-page trade paperback) $24 US

(168-page softcover) $26 US (192-page trade hardcover) $49 US

AGAINST THE GRAIN: MAD ARTIST

DICK GIORDANO

WALLACE WOOD

CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ most prominent and affable personality!

• Covers his career as illustrator, inker, and editor, peppered with DICK’S PERSONAL REFLECTIONS on his career milestones!

• Lavishly illustrated with RARE AND NEVER SEEN comics, merchandising, and advertising art (includes a color section)!

• Extensive index of his published work!

• Comments & tributes by NEAL ADAMS, DENNIS O’NEIL, TERRY AUSTIN, PAUL LEVITZ, MARV WOLFMAN, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JIM APARO & others!

• With a Foreword by NEAL ADAMS and Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ! (176-pg. Paperback) $24 US

ALTER EGO COLLECTION, VOL. 1 Collects the first two issues of ALTER EGO, plus 30 pages of NEW MATERIAL! JLA Jam Cover by KUBERT, PÉREZ, GIORDANO, TUSKA, CARDY, FRADON, & GIELLA, new sections featuring scarce art by GIL KANE, WILL EISNER, CARMINE INFANTINO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MURPHY ANDERSON, DICK DILLIN, & more!

ART OF GEORGE TUSKA

The definitive biographical memoir on Wood, 20 years in the making! Former associate BHOB STEWART traces Wood’s life and career, with contributions from many artists and writers who knew Wood personally, making this remarkable compendium of art, insights and critical commentary! From childhood drawings & early samples to nearly endless comics pages (many unpublished), this is the most stunning display of Wood art ever assembled! BILL PEARSON, executor of the Wood Estate, contributed rare drawings from Wood’s own files, while art collector ROGER HILL provides a wealth of obscure, previously unpublished Wood art.

A comprehensive look at Tuska’s personal and professional life, including early work with Eisner-Iger, crime comics of the 1950s, and his tenure with Marvel and DC Comics, as well as independent publishers.

The book includes extensive coverage of his work on IRON MAN, X-MEN, HULK, JUSTICE LEAGUE, TEEN TITANS, BATMAN, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, and many more! A gallery of commission artwork and a thorough index of his work are included, plus original artwork, photos, sketches, previously unpublished art, interviews and anecdotes from his peers and fans, plus George’s own words!

(336-Page Trade Paperback) $44 US

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US

(192-page trade paperback) $26 US

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOL. 1-5 See what thousands of comics fans, professionals, and historians have discovered: The King lives on in the pages of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR! These colossal TRADE PAPERBACKS reprint the first 22 sold-out issues of the magazine for Kirby fans!

• VOLUME 1: Reprints TJKC #1-9 (including the Fourth World and Fantastic Four theme issues), plus over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published in TJKC! • (240 pages) $29 US • VOLUME 2: Reprints TJKC #10-12 (the Humor, Hollywood, and International theme issues), and includes a new special section detailing a fan’s private tour of the Kirbys’ remarkable home, showcasing more than 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published in TJKC! • (160 pages) $22 US • VOLUME 3: Reprints TJKC #13-15 (the Horror, Thor, and Sci-Fi theme issues), plus 30 new pieces of Kirby art! • (176 pages) $24 US • VOLUME 4: Reprints TJKC #16-19 (the Tough Guys, DC, Marvel, and Art theme issues), plus more than 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published in TJKC! • (240 pages) $29 US • VOLUME 5: Reprints TJKC #20-22 (the Women, Wacky, and Villains theme issues), plus more than 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published in TJKC! • (224 pages) $29 US

TRUE BRIT

CELEBRATING GREAT COMIC BOOK ARTISTS OF THE UK A celebration of the rich history of British Comics Artists and their influence on the US with in-depth interviews and art by: • BRIAN BOLLAND • ALAN DAVIS • DAVE GIBBONS • BRYAN HITCH • DAVID LLOYD

• DAVE MCKEAN • KEVIN O’NEILL • BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH and other gents!

(204-page Trade Paperback with COLOR SECTION) $26 US

HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

REDESIGNED and EXPANDED version of the groundbreaking WRITE NOW! #8 / DRAW! #9 crossover! DANNY FINGEROTH & MIKE MANLEY show step-by-step how to develop a new comic, from script and roughs to pencils, inks, colors, lettering— it even guides you through printing and distribution, & the finished 8-page color comic is included, so you can see their end result!

PLUS: over 30 pages of ALL-NEW material, including “full” and “Marvel-style” scripts, a critique of their new character and comic from an editor’s point of view, new tips on coloring, new expanded writing lessons, and more!

(108-page trade paperback) $18 US (120-minute companion DVD) $35 US

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE JACK KIRBY’S six-issue “Visual Novel” for Pacific Comics, reproduced from his powerful, uninked pencil art! Includes Kirby’s illustrated movie screenplay, never-seen sketches, pin-ups, & more from his final series!

(160 pages) $24 US

CALL, WRITE, OR E-MAIL FOR A FREE COLOR CATALOG!

Prices include US Postage. Outside the US, ADD PER ITEM: Magazines & DVDs, $2 ($7 Airmail)

Edited by ROY THOMAS

The greatest ’zine of the ’60s is back, all-new, and focused on Golden & Silver Age comics and creators with articles, interviews, unseen art, plus FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

AE #3: (100 pgs.) ALEX ROSS cover & interview, JERRY ORDWAY, BILL EVERETT, CARL BURGOS, Giant FAWCETT (FCA) section with C.C. BECK, MARC SWAYZE, & more! $9 US

AE #4: (100 pgs.) 60 years of HAWKMAN & FLASH! ROY THOMAS remembers GIL KANE, intvs. with KUBERT, MOLDOFF, LAMPERT, FOX, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, KUBERT covers, more! $9 US

AE #5: (100 pgs.) JSA issue!

Intvs. with SHELLY MAYER, GIL KANE, MART NODELL, GEORGE ROUSSOS, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, NEW INFANTINO / ORDWAY wraparound cover, more! $9 US

AE #6: (100 pgs.) GENE COLAN intv., how-to books by STAN LEE & KANIGHER, ALLSTAR SQUADRON, MAC RABOY section, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, COLAN & RABOY covers, more! $9 US

AE #7: (100 pgs.) Companion issue to the ALL-STAR COMPANION! J. SCHWARTZ intv., JLA-JSA teamups, MAC RABOY, FCA with BECK & SWAYZE, BUCKLER & BECK covers, more! $9 US

AE #8: (100 pgs.) Bio of WALLY WOOD, ADKINS & PEARSON intvs., KUBERT intv., FCA w/ BECK, SWAYZE, & ORDWAY, MR. MONSTER, WOOD & KUBERT covers, more! $9 US

AE #9: (100 pgs.) JOHN ROMITA intv. & gallery, plus ROY THOMAS’ dream projects! FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, & TUSKA, MR. MONSTER, ROMITA & DICK GIORDANO covers! $9 US

AE #10: (100 pgs) CARMINE INFANTINO intv. & art, neverseen FLASH story, VIN SULLIVAN & MAGAZINE ENTERPRISES, FRED GUARDINEER, AYERS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, more! $9 US

AE #11: (100 pgs) Interviews with SYD SHORES, MICKEY SPILLANE, VINCE FAGO, MAGAZINE ENTERPRISES Part Two, FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, DON NEWTON, MR. MONSTER, more! $9 US

AE #12: (100 pgs) GILL FOX on QUALITY COMICS, neverseen PAUL REINMAN Green Lantern art, origins of ALLSTAR SQUADRON, FCA, MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD, more! $9 US

AE #13 (100 pgs.) TITANS OF TIMELY/MARVEL Part Two! JOE SIMON & MURPHY ANDERSON covers, Silver Age AVENGERS section (with BUSCEMA, HECK, TUSKA, & THOMAS) & more! $9 US

AE #14 (100 pgs.) JSA FROM THE ’40s TO THE ’80s! MIKE NASSER & MICHAEL T. GILBERT covers, intvs. with ORDWAY & LEE ELIAS, neverseen 1940s JSA pgs., ’70s JSA, & more! $9 US

AE #15 (108 pgs.) JOHN BUSCEMA TRIBUTE ISSUE! BUSCEMA covers & interview, unseen art, ROY THOMAS on their collaborations, plus salute to KURT SCHAFFENBERGER, & more! $9 US

AE #16: (108 pgs.) COLAN, BUSCEMA, ROMITA, SEVERIN interviews, ALEX ROSS on Shazam!, OTTO & JACK BINDER, KURTZMAN, new ROSS & FRADON/SEVERIN covers, more! $9 US

AE #17: (108 pgs.) LOU FINE overview & art, ARNOLD DRAKE & MURPHY ANDERSON interviews, plus EISNER, CRANDALL, DAVIS & EVANS’ non-EC action comics, FCA, LOU FINE cover, more! $9 US

AE #18: (108 pgs.) STAN GOLDBERG interview & art, plus KIRBY, DITKO, HECK, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, EVERETT, WALLY WOOD’S Flash Gordon, FCA, KIRBY & SWAYZE covers, more! $9 US

AE #19: (108 pgs.) DICK SPRANG interview & art, JERRY ROBINSON on FRED RAY, BOB KANE, CARMINE INFANTINO, ALEX TOTH, WALLY WOOD, FCA, SPRANG & RAY covers, more! $9 US

AE #20: (108 pgs.) TIMELY/ MARVEL focus, INVADERS overview with KIRBY, KANE, ROBBINS, BOB DESCHAMPS intv., panel with FINGER, BINDER, FOX, & WEISINGER, FCA, rare art, more! $9 US

AE #21: (108 pgs.) IGER STUDIO with art by EISNER, FINE, MESKIN, ANDERSON, CRANDALL, CARDY, EVANS, “SHEENA” section, THOMAS on the JSA, FCA, DAVE STEVENS cover, more! $9 US

AE #22: (108 pgs.) EVERETT & KUBERT interviewed by GIL KANE & NEAL ADAMS, ROY THOMAS on Sub-Mariner, COLAN, BUSCEMA, SEVERIN, WOOD, FCA, BECK & EVERETT covers, more! $9 US

AE #23: (108 pgs.) Two unseen Golden Age WONDER WOMAN stories examined, BOB FUJITANI intv. Archie/ MLJ’s JOHN ROSENBERGER & VICTOR GORELICK intv., FCA, rare art, more! $9 US

AE #24: (108 pgs.) NEW X-MEN intvs. with STAN LEE, COCKRUM, CLAREMONT, WEIN, DRAKE, SHOOTER, THOMAS, MORT MESKIN profiled, FCA, covers by COCKRUM & MESKIN! $9 US

AE #25: (108 pgs.) JACK COLE & PLASTIC MAN! Brother DICK COLE interviewed, Cole celebrated by ALEX TOTH, THOMAS on All-Star Squadron #1, JERRY BAILS tribute, FCA, cover by TOTH! $9 US

AE #26: (108 pgs.) JOE SINNOTT interview, KIRBY and BUSCEMA art, IRWIN DONENFELD, Superman art by SHUSTER, BORING, SWAN, FCA, Mr. MONSTER, covers by SINNOTT & BORING! $9 US

TIMELY/ AE #20: #27: (108 (108pgs.) pgs.)

VIN MARVEL focus, INVADERS SULLIVAN intv., “Lost” KIRBY overview with KIRBY, KANE, HULK covers, the 1948 NY ROBBINS, DESCHAMPS CON, “GreatBOB Unknown” artists, intv., panel FCA, withALEX FINGER, KURTZMAN, TOTH, BINDER, FOX, & WEISINGER, MR. MONSTER, covers by FCA, rare art, more! $9 $9 US US BURNLEY & KIRBY!

AE #28: (108 pgs.) JOE MANEELY spotlight, scarce Marvel art by EVERETT, SEVERIN, DITKO, ROMITA, extra-size FCA, LEE AMES intv., covers by MANEELY & DON NEWTON! $9 US

AE #29: (108 pgs.) FRANK BRUNNER intv., EVERETT’s Venus, Classics Illustrated adapting Lovecraft, LEE/KIRBY/ DITKO prototypes, ALEX TOTH, FCA with GENE COLAN, BRUNNER cover! $9 US

AE #30: (108 pgs.) SILVER AGE JLA special, ALEX ROSS on the JLA, MIKE SEKOWSKY, DICK DILLIN, GOLDEN AGE SIMON & KIRBY scripters speak, FRENCH HEROES, ROSS & RUDE covers! $9 US

AE #31: (108 pgs.) DICK AYERS intv., HARLAN ELLISON’S Marvel work (with Bullpen artists), LEE/KIRBY/ DITKO prototypes, Christmas cards from cartoonists, AYERS & RAY covers! $9 US

AE #32: (108 pgs.) Golden Age TIMELY ARTISTS intv., MART NODELL, MIKE GOLD on the Silver Age, art by SIMON & KIRBY, SWAN, INFANTINO, KANE, GIORDANO & GIL KANE covers! $9 US

AE #33: (108 pgs.) MIKE SEKOWSKY tribute, intvs. with wife PAT SEKOWSKY and Golden Age inker VALERIE BARCLAY, art by ANDERSON, ANDRU & ESPOSITO, INFANTINO, FRENZ covers! $9 US

AE #34: (108 pgs.) QUALITY COMICS, intvs. with ALEX KOTZKY, CHUCK CUIDERA, DICK ARNOLD, TOTH, KURTZMAN, art by FINE, EISNER, COLE, CRANDALL and NICHOLAS covers! $9 US

AE #35: #20: (108 (108pgs.) pgs.)STAN TIMELY/ LEE, MARVEL focus,DICK INVADERS JOHN ROMITA, AYERS, overview with KIRBY, KANE, ROY THOMAS, & AL JAFFEE ROBBINS, BOB DESCHAMPS on the 1940s & 1950s Golden intv., FINGER, Age at panel Timely/with Marvel, FCA, BINDER, FOX, & ROMITA WEISINGER, MR. MONSTER, and $9 US FCA, rarecovers! art, more! $9 US JAFFEE

AE #36: (108 pgs.) JOE SIMON intv. & cover, GOLDEN AGE HEROES of Canada, ELMER WEXLER, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on MR. MONSTER’S ORIGINS, FCA, ALEX TOTH, and more! $9 US

AE #37: (108 pgs.) BECK & BORING covers, SY BARRY intv., Superman “K-Metal” story, FCA with C.C. BECK, MARC SWAYZE, DON NEWTON, and Shazam!/Isis!, MR. MONSTER, and more! $9 US

AE #38: (108 pgs.) JULIUS SCHWARTZ tribute & interviews, art by INFANTINO, ANDERSON, KUBERT, KANE, TOTH, SWAN, SEKOWSKY, FCA section, INFANTINO and HASEN covers, more!! $9 US

AE #39: (108 pgs.) Full issue JERRY ROBINSON spotlight, with comprehensive interview and unseen Batman art, AL FELDSTEIN on EC, GIL FOX, MESKIN, ROUSSOS, & ROBINSON covers! $9 US

AE #40: (108 pgs.) JULIUS SCHWARTZ memorial issue with tributes by pros, GIL KANE interview, comprehensive interview and unseen art by RUSS HEATH, GIL KANE and HEATH covers! $9 US

AE #41: (108 pgs.) BERNIE WRIGHTSON on FRANKENSTEIN, art by KALUTA, BAILY, MANEELY, PLOOG, KUBERT, BRUNNER, CRANDALL, FCA #100, & more! WRIGHTSON, SWAYZE covers! $9 US

ALTER EGO #42 Covers by FASTNER & LARSON and ERNIE SCHROEDER, a celebration of DON HECK, WERNER ROTH, and PAUL REINMAN, rare art by KIRBY, DITKO, AYERS, Hillman & Ziff-Davis remembered by SCHROEDER, HERB ROGOFF, and WALTER LITTMAN, FCA, ALEX TOTH, & more!

(108-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #43

ALTER EGO #44

ALTER EGO #45

ALTER EGO #46

Flip covers by TUSKA and JSA/All-Star Squadron/Infinity Inc. Interviews with Golden Age The VERY BEST of the 1960s-70s STEVENS, yuletide art by SINNOTT, special! Interviews with JOE Sandman artist CREIG FLESSEL and ALTER EGO! EVERETT/SEVERIN BRUNNER, CARDY, TOTH, KUBERT, IRWIN HASEN, MURPHY 1940s creator BERT CHRISTMAN, cover, classic 1969 BILL EVERETT NODELL, and others, interviews ANDERSON, JERRY ORDWAY, MICHAEL CHABON on researching interview, art by BURGOS, with Golden Age artists TOM GILL 1940s Atom writer ARTHUR his Pulitzer-winning novel Kavalier GUSTAVSON, SIMON & KIRBY, (Lone Ranger) and MORRIS WEISS, ADLER, art by TOTH, SEKOWSKY, & Clay, art by EISNER, KANE, KIRBY, and others, 1960s gems by DITKO exploring 1960s Mexican comics, HASEN, MACHLAN, OKSNER, & AYERS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, & E. NELSON BRIDWELL, FCA, FCA, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, INFANTINO, FCA, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, & more!

TOTH, & more! & more!

ORDWAY cover, more!

(100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (108-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #48

ALTER EGO #49

The late WILL EISNER discusses ’40s Quality Comics with art by FINE, CRANDALL, COLE, & CARDY! EISNER tributes by STAN LEE, GENE COLAN, & others! ’40s Quality artist VERN HENKEL interviewed, FCA, MR. MONSTER, TOTH, & more!

Interview with CARL BURGOS’ daughter! Unused 1941 cover layouts by BURGOS and other Timely titans! The 1957 Atlas Implosion, MANNY STALLMAN, and the BLUE FLAME! Also, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER and more!

(100-page magazine) $9 US

(100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #54

ALTER EGO #55

MIKE ESPOSITO on DC and Marvel, ROBERT KANIGHER on the creation of Metal Men & Sgt. Rock (with comments by JOE KUBERT & BOB HANEY), art by ANDRU, INFANTINO, KIRBY, SEVERIN, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, GIL KANE, plus FCA with SWAYZE, ALEX TOTH, & more!

ALEX ROSS cover, JACK & OTTO BINDER, KEN BALD, VIC DOWD, and BOB BOYAJIAN interviewed, FCA with MARC SWAYZE & EMILIO SQUEGLIO, Christmas Card Art from CRANDALL, SINNOTT, HEATH, MOONEY, and CARDY, 1943 superheroine Pin-Up Calendar, and more!

(100-page magazine) $9 US

(100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #50

ALTER EGO #51

ALTER EGO #52

ALTER EGO #47 MATT BAKER, Golden Age cheesecake artist of PHANTOM LADY, plus art from AL FELDSTEIN, VINCE COLLETTA, ARTHUR PEDDY, JACK KAMEN & others, FCA, BILL SCHELLY talks to BUD PLANT, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, and more!

(100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #53

Golden Age Batman artist/Bob JOE GIELLA on the Silver Age at ROY THOMAS covers his 40-YEAR career in comics, with ADAMS, Kane ghost LEW SAYRE DC, the Golden Age at Marvel, and BUSCEMA, COLAN, DITKO, GIL SCHWARTZ interviewed, the JULIE SCHWARTZ, with rare art by KANE, KIRBY, STAN LEE, ORDWAY, Golden & Silver Ages of INFANTINO, GIL KANE, PÉREZ, ROMITA, and many others!

AUSTRALIAN SUPER-HEROES, SEKOWSKY, SWAN, DILLIN, Also, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT Mad artist DAVE BERG interviewed, MOLDOFF, GIACOIA, SCHAFFENand MR. MONSTER and more!

FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on BERGER, and others, JAY SCOTT WILL EISNER, ALEX TOTH and PIKE on STAN LEE, MARTIN (100-page magazine) $9 US more!

THALL, and more!

Halloween issue! GIORDANO & THOMAS on STOKER’S DRACULA, never-seen DICK BRIEFER Frankenstein strip, MIKE ESPOSITO on his work with ROSS ANDRU, art

by COLAN, WRIGHTSON, MIGNOLA, BRUNNER, BISSETTE, KALUTA, HEATH, MANEELY, EVERETT, DITKO, and others!

(100-page magazine) $9 US

(100-page magazine) $9 US

(100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #57

ALTER EGO #58

ALTER EGO #59

ALTER EGO #56

Issue-by-issue index of Timely/Atlas GERRY CONWAY & ROY THOMAS Batman & Superman in the Golden NEAL ADAMS cover, interviews & Silver Ages, ARTHUR SUYDAM super-hero stories by MICHELLE on their ’80s “X-Men Movie That with Superman creators SIEGEL & interview, NEAL ADAMS on NOLAN, art by SIMON & KIRBY, Never Was!” with art by ADAMS, SHUSTER, Golden/Silver Age DC 1960s/70s DC, SHELLY MOLDOFF, EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, COCKRUM, BUSCEMA, BYRNE, production guru JACK ADLER, AL PLASTINO, Golden Age artist AYERS, HEATH, SEKOWSKY, KANE, KIRBY, HECK, & LIEBER, NEAL ADAMS & TV iconoclast (& FRAN (Doll Man) MATERA Atlas artist VIC CARRABOTTA comics fan) HOWARD STERN on SHORES, SCHOMBURG, MANEELY, interviewed, SIEGEL & SHUSTER, Adler, art by CURT SWAN, WAYNE & SEVERIN, GENE COLAN & ALLEN interview, ALLEN BELLMAN on ’40s FCA, MR. MONSTER, SUYDAM Timely, FCA, 1966 panel on EC BORING, AL PLASTINO, plus FCA, BELLMAN on 1940s Timely heroes, cover, & more! Edited by ROY FCA, MR. MONSTER, & BILL Comics, & MR. MONSTER! Edited MR. MONSTER, & more! Edited by THOMAS !

SCHELLY! KIRBY & VON SHOLLY

by ROY THOMAS. ROY THOMAS. cover! Edited by ROY THOMAS. (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US

SUBSCRIBE! Twelve Issues in the US: $72 Standard, $108 First Class (Canada: $132, Elsewhere: $144 Surface, $192 Airmail).

NOTE: IF YOU PREFER A SIX-ISSUE SUB, JUST CUT THE PRICE IN HALF!

ALTER EGO #60 Celebrates 50 years since SHOWCASE #4! FLASH interviews with SCHWARTZ, KANIGHER, INFANTINO, KUBERT, & BROOME, Golden Age artist TONY DiPRETA, 1966 panel with NORDLING, BINDER, & LARRY IVIE, FCA, MR. MONSTER, never-beforepublished full-color Flash cover by CARMINE INFANTINO, and more!

(100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #61

ALTER EGO #62

ALTER EGO #63

ALTER EGO #64

ALTER EGO #65

NICK CARDY interviewed on his Tribute to ALEX TOTH! NeverFawcett Favorites! Issue-by-issue History of the AMERICAN COMICS HAPPY HAUNTED HALLOWEEN work in the Golden & Silver Ages, before-seen interview with tons of analysis of OTTO BINDER & C.C. GROUP (1946 to 1967)—including ISSUE, featuring: MIKE PLOOG & with CARDY artwork from Quality & BECK’s 1943-45 “The Monster its roots in the Golden Age RUDY PALAIS on their horror-comics TOTH art, including sketches he sent DC—plus the work of EISNER, to friends! Christmas cards from Society of Evil!” serial! Double-size SANGOR ART SHOP and work! AL WILLIAMSON on his work STANDARD/NEDOR comics! for the American Comics Group— MOLDOFF, MAROTO, LEIALOHA, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) ADAMS, INFANTINO, JIM APARO, RAMONA FRADON, CURT SWAN, section with MARC SWAYZE, Art by MESKIN, ROBINSON, plus more on ACG horror comics! FLESSEL, & others! Our annual 1943 JOE ORLANDO, BOB HANEY, MIKE pin-up calendar by ALEX WRIGHT, EMILIO SQUEGLIO, C.C. BECK, WILLIAMSON, FRAZETTA, SCHAFRare DICK BRIEFER Frankenstein SEKOWSKY, et al.! Plus FCA with with Miss America, Namora, Sun MAC RABOY, and others! Interview FENBERGER, & BUSCEMA, ACG strips! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, MARC SWAYZE and others, Girl, Venus, and others as real-life with MARTIN FILCHOCK, Golden writer/editor RICHARD HUGHES, BILL SCHELLY on the 1966 MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. ’40s starlets, FCA, MR. MONSTER, Age artist for Centaur Comics! Plus plus AL HARTLEY interviewed, FCA, KalerCon, a new PLOOG cover— MONSTER, a new CARDY COVER, and more!

MR. MONSTER, an unpublished MR. MONSTER, & more! & more! and more!

DON NEWTON cover, and more!

GIORDANO cover!

(100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US

ALL- STAR COMPANION VOL. 2

ALTER EGO COLLECTION, VOL. ONE

ROY THOMAS’ new sequel, with more secrets of the JSA and ALL-STAR COMICS, from 1940 through the 1980s, featuring: Wraparound CARLOS PACHECO cover! More amazing information, speculation, and unseen ALL-STAR COMICS art!

Unpublished 1940s JSA STORY ART not printed in Volume One! Scarce & never-published art by KUBERT, FLESSEL, ORDWAY, BUCKLER, HASEN, RYAN, LARK, MIGNOLA, and others!

Full coverage of the 1980s ALL-STAR SQUADRON, with unpublished and unseen art, and more!

Collects ALTER EGO #1-2, plus 30 pages of NEW MATERIAL! New JLA Jam Cover by KUBERT, PÉREZ, GIORDANO, TUSKA, CARDY, FRADON, & GIELLA, new sections featuring scarce art by GIL KANE, WILL EISNER, CARMINE INFANTINO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MURPHY ANDERSON, DICK DILLIN, & more!

(192-page trade paperback) $26 US

(240-page Trade Paperback) $29 US

OUR NEWEST MAGAZINE! Spinning off from the pages of BACK ISSUE! magazine comes ROUGH STUFF, celebrating the ART of creating comics! Edited by famed inker BOB McLEOD, each issue spotlights NEVERBEFORE PUBLISHED penciled pages, preliminary sketches, detailed layouts, and even unused inked versions from artists throughout comics history. Included is commentary on the art, discussing what went right and wrong with it, and background information to put it all into historical perspective. Plus, before-and-after comparisons let you see firsthand how an image changes from initial concept to published version. So don’t miss this amazing new magazine, featuring galleries of NEVER-BEFORE SEEN art, from some of your favorite series of all time, and the top pros in the industry!

ROUGH STUFF #1 Our debut issue features galleries of UNSEEN ART by a who’s who of Modern Masters including:

ALAN DAVIS GEORGE PÉREZ BRUCE TIMM KEVIN NOWLAN JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ ARTHUR ADAMS JOHN BYRNE WALTER SIMONSON Plus a KEVIN NOWLAN interview, and a new BRUCE TIMM COVER! (116-page magazine) $9 US

ROUGH STUFF #2 (NOW!) The follow-up to our smash first issue features more galleries of UNSEEN ART by top industry professionals, including:

BRIAN APTHORP FRANK BRUNNER PAUL GULACY JERRY ORDWAY ALEX TOTH MATT WAGNER Plus a PAUL GULACY interview, a look at oddball penciler/inker combinations, and a new GULACY “HEX” COVER! (100-page magazine) $9 US

ROUGH STUFF #3 (JAN.) This third groundbreaking issue presents still more galleries of UNSEEN ART by some of the biggest names in the comics industry, including:

MIKE ALLRED JOHN BUSCEMA YANICK PAQUETTE JOHN ROMITA JR. P. CRAIG RUSSELL LEE WEEKS Plus a JOHN ROMITA JR. interview, looks at the earliest work of some of your favorite artists, and a new ROMITA JR. COVER! (100-page magazine) $9 US

T H E U LT I M AT E C O M I C S E X P E R I E N C E !

TM

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE celebrates comic books of the 1970s, ’80s, and today through recurring (& rotating) departments. 100 PAGES, $9 US. 6-ISSUE SUBS: $36 Standard, $54 First Class (Canada: $66, Elsewhere: $72 Surface, $96 Airmail).

#2: HUGHES, RUDE, WAGNER, JONES, STEVENS!

#1: PÉREZ, KIRBY, BUSCEMA, INFANTINO, KUBERT! “PRO2PRO” interview between GEORGE PÉREZ and MARV WOLFMAN (with UNSEEN PÉREZ ART), “ROUGH STUFF” featuring JACK KIRBY’s PENCIL ART, “GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD” on the first JLA/AVENGERS, “BEYOND CAPES” on DC and Marvel’s TARZAN (with KUBERT & BUSCEMA ART), “OFF MY CHEST” editorial by INFANTINO, & more!

#3: EVANIER, GIFFEN, MAGUIRE, BOLLAND!

“PRO2PRO” between ADAM HUGHES & MIKE W. BARR (with UNSEEN HUGHES ART) and MATT WAGNER and DIANA SCHUTZ, “ROUGH STUFF” HUGHES PENCIL ART, STEVE RUDE’s unseen SPACE GHOST/ HERCULOIDS team-up, Bruce Jones’ ALIEN WORLDS & TWISTED TALES, an “OFF MY CHEST” editorial by MIKE W. BARR on the DC IMPLOSION, & more!

“PRO2PRO” between KEITH GIFFEN, J.M. DeMATTEIS and KEVIN MAGUIRE on their JLA WORK, “ROUGH STUFF” PENCIL ART by ARAGONÉS, HERNANDEZ BROS., MIGNOLA, BYRNE, KIRBY, HUGHES, two unknown PLASTIC MAN movies, a look at the Joker’s history with O’NEIL, ADAMS, ENGLEHART, ROGERS & BOLLAND, an editorial by MARK EVANIER, & more!

#6: WRIGHTSON, COLAN, THOMAS, GODZILLA!

#7: APARO, BYRNE, LEE, EVANIER, & MORE!

#8: ADAMS, VON EEDEN, & ’70s BLACK HEROES!

#9: RUDE, TRUMAN, GIL KANE & COSMIC HEROES!

TOMB OF DRACULA revealed with GENE COLAN and MARV WOLFMAN, LEN WEIN & BERNIE WRIGHTSON on Swamp Thing’s roots, STEVE BISSETTE and RICK VEITCH on their Swamp work, pencil art by SMITH, BRUNNER, PLOOG, BISSETTE, COLAN, & WRIGHTSON, editorial by ROY THOMAS, GODZILLA comics (with TRIMPE art), CHARLTON horror, PREZ, and more!

SWAN/ANDERSON cover, history of BRAVE AND THE BOLD, JIM APARO interview, tribute to BOB HANEY, FANTASTIC FOUR ROUNDTABLE with STAN LEE, MARK WAID, and others, EVANIER & MEUGNIOT on DNAgents, pencil art by ROSS, TOTH, COCKRUM, HECK, ROBBINS, NEWTON, and BYRNE, DENNY O’NEIL editorial, a tour of METROPOLIS, IL, & more!

DENNY O’NEIL & Justice League Unlimited voice actor PHIL LaMARR discuss GL JOHN STEWART, NEW X-MEN pencil art by NEAL ADAMS, ARTHUR ADAMS, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, ALAN DAVIS, JIM LEE, ADAM HUGHES, STORM’s 30-year history, animated TV’s black heroes (with TOTH art), TONY ISABELLA and TREVOR VON EEDEN on BLACK LIGHTNING, & more!

MIKE BARON and STEVE RUDE on NEXUS past and present, a colossal GIL KANE pencil art gallery, a look at Marvel’s STAR WARS comics, secrets of DC’s unseen CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS SEQUEL, TIM TRUMAN on his GRIMJACK SERIES, MIKE GOLD editorial, THANOS history, TIME WARP revisited, an allnew STEVE RUDE COVER, & more!

#12: GIBBONS, BYRNE, MILLER, FRENZ!

#13: STATON, CARDY, EISNER, ROMITA!

#15: PLOOG, COLAN, WAGNER, KUBERT!

’70s and ’80s character revamps with DAVE GIBBONS, ROY THOMAS & KURT BUSIEK, TOM DeFALCO & RON FRENZ on Spider-Man’s 1980s “black” costume change, DENNY O’NEIL on Superman’s 1970 revamp, JOHN BYRNE’s aborted SHAZAM! series detailed, pencil art gallery with FRANK MILLER, LEE WEEKS, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, CHARLES VESS, and more!

CARDY interview, ENGLEHART and MOENCH on kung-fu comics, “Pro2Pro” with STATON and CUTI on Charlton’s E-Man, pencil art gallery featuring MILLER, KUBERT, GIORDANO, SWAN, GIL KANE, COLAN, COCKRUM, and others, EISNER’s A Contract with God; “The Death of Romance (Comics)” (with art by ROMITA, SR. and TOTH), & more!

#14: GRELL, COCKRUM, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, KIRBY! DAVE COCKRUM and MIKE GRELL go “Pro2Pro” on the Legion, pencil art gallery by BUSCEMA, BYRNE, MILLER, STARLIN, McFARLANE, ROMITA JR., SIENKIEWICZ, looks at Hercules Unbound, Hex, Killraven, Kamandi, MARS, Planet of the Apes, art & interviews with GARCÍALÓPEZ, KIRBY, WILLIAMSON, and more! New MIKE GRELL/BOB McLEOD cover!

“Weird Heroes” of the 1970s and ’80s!MIKE PLOOG discusses Ghost Rider, MATT WAGNER revisits The Demon, JOE KUBERT dusts off Ragman, GENE COLAN “Rough Stuff” pencil gallery, GARCÍALÓPEZ recalls Deadman, DC’s unpublished Gorilla Grodd series, PERLIN, CONWAY, & MOENCH on Werewolf by Night, & more! New ARTHUR ADAMS cover!

#4: BYRNE, CLAREMONT, CASEY, SIMONSON!

#5: ROSS, HUGHES, LYNDA CARTER, LOU FERRIGNO!

“PRO2PRO” between JOHN BYRNE and CHRIS CLAREMONT on their X-MEN WORK and WALT SIMONSON and JOE CASEY on Walter’s THOR WORK, WOLVERINE PENCIL ART by BUSCEMA, LEE, COCKRUM, BYRNE, & GIL KANE, LEN WEIN’S TEEN WOLVERINE, PUNISHER’S 30TH & SECRET WARS’ 20TH ANNIVERSARIES (with UNSEEN ZECK ART), & more!

Covers by ALEX ROSS & ADAM HUGHES, Wonder Woman TV series in-depth, LYNDA CARTER INTERVIEW, WONDER WOMAN TV ART GALLERY, Marvel’s TV Hulk, SpiderMan, Captain America, & Dr. Strange, LOU FERRIGNO INTERVIEW, super-hero cartoons you didn’t see, pencil gallery by JERRY ORDWAY, STAR TREK in comics, & JOHN ROMITA SR. editorial on Marvel’s movies!

#10: ADAMS, GRELL, KALUTA, CHAYKIN!

#11: BUSCEMA, JUSKO, BOLLAND, ARAGONÉS!

NEAL ADAMS and DENNY O’NEIL on RA’S AL GHUL’s history (with Adams art), O’Neil and MICHAEL KALUTA on THE SHADOW, MIKE GRELL on JON SABLE FREELANCE, HOWIE CHAYKIN interview, DOC SAVAGE in comics, BATMAN ART GALLERY by SIENKIEWICZ, SIMONSON, PAUL SMITH, BOLLAND, HANNIGAN, MAZZUCCHELLI, and others, and a new cover by ADAMS!

#16: ZECK, ARTHUR ADAMS, GUICE, GOLDEN, KIRBY! “Toy Stories!” Behind the Scenes of Marvel’s G.I. JOE™ and TRANSFORMERS, “Rough Stuff” MIKE ZECK pencil gallery, ARTHUR ADAMS on Gumby, HE-MAN, ROM, MICRONAUTS, SUPER POWERS, SUPER-HERO CARS, art

by HAMA, SAL BUSCEMA, GUICE, GOLDEN, KIRBY, TRIMPE, & new ZECK sketch cover!

ROY THOMAS, KURT BUSIEK, and JOE JUSKO on CONAN (with art

by JOHN BUSCEMA, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, NEAL ADAMS, JUSKO, & others), SERGIO ARAGONÉS & MARK EVANIER on GROO, DC’s never-published KING ARTHUR, pencil art gallery by KIRBY, PÉREZ, MOEBIUS, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, BOLLAND, & others, and a new BUSCEMA/JUSKO Conan cover!

#17: TIMM, HAMNER, INFANTINO, HUGHES! “Super Girls!” Supergirl retrospective with art by STELFREEZE, HAMNER, & others, Spider-Woman, Flare, Tigra, DC’s unused Double Comics with unseen BARRETTO and INFANTINO art, WOLFMAN and JIMENEZ on Donna Troy, Female comics pros Roundtable, Animated Super Chicks, art by SEKOWSKY, OKSNER, PÉREZ, HUGHES, GIORDANO, plus an 8-page COLOR ART GALLERY and COVER by BRUCE TIMM!

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom.

TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

COMING SOON FROM TWOMORROWS!

BACK ISSUE! #18 (NOW!)

BACK ISSUE! #19 (NOW!)

“BIG, GREEN ISSUE!” Tour of NEAL ADAMS’ studio (with interview & gallery), DAVE GIBBONS “Rough Stuff” pencil art, interviews with MIKE GRELL (Green Arrow), PETER DAVID (Incredible Hulk), a “Pro2Pro” chat between GERRY CONWAY and JOHN ROMITA, SR., the un-produced She-Hulk movie, & more. GREEN LANTERN cover by ADAMS! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

“Unsung Heroes!” DON NEWTON spotlight, GERBER and COLAN on Howard the Duck, CARLIN and FINGEROTH on Marvel’s Assistant Editors’ Month, the unrealized Unlimited Powers TV show, TONY ISABELLA’s aborted plans for The Champions, MARK GRUENWALD tribute, art by SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, unused NEWTON/ RUBINSTEIN cover, and more!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

(100-page magazine) $9 US

(100-page magazine) $9 US

ROUGH STUFF! #3 (JAN.) Galleries of NEVER-SEEN penciled pages, sketches, layouts, and unused inks by P. CRAIG RUSSELL, MIKE ALLRED, YANICK PAQUETTE, and LEE WEEKS, who contribute commentaries on the art, plus a retrospective art gallery on the late JOHN BUSCEMA, a new, profusely illustrated interview with JOHN ROMITA JR., a new ROMITA JR. cover, and more! Edited by BOB McLEOD.

DRAW! #13 (DEC.)

WRITE NOW! #14

BLUE BEETLE THE KRYPTON COMPANION (FEB.) COMPANION (NOW!)

ALL-STAR COMPANION VOL. 2 (NOW!)

KIRBY COLLECTOR

(DEC.) #47 (NOW!) Step-by-step demo of painting methods by cover artist ALEX BRIAN BENDIS interview, STAN KIRBY’S SUPER TEAMS, with HORLEY (Heavy Metal, Vertigo, LEE, TODD McFARLANE, unseen 1960s Marvel pencil art, a DC, Wizards of the Coast), plus STRACZYNSKI, and others on rare KIRBY interview, MARK interviews and demos by Banana writing Spider-Man, pencil art and EVANIER’s column, two pencil art Sundays’ COLLEEN COOVER, script from MARVEL CIVIL WAR galleries, a complete neverPigtale’s OVI NEDELCU, behind- #1 by MILLAR and McNIVEN, JIM reprinted 1950s story, author the-scenes on Adult Swim’s STARLIN on Captain Comet and JONATHAN LETHEM on his Kirby MINORITEAM, regular features on The Weird, LEE NORDLING on influence, an interview with drawing by BRET BLEVINS, MIKE Comics in Hollywood, JOHN JOHN ROMITA, JR. on his work MANLEY, links, color section & OSTRANDER, and a new ALEX with NEIL GAIMAN on the more! HORLEY cover! Edited by MALEEV cover! Edited by DANNY Eternals, and more! Edited by MIKE MANLEY. FINGEROTH. JOHN MORROW. (100-page magazine) $9 US (84-page magazine) $9 US (84-page tabloid) $13 US

His history from 1939 to today! Unlocks the secrets of Superman’s Reprints his first appearance from Silver and Bronze Ages, when ROY THOMAS’ new sequel, with MYSTERY MEN COMICS #1, plus kryptonite came in multiple colors more secrets of the JSA and ALLinterviews with WILL EISNER, JOE and super-pets flew the skies!

STAR COMICS, from 1940 SIMON, JOE GILL, ROY THOMAS, Features all-new interviews with through the 1980s: Amazing GEOFF JOHNS, CULLY HAMNER, ADAMS, ANDERSON, CARDY, information, speculation, and KEITH GIFFEN, LEN WEIN, neverGARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GIFFEN, , unseen ALL-STAR COMICS art! seen Blue Beetle designs by ALEX MOONEY, O’NEIL, OKSNER, Unpublished 1940s JSA STORY ROSS and ALAN WEISS, as well PASKO, ROZAKIS, SHOOTER, ART not printed in Volume One! as artwork by EISNER, JACK WEIN, WOLFMAN, and others, Full coverage of the 1980s ALLKIRBY, STEVE DITKO, KEVIN plus tons of rare and unseen art! STAR SQUADRON, with scarce & MAGUIRE, & more!

By BACK ISSUE’S Michael Eury! never-published art! Wraparound MODERN MASTERS (100-page magazine) $9 US CARLOS PACHECO cover, & more! VOL. 9: WIERINGO (NOW!) (128-page trade paperback) (240-page trade paperback) $21 US $29 US (240-page Trade Paperback) $29 US VOL. 10: MAGUIRE (DEC.) Features EXTENSIVE, CAREERSUBSCRIPTIONS: SPANNING INTERVIEWS lavishly illustrated with rare art from the JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Four issues US: $40 Standard, $56 First Class (Canada: $64, Elsewhere: $68 Surface, $84 Airmail). artists’ files, plus an ENORMOUS BACK ISSUE!: Six issues US: $36 Standard, $54 First Class (Canada: $66, Elsewhere: $72 Surface, $96 Airmail).

SKETCHBOOK SECTION with some of their finest work, including DRAW!, WRITE NOW!, ROUGH STUFF: Four issues US: $24 Standard, $36 First Class (Canada: $44, Elsewhere: $48 Surface, UNSEEN AND UNUSED ART! $64 Airmail).

(120-page trade paperbacks with ALTER EGO: Twelve issues US: $72 Standard, $108 First Class (Canada: $132, Elsewhere: $144 Surface, $192 Airmail).

FOR A SIX-ISSUE ALTER EGO SUBSCRIPTION, JUST CUT THE PRICE IN HALF! color sections) $19 US EACH

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom.

TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com