From Savage Combat Tales vol. 2, no. 2 (April 1975), here’s “Warhawk: ‘Chennault Must Die!!’” with script by Archie Goodwin and art by Alex Toth:
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Yesterday, the Michael Sporn Animation “Splog” featured scans of a multi-page interview with Alex Toth that was conducted by Bill Spicer for his own Graphic Story Magazine and published in 1969, when Toth was about 40 years old. The interview includes this famous exchange:
[TOTH:] Whither the comic book; where’s it going, except to hell?
[SPICER:] Someday graphic novels will take up where comic books are leaving off, but what about the artist who has to sit down and draw them? If some one came to you with a 200-page pictorial novel to illustrate, and if the money was okay, do you think you’d be interested?
[TOTH:] I’d probably blow my brains out. It could be done, and there are plenty of guys around who could and would do it. But I’d rather have twenty 10-page stories than one 200-page story. I found this to be the case when I was freelancing; I could be tired as hell, having just come off a job, when a new script would arrive in the mail and I’d be perked up by it. Despite being tired, and wanting a few days off before starting the next assignment, a new script would get me enthused. Change itself is refreshing; a new subject to tackle is stimulating. It juices you up to get into it right away. To sustain yourself for 100 or 200 pages would be rough. Even those 34-pagers used to drive me up the wall. It would have to be a damn good script to keep me going.
This graphic novel concept frightens me. Although, I have to wonder where comics are going. Where the medium is really going. If comic books are going down the drain, and if newspaper strips are being killed off by ads crowding ever deeper into the pages — and by the lack of any real contributing function of their editors — then I think the strip may be finished. If they would reach out into new subject areas, maybe graphic novels will happen as dollar or two-dollar soft covers in black & white or color. The medium deserves a better shake than it’s gotten from its practitioners who’re making it go on the way it’s been going down. I don’t know who’s really doing the experimentation and planning for new off-shoots of the strip. I’d like to get into it, though, when it happens.
From The House of Secrets #83 (Dec. 1969 – Jan. 1970), here’s “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of,” with script by Marv Wolfman and gorgeous, groovy art by Alex Toth:
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Coming in April 2012 from IDW:
Here’s the publisher’s description:
Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell continue their comprehensive review of the life and art of Alex Toth in Genius, Illustrated. Covering the years from the 1960s to Toth’s poignant death in 2006, this oversized 9.5″ x 13″ book features artwork and complete stories from Toth’s latter-day work at Warren, DC Comics, Red Circle, Marvel, and his own creator-owned properties, plus samples of his animation work for Hanna-Barbera, Ruby-Spears, and others, as well as sketchbook pages, doodles, advertising art, and other rarities provided through the cooperation of Toth’s family and his legion of fans. Two of Toth’s best stories are reproduced complete from the original artwork: “Burma Skies” and “White Devil… Yellow Devil.” A full-length text biography will chart the path from Toth’s increasingly-reclusive lifestyle to his touching re-connection to the world in his final years. Fans of comics, cartoons, and all-around great artwork revere Alex Toth. See why Genius, Illustrated —along with its companion volume, 2011′s Genius, Isolated —are being praised as the definitive examination of the life and art of The Master, Alex Toth. Volume 2 of a definitive three-volume series.
And here’s my recommendation: buy it!
Oct 282011
To mark the season, here’s an old favourite of mine from Creepy #125 (February 1981): it’s “Jacque Cocteau’s Circus of the Bizarre,” with script by Roger McKenzie and amazing art by the odd couple of Carmine Infantino and Alex Toth:
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Eat your heart out, Gilbert Hernandez – LOL!
From Hot Stuf’ #4 (Spring 1977), here’s The Vanguard with story and art by Alex Toth:
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Aug 252011
The single panel above is from the story, “The Tell Tell Car,” as it appeared in Pete Millar’s DRAG CARtoons #2 (December 1963).
Marshall Matt Dillon, of course, was played by actor James Arness; in interviews, Arness generally claimed to be 6′ 6″ tall, but some sources say he was actually 6′ 7″, which is a full three inches taller than Clint Eastwood was, back in his salad spaghetti days.
From a 1993 reprint of Two-Fisted Tales #22 (EC, 1951), here’s “Dying City!” with script and layouts by Harvey Kurtzman, pencils by Alex Toth, and inks by Kurtzman:
Of course, in the summer of 2012, “Dying City!” will be back in print, this time from Fantagraphics, which recently acquired the reprint rights to the EC Comics Library and has announced plans to publish a series of volumes focused on individual creators. “Corpse on the Imjin” and Other Stories (including “Dying City!”) by Harvey Kurtzman and his various collaborators (ISBN: 978-1-60699-545-7) will be the first volume in the series.
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