Alex Toth

One of the greats of comics died over the weekend, supposedly while sitting at his drawing board. For an artist, that's a pretty awesome way to leave this world, but awesome is a word that always described Alexander Toth.

I think I first became aware of Toth in the 60s watching Saturday morning cartoons. I never really paid much attention to the artwork in cartoons until Johnny Quest came out and the artist who designed the series actually signed the show; his signature actually appeared at the end of each episode. No, it wasn't Alex Toth, it was the late, great Doug Wildey, but Wildey's signature in a box got me to start reading the credits of other shows and one name showed up over and over: Alex Toth.

From Space Ghost to Space Angel, from Birdman to Hot Wheels, Toth was everywhere. The Hanna-Barbera non-funny animal style was Alex Toth's style. Clean distinctive characters created using the minimum number of lines required, that was Alex Toth.

Oddly I never noticed that the same guy was drawing comics for DC. His comic work at that time was much more mainstream, much more detailed than his cartoon work; until he did the comic book for Hot Wheels.

I remember really loving the Hot Wheels comic book and not knowing why. I eventually figured out that it was because of Toth. After that book died, Toth was doing all sorts of work for DC, from war stories to horror to super hero. His Black Canary was an amazing piece of minimalist work, as was his Black Hood work for Red Circle Comics. I never grew tired of Alex's work, but there never seemed to be enough of it. He worked so sporadically that each story became a mini-event all on its own.

Toth was one of the greats of comic art and the industry is diminished by his loss. Thank you Alex for all the wonderful years of amazing artwork; thank you for being such a large part of my childhood. We will miss you.