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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 1, 2023 16:40:17 GMT -5
Definitely did not state "best comic artist who ever lived, actual words were "top echelon" which would mean more "an all time great". Again, my goal in this is more understanding and summarizing the insights of the many great posts here, as stated before, I self-admittedly am not nearly as well-versed on his comic book career much as I have loved his other work. Apologies superc, it was actually Slam who had him leagues ahead of Kirby and Eisner, not you. I had him ahead of either as an artist. And I'm fine with that. I didn't say a thing about him being leagues ahead of them as an all time great or as an influence on the medium because that would be silly. Appreciation of their artistic value is, largely, subjective. So I'm fine with my assessment. I did not, nor would I, say that Toth was more influential than Kirby or that he should be ahead of him in some mythical pantheon of comic book creators. But, to my eye, he's a much better artist.
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Post by commond on Oct 1, 2023 16:56:53 GMT -5
Ultimately, Toth was an artist's artist. Even artists who hated him admired his work, and these days you have modern cartoonists whom revere him and study and worship his work. I think it's fair to say that Toth would have liked to have been a syndicated newspaper cartoonist. If he had achieved that, perhaps it would have stood as his iconic work.
As a comic book artist, he was limited by a number of factors. While it's true that he worked in an era where the scripts weren't always the greatest, he also held many writers and editors in contempt. Folks praise his Zorro work, for example, but after the first story or two, he clashed with the writers and editor over the stories and started mailing it in. The first installment of Torpedo he drew ranks among his best work, but he disliked the story, half-arsed the second installment, and that was that. Toth preferred working on short stories. He didn't have the patience to produce a monthly book and couldn't fathom the thought of producing a graphic novel.
For all his achievements in animation, he clashed with the artists at Hanna-Barbera too. He was a difficult man to work with. The number of people who had fallings out with Toth is longer than his bibliography.
Since I mentioned Kirby originally, the story of Toth visiting Kirby's house to discuss each other's work and leaving abruptly when he couldn't understand a thing Kirby was saying, is a classic anecdote.
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Post by Icctrombone on Oct 1, 2023 17:36:51 GMT -5
You guys are both touching on themes that generated some of questions on this. The fact that I couldn't really think of a specific comic book work I associated Toth with speaks maybe a little to what kirby101 is saying. Whereas I think even most folks casually acquainted with comics can rattle off the Spirit (even if they've never read it) and certainly Kirby needs no explanation. At the same time, commond , you are speaking to the other side of my thoughts. I too personally consider Toth the superior artist from what I know of all three at least from a draftsmanship standpoint. Perhaps narrative storytelling ability is more balanced in comparison? Others here will be far more equipped to answer that than me, but my impression is yes. Toth's aesthetic sense though is something extra special IMO. I feel the same way about Steranko. Great art but not enough of a body of work.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 1, 2023 17:39:08 GMT -5
Ultimately, Toth was an artist's artist. Even artists who hated him admired his work, and these days you have modern cartoonists whom revere him and study and worship his work. I think it's fair to say that Toth would have liked to have been a syndicated newspaper cartoonist. If he had achieved that, perhaps it would have stood as his iconic work.
As a comic book artist, he was limited by a number of factors. While it's true that he worked in an era where the scripts weren't always the greatest, he also held many writers and editors in contempt. Folks praise his Zorro work, for example, but after the first story or two, he clashed with the writers and editor over the stories and started mailing it in. The first installment of Torpedo he drew ranks among his best work, but he disliked the story, half-arsed the second installment, and that was that. Toth preferred working on short stories. He didn't have the patience to produce a monthly book and couldn't fathom the thought of producing a graphic novel. For all his achievements in animation, he clashed with the artists at Hanna-Barbera too. He was a difficult man to work with. The number of people who had fallings out with Toth is longer than his bibliography. Since I mentioned Kirby originally, the story of Toth visiting Kirby's house to discuss each other's work and leaving abruptly when he couldn't understand a thing Kirby was saying, is a classic anecdote. Expanding on that to say his own syndicated strip, as he did ghost on Casey Ruggles, for Warren Tufts One of the other things that held Toth back, was location. He relocated to California, in 1952, and was drafted into the Army in 1954. DC and Marvel were in New York, as were most of the other major publishers. part of the reason he worked for Dell/Western was that they had offices in Los Angeles, because of their connections to the various studios. Generally speaking, you had to live in the New York area to get comic work from those publishers, until much later. Kirby moved west because of his daughter's asthma and helped change that dynamic somewhat, as the publishers wanted to work with him, plus the increasing avenues for shipping artwork and script, even in those days before Fedex.
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Post by Icctrombone on Oct 1, 2023 17:41:06 GMT -5
Yeah…but that wasn’t teapot the question. How many people who watched cartoons as kids know Alex Toth’s name? I’m guessing it’s a minuscule fraction. His name wasn’t part of the production company, i.e., Hannah-Barbera. He wasn’t a name director like Chuck Jones. The general audience that watched cartoons for seven or eight years and then moved on to other fare has, I suspect, no idea who Alex Toth is. Animation fans do, as comics fans know Kirby and Eisner, but really only comics “fans.” Folks who read comics for a while as kids and moved on would have zero idea who Eisner was and might vaguely remember Kirby. Oh, I don't know...his name was fairly prominent in the closing credits of his 60s adventure shows and they had exciting sequences that kids tended to watch, even though the episode was over. How many of Toth's comics actually had credits in the issue, before the 1970s? Well, as a collector and fan, I would seek out a comic just because Kirby drew it and maybe an Eisner fan would buy what he created but I don’t think your average kid will look through a TV guide to see what show has Toth doing animation.
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Post by Icctrombone on Oct 1, 2023 17:42:35 GMT -5
Someone mentioned that Toth didn’t always get along with his fellow creators. Any anecdotes ?
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 1, 2023 17:52:44 GMT -5
Oh, I don't know...his name was fairly prominent in the closing credits of his 60s adventure shows and they had exciting sequences that kids tended to watch, even though the episode was over. How many of Toth's comics actually had credits in the issue, before the 1970s? Well, as a collector and fan, I would seek out a comic just because Kirby drew it and maybe an Eisner fan would buy what he created but I don’t think your average kid will look through a TV guide to see what show has Toth doing animation. You average kid was not a collector of either tv or comics. They were casual consumers. In the grand scheme of things we are still talking about a select audience as to Kirby's name beyond comic fans and Toth's, or Adams, Eisner, Kane, or Siegel & Schuster. The average consumer is more likely to know the character than the creator or the nuances of the stories, beyond basic premise and maybe origin. Fans will always be more interested, hence the title "fan." Ultimately, Toth's legacy is experienced by people within comics and animation; but, more casual consumers were exposed to his animation work than his comics. Kirby's too, though his name has gotten more exposure to the general public in the past decade, with the success of the Marvel films. However, if you were to poll a hundred people, across the country and ask them to name the creator(s) of any of those characters, I will almost guarantee you that the name that will come up most often is Stan Lee, because he was the public face, no matter how many extra features they put on the dvds.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 1, 2023 18:08:38 GMT -5
Someone mentioned that Toth didn’t always get along with his fellow creators. Any anecdotes ? The documentary on the cartoon sets had both Bruce Timm and Mark Chiarello say that Toth cut them off, after some perceived slight. Toth did quit the comic series Torpedo, with Enrique Sanchez Abuli, after conflict over the levels of sex and violence within the scripts. Jordi Bernet replaced toth and it worked out well for the series; but, Toth's name was used to help get is printed in the US, by Catalan Communications (later reprinted, in the last decade or so, by IDW). There is an apocryphal story of Toth holding an editor (either Julie Schwartz or Robert Kanigher) out a window until he produced the payment he was owed. That wasn't creative, as the editor was being a bully. However the story has been largely debunked and I have also read versions suggesting other artists for the story, including Gil Kane. misremembered the story and Kane was the one relating it). He had conflicts with Joe Barbera, at Hanna-Barbera, mostly over quality vs cost. I don't know of specifics of conflicts with other creators, beyond those.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 1, 2023 18:15:53 GMT -5
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Post by commond on Oct 1, 2023 18:25:28 GMT -5
Someone mentioned that Toth didn’t always get along with his fellow creators. Any anecdotes ? Toth had a habit of severing relationships over the smallest details. He had a close personal friend named Bob Foster, who was basically like Toth's version of Mark Evanier. They were tight for about a decade until one day Foster made a casual joke about communism. Toth snapped, kicked him out of his house, and told him he'd beat the shit out of him if he ever saw him again. Ten years later, Foster spotted Toth at the hotel during the San Diego Comic Con. He approached Toth to try to make amends, but Toth went into a frenzy and tried to attack Foster. A common story among creators is how they would have what they thought was a good relationship with Toth and then one day they'd receive what was referred to as The Letter, a handwritten missive from Toth detailing all of their failings and short comings as an artist and expressing, in no uncertain terms, that they made a mistake thinking they could ever succeed as an artist and should do the world a favor and quit. A lot of this behavior stemmed from Toth's insecurities and jealousies. He would often have anxiety attacks before handing in an assignment and find some reason to refuse to submit the work as a matter of principle. Toth liked to grandstand a lot. He'd show people pages he was working on, point out some mistake he'd made in a panel, then rip up the entire page in front of them and start from scratch just to show what a great artist he was. Editors claim he was forever threatening to commit suicide. As Howard Chaykin once said, "avoiding Toth was a positive and healthy lifestyle choice." You have to remember that most of the comic book greats from that era had a lot of hatred and resentment towards the industry and didn't think they were being paid fairly for their work. Many of them loathed their peers and were jealous of any success they had. That's part of what made Kirby special. He dealt with adversity in the comic book industry by working harder and producing more work, and he never had bad feelings towards his peers to the extent of the hatred that Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino had for one another.
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Post by tarkintino on Oct 1, 2023 18:43:55 GMT -5
Given viewership figures for Saturday morning tv in those periods, vs comic book circulations, a hell of a lot more. Thousands of kid read comics, regularly; millions of kid watched Saturday morning cartoons, weekly. Yeah…but that wasn’t teapot the question. How many people who watched cartoons as kids know Alex Toth’s name? I’m guessing it’s a minuscule fraction. His name wasn’t part of the production company, i.e., Hannah-Barbera. He wasn’t a name director like Chuck Jones. The general audience that watched cartoons for seven or eight years and then moved on to other fare has, I suspect, no idea who Alex Toth is. Animation fans do, as comics fans know Kirby and Eisner, but really only comics “fans.” Folks who read comics for a while as kids and moved on would have zero idea who Eisner was and might vaguely remember Kirby.Very good point. It was not until the so-called "superhero boom" of the mid 1960s that certain comic creators' names were publicized through media coverage of the pop-culture mini-phenomenon, or someone such as Bob Kane who was named in the end credits of and interviewed about the ABC Batman TV series.
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Post by MDG on Oct 1, 2023 19:16:38 GMT -5
I feel the same way about Steranko. Great art but not enough of a body of work. Toth has a huge body of work from over 40+ years. It's just that a lot of it--especially his work for Dell--hasn't been reprinted and as licensed properties probably won't be. And even things that have been reprinted like his work for Standard and Warren isn't in demand by superhero-centric fans. Steranko, on the other hand, was active for maybe 10 years and his most noted work has been reprinted multiple times.
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Post by Calidore on Oct 1, 2023 19:26:19 GMT -5
Toth had a habit of severing relationships over the smallest details. He had a close personal friend named Bob Foster, who was basically like Toth's version of Mark Evanier. They were tight for about a decade until one day Foster made a casual joke about communism. Toth snapped, kicked him out of his house, and told him he'd beat the shit out of him if he ever saw him again. Ten years later, Foster spotted Toth at the hotel during the San Diego Comic Con. He approached Toth to try to make amends, but Toth went into a frenzy and tried to attack Foster. Sounds like a combination of Alan Moore and Harlan Ellison. You have to remember that most of the comic book greats from that era had a lot of hatred and resentment towards the industry and didn't think they were being paid fairly for their work. Many of them loathed their peers and were jealous of any success they had. That's part of what made Kirby special. He dealt with adversity in the comic book industry by working harder and producing more work, and he never had bad feelings towards his peers to the extent of the hatred that Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino had for one another. Kirby seems like quite the unique combination of giant, uncontainable comic-book imagination and down-to-earth, regular guy in all other ways. It's shameful, reading the stories about some of his colleagues' behavior toward him and his work when he returned to Marvel and took over Captain America (a run which I've just finished reading for the first time). I wonder if his military service helped him compartmentalize.
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Post by commond on Oct 1, 2023 20:00:33 GMT -5
Another thing that may have held Toth back, aside from the fact that a large number of editors refused to work with him, was the fact that he wasn't that confident in his writing ability. He was an incredible visual storyteller, but there have been criticisms made of Bravo for Adventure that it's just as overwritten as the scripts Toth complained about having to work from at Dell and other companies. Personally, I love Brave for Adventure and think it's a fine comic, but it's been said that without his ex-friend Foster to bounce ideas off, Toth's work suffered. He also created the book during a difficult time in his personal life where his wife was sick and in hospital. That said, aside from collections like On the Road, it's hard to make a case for Toth as a strong writer-artist. He also gave up working so much after his wife died in '85 right before the direct market fully took off. If he hadn't burned bridges with the Europeans who actively wanted to support and publish his work, we might have more great Toth work from the 70s onwards. That said, Toth's conservative politics (described as to the right of Regan), and his detest for modern comics being too liberal and nihilistic, probably would have seen him continue to struggle to find work and perhaps even an audience in the 80s.
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Post by tarkintino on Oct 1, 2023 21:47:21 GMT -5
That said, Toth's conservative politics (described as to the right of Regan), and his detest for modern comics being too liberal and nihilistic, probably would have seen him continue to struggle to find work and perhaps even an audience in the 80s. So, he was a sociopolitical extremist if he was to the right of Regan. For a man who witnessed significant social change in the kind of people and stories being told in comics, you'd think he would have found another use for his abilities (e.g., advertising, political campaign conceptual artist, etc.) where he would not be so triggered by the business (on the creative side) not being trapped in the 40s or 50s.
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