Bill Peckmann &Comic Art &Illustration 19 Apr 2013 02:44 am
The Black Canary & Batman
A rich Alex Toth comic creation arranged and sent to us by Bill Peckmann. Bill writes:
- In the new recently published “Genius Illustrated, the Life and Art of Alex Toth” by Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell, there are pages, after wonderful pages, of Alex’s terrific, original comic book art. I thought it would be fun to see a couple of those original splash pages (thanks to Mr. Mullaney) followed by their stories from when they were originally printed.
Here is a 16 page Alex Toth story that appeared in DC’s “Adventure Comics” in 1972. The “Black Canary” was a super heroine that got her start in 1947 and was updated by Alex 25 years later in this two part story. Lucky for us bird watchers!
This is the Splash page of page one – “the author’s proof”
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The Splash page of the Title page for story 2.
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Here is the prologue page to Toth’s “Batman” story, the splash page follows. It was the only time he did a story of the caped crusader and what an excellent one it is. Teamed with friend, writer, editor Archie Goodwin, who was smart enough to entice Alex to illustrate, by writing a tale that came with one of Toth’s great loves, World War One airplanes!
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This story appeared in DC’s “Detective Comics”, # 442, Sept. 1974.
The Splash page of the Title page
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The Title page
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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for all his work in getting the story to us.
on 19 Apr 2013 at 1:54 pm 1.Swinton Scott said …
Excellent post of a great artist’s work, and as always with his work, I like the black and white better than comic book color. Not that the coloring is bad here, its nice, but I enjoy looking at Alex Toth’s art in black and white. Thanks again.
on 19 Apr 2013 at 7:59 pm 2.Suzanne Wilson said …
Alex Toth shows us “how it is done”–an unparalleled master!
Thanks to Dean and Bruce for keeping the spirit and “genius” alive. And as always, thanks to Bill and Michael.
Great to see those airplanes!
on 19 Apr 2013 at 10:12 pm 3.the Gee said …
So far, there’s been nothing but awesome posts this week.
Thanks. You touched on a lot of good stuff… and… good is good.
The Toth comics are cinematic and beautiful. I do have vague images in my noggin of just how work of his from this period is fantastically crafted, solid stuff.
But, it was Toth!