Bill Peckmann &Books &Comic Art &Illustration 20 May 2011 06:50 am
Early Toth
- Bill Peckmann sent some fresh Alex Toth material and with it came some notes. So, I’ll turn the blog over to him today:
- In keeping with the celebration of Dean Mullaney‘s book, Genius Isolated, I thought I’d scan some of Alex’s early 1950′s and early 1960′s comic book art.
The first three are DC Comics’ “All American Western” covers from 1949 to 1951. (Wonderful house/publisher coloring.) The character he was doing for the book was called “Johnny Thunder”, a western hero with a Clark Kent duel personality. Alex was only 21 years old at the time of the first cover.
(#121 has been reprinted in “Genius”)
1
2
3
- The following is the back cover of issue #121, it’s an ad, non Toth, I just thought you’d get a kick out of it. . . .
. . . As an 8 year old I remember this premium/give away very well, Donald and Mickey were the prized ones of course. To all us little cookie snappers at that time, anything Disney was few and far between, unlike today!
- The following complete story is from EC Comics’ “Two-Fisted Tales”, issue #22, 1951. (This scan is of the cover done by book editor Harvey Kurtzman.)
The story “Dying City” was written, layed out and outstandingly inked by Harvey Kurtzman. The beautiful tight pencils were Alex’s. Both gents were in their best Milton Caniff mode, wonderful job of a very grim story.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
- In 1963 Alex was doing “Mad Magazine” type pages for “cartoon car” type magazines coming out of the west coast. It looks like he had an easy time slipping into the skins of Jack Davis and Mort Drucker and seemed to enjoy doing it for a while. These 2 stories are from “DRAG CARtoons” #2. They are take offs of the then popular TV series, “Dr. Kildare” and “The Defenders.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
- Both these stories plus all of the rest of this type that Alex did for the “cartoon car” magazines were lovingly and handsomely collected by Manuel Auad (publisher of the new, excellent Robert Fawcett book) in his/this Alex Toth, One for the Road, published in 2000.
Cover – “One for the Road”
Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for all the great material in this post.
on 20 May 2011 at 7:19 am 1.David Gale said …
Those car comics are amazing!
on 20 May 2011 at 10:39 am 2.R A said …
Man, I read all these car comics as a kid, and I wasn’t even a car guy. Couldn’t care less about cars; I was just interested in the art!
on 20 May 2011 at 10:34 pm 3.Eric Noble said …
The man could draw like nobody else’s business. I am humbled by his talent and sheer determination. The story he did for Harvey Kurtzman is a good story, but a strange hybrid of Toth and Kurtzman. I guess it was inevitable that they would separate. Two driven, powerful storytellers with egos like theirs are bound to butt heads. Doesn’t detract from their incredible body of work.