The Alex Toth Appreciation Thread

Wow! That postcard is fucking awesome! If you're gonna get slagged, HEY, get slagged by Alex Toth!

There's an amazing Green Lantern issue from the 80s, during Hal Jordan's exile in space, where HJ learns a lesson in something, and it's AMAZINGLY illo'd by AT. It was the first GL I ever bought, owned, or read, and WOWED me in my 6 or 7 yr old short pants.

er, that's probably GL #172 mentioned above.

It was actually GL #171. Just dug it out. The issue before Dave Gibbons' run started.

ihttp://www.chezchrissie.co.uk/toth_gl.jpg

(Well, that 'i' thing failed, but the link's still there...)

The GL is a horrible mess - the story had GL kill someone, and the editors didn't spot it until it had been drawn, so they hacked out a rearranged sequence of pages and changed the text. It's still beautiful, but it's a terrible story. Ward choice is a great one, one of the greatest short stories in comics history.

I have a letter from him somewhere, in which he agrees to do an interview and cover for my magazine. Sadly I had to hand the mag on to someone else, due to growing professional commitments in comics, and it folded before the Toth issue was created. I'm sad about that - he's my favourite artist ever in comics, and his work was so varied on so many projects away from the superhero mainstream.

That explains the bizarre writing credits on the GL issue. I think it was credited to "Noelle Naive" or something.

Yeah, I noticed that credit, looking earlier. Been ages since I looked at it. I don't remember the story, just being severely impressed with it visually.

Shame there wasn't a Toth FA. I seem to recall Paul Duncan's mag (Ark?) got him shortly after that and Toth was pretty consistently grouchy and infuriated throughout said interview.

And I remember a huge Comics Journal interview that was a lot better. Anyone have the number? I sold most of my Journals years ago, but wouldn't mind seeing it again... an issue in the 90s (c. 1983 or so), maybe...

Adding to this, I just posted a heads-up on the CI blog about Alex's situation, as it's finally broken on a load of major comics forums today:

www.comicsinternational.com

Permalink: http://www.qualitycommunications.co.uk/ci/archives/2006_04.html#alex_toth_get_well_soon

Some stuff a lot of people won't have seen -- splashes from the stories AT did for Globe's Monsters Attack, c. 1990:

http://www.chezchrissie.co.uk/monsters4toth.gif
http://www.chezchrissie.co.uk/monsters5toth.gif

(Had to do some scanning today, so what the hell...)

BTW, the latter is a reprint from Atlas/Seaborad's Thrilling Adventure Stories #2: does anyone know the source of the other one or was it unique to Monsters Attack?

In reference to the Monsters Attack story by Toth, according to http://www.enjolrasworld.com/Richard%20Arndt/Web%20Of%20Horror.htm:

"‘Bookworm’ was done in 1975 and intended for a Charlton magazine. For some reason, Toth withheld the artwork and the same story appeared at Charlton with a different artist."