A lot of folks seem unaware of them but several recently-released DVDs contain interesting documentaries on great cartoonists and comic book artists. The new Josie and the Pussycats DVD has a 20-minute featurette on the life and times of the great Dan DeCarlo. It features Casey Kasem, Bill Morrison, Scott Shaw!, Paul Dini, Dan's widow Josie, some folks from the Archie company and one or two other people…oh, yes. I'm in there, too. We're all talking about Dan and his work and it's very nice for what it is. The DVD, The Fantastic Four: Extended Cut, features a documentary on Jack Kirby. I'm in that one, too.
Not long ago, Warner Home Video put out Space Ghost and Dino Boy: The Complete Series 4-DVD set that offers all of the original cartoons of those characters. Most of Disc 4 is a long (72 minute) documentary about the great comic artist, Alex Toth, who designed most of the Hanna-Barbera adventure shows of the period. Alex was a fiery, controversial presence in our field and in some of our lives…and to its credit, the feature on him does not gloss this over or sidestep the fact that he was, at time, an angry and difficult person. Testifying to this are a number of Toth colleagues — Joe Kubert, Irwin Hasen, Bruce Timm, Mark Chiarello, John Hancock, Paul Pope, Ruben Procopio and others, as well as Alex's four kids. It's a very good, detailed portrait of Toth and if you've ever been interested in his work, you oughta see it. (If you've never been interested in his work, you ought to see his work.)
You can order the entire Space Ghost and Dino Boy DVD set here but if you have no interest in the old cartoons and just want to see the Toth documentary, see if your local DVD rental place will just let you just check out Disc 4. You can rent individual discs via Netflix.