For reasons I'll explain in the next post, I'm a day behind the comic blogosphere in noting the passing of Alex Toth, who died yesterday morning. Alex was easily one of the most admired artists to ever work in comics and animation, envied by his peers for his ability to capture action and human gesture like no one else. Like a great photographer who can sense the split-second to hit the shutter, Alex had a knack for drawing exactly the right second in any sequence of events. His people moved and acted like people and when he drew a car or airplane, you could sense its speed right on the page.
That he designed many popular Saturday morning shows was the least of it. He invented much of the shorthand necessary to do adventure cartoons for television. Other animation artists hoarded and traded his model sheets and swiped off them. You could see Toth designs, slightly changed, on shows he never worked on. You could see other artists strain for the Toth simplicity.
Simplicity was a constant goal of Toth's. He was known to draw an entire comic book page — I saw him do this — decide it was too cluttered and then rip it to shreds and do it over with fewer lines. There was nothing wrong with the first version other than that Alex thought he could do it better. He usually could.
To be around Alex was to be with the ultimate fan. No one loved great comics like Alex. He collected them, studied them, wrote long essays (usually crammed onto postcards) to friends about them. We spent some long evenings on the phone or in his living room talking about the handiwork of Roy Crane or Frank Robbins. It was always fascinating to hear a Toth analysis because he understood other artists from the inside. I'm not sure he ever understood what he did so well but he could talk for hours about what Milton Caniff did.
He leaves behind a legacy of fine work but you always got the feeling with Alex there could have been more. He worked too often for companies that never seemed to know what to do with him and he got into the habit of quitting when he was wronged…and sometimes even when he wasn't. Tonight, I want to think about how much excellence came off his drawing table…but it's hard to not consider how much more he had to give us, to teach us and to leave us. He really was that good.