The Folks behind the Toons
Alexander Toth was born June 25, 1928, in Manhattan, New York, the child of Hungarian immigrants. Toth's artistic talent was evident early on and his teachers in high school encouraged him to pursue a career in the arts. Enrolling in the School of Industrial Art, Toth studied illustration. He began his career when he sold his first freelance art at the age of 15, subsequently illustrating true stories for Heroic magazine through a comic book packager named Steve Douglas.
Although he initially wanted to create newspaper comic strips, Toth saw that the medium was on the decline and instead honed his craft for drawing comic books. After graduating from the School of Industrial Art in 1947, Toth was hired by Sheldon Mayer at National/DC Comics. Among the titles that Toth illustrated for DC included Green Lantern, All-Star Comics, Black Canary and the Justice Society of America.
Toth worked at DC for five years, drawing the Golden Age versions of the Flash, Doctor Mid-Nite, and the Atom. In addition to superheroes, Toth also drew Western comics for DC including All-Star Western, Johnny Thunder and Rex The Wonder Dog (a canine character he co-created alongside writer Robert Kanigher.
In 1952 Toth ended his contract with DC Comics and moved to California. It is during that time that he worked on crime, war and romance comics for Standard Comics. In 1954, Toth was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in Tokyo, Japan. While in Japan, he wrote and drew his own weekly adventure strip, Jon Fury, for the base paper, Depot Diary.
Toth served in the Army until 1956. After which he settled in the Los Angeles area and worked primarily for Dell Comics. While at Dell, Toth wrote and illustrated comics featuring Johnston McCulley’s hero of Zorro. Later that same year Toth approached by Cambria Productions to work on its science fiction animated series, Space Angel. This cartoon used the synchro-vox lip technique wherein human mouths were superimposed over the animated faces to make the characters look like they were talking.
Toth’s excellent design work for Space Angel led to his being poached by a fledgling cartoon studio founded by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Toth would create a bevy of characters for Hanna-Barbera, including Space Ghost, The Herculoids, Birdman, the Galaxy Trio and Dino Boy. His ultra-confident line and highly economic style was perfectly suited for animation. His character design sheets became something of a gold standard for cartoon characters as well as the house style for action cartoons at Hanna-Barbera.
His design work helped to form many of the characters for the studio, including designs for Johnny Quest, The Fantastic Four and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! along with countless other characters who remained unused.
Toth worked with Hanna-Barbera up until 1968. He was later rehired by the studio in 1973 to design and produce the animated series, Super Friends (a cartoon iteration of the Justice League from DC Comics).
Toth returned to comics, working for various publishing houses, creating stories for Disney, Warren Publishing and DC Comics. Herein he worked on Zorro, Eerie, Creepy, the Witching Hour, Our Fighting Forces, Detective Comics and Batman.
Stepping away from American comics, Toth went overseas where he worked with a French publisher to produce Bravo For Adventures, a beautifully rendered high flying tale about an adventurous pilot in the 1930s. Although out of print for many years, IDW Publishing reprinted Bravo For Adventures in the United States. Both additionally worked on a character called The Fox along with a seminal how-to book on comic and cartoon illustration.
Alex Toth was the father of four children, sons Eric and Damon and daughters Dana and Carrie. His marriage to Christina Schaber Hyde ended in divorce in 1968, and his second wife, Guyla Avery, died in 1985. Both passed away at his drawing table on May 27, 2006, four weeks shy of his 78th birthday.
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