TOTH The BARBARIAN: Alex Toth's Rarely Seen Conan
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- čas přidán 17. 02. 2024
- #conan #alextoth #comics NOTE: I know that Toth drew X-Men #12 over layouts by Kirby, and since I make such a connection between the arcs of the two artists I should have mentioned that in the video as a point of interest, if nothing else. However, my central thesis remains that the rise of superheroes as the dominant genre in mainstream comics largely marginalized Toth's output, even when it seemed like he would have been a good fit for more noirish heroes like Batman or Daredevil.
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It kills me to think how many Toth comics we missed out on because editors didn't think his art was flashy enough.
Yeah, it's hard to say whether it would have been successful. I think his work would have fit well in the Silver Age and perhaps far less well in the Bronze when more detail and realism came into vogue. Whether he was really seeking out comics work or not is hard to determine. It seems like he was to some degree, but there's always the narrative that animation paid much better and was far less labor intensive. As a kid, would I have loved Toth's work in a monthly comic? I probably would have been lukewarm on it at best. Recognizing stuff I liked, but never feeling that it quite took me over the edge or wow'd me the way other artists did at the time. Ironically Toth was maybe an artist who appealed only to the sophisticated tastes of the very young (Superfriends, Herculoids), or the much older.
@@GodLovesComics I think I would have loved it. I was instantly attracted to Steve Rude's work when I was a kid (on a Toth character no less, the Space Ghost Comico Special). And I had a similar reaction to Mike Allred's work a few years later when I first encountered it while Tundra was publishing the second Madman mini-series. Not that Allred comes from the school of Toth (He doesn't, does he?), but he certainly had/has a retro style that was out of step with the predominant style when he was coming up.
@@RarebitFiends I have the Space Ghost Special by Rude now and do love it. I probably would have liked Space Ghost for sure simply because of the design. I definitely loved Johnny Quest. Anyway, the real tragedy is not whether Toth could have done superheroes or specific genre comics but that he didn't get to (or often try to) apply his art to better stories. I did think of Allred and have always loved his work as well. His style is unquestionably retro, but I think he adds quite a bit more satisfying images and elements that appease mainstream comics fans in a way that Toth was unwilling or unable. That's a very off the cuff statement though.
@@GodLovesComics I agree that Mike Allred brings enough modern energy to connect with a wider audience. I think he's firmly rooted in comic book art, whereas if Toth didn't have fine art ambition, he certainly had the sensibilities and tendency toward it. I think the Batman B&W cover is a perfect example of this. As a comic cover it's minimalist to a fault, arguably not a great cover. But viewed from a different perspective, the paucity of line is absolutely sublime. I think it is the kind of artistic extreme Frank Miller has been trying to take his work to for the better part of the last three decades... brilliant as he is though, he hasn't gotten close to what Toth achieved. While writing this I realized it's quite a dichotomy that I hold work like Toth's and Wrightson's in equally high regard, when at their creative and artistic peaks they could not be more opposite in nearly every measurable way.
@@RarebitFiends Yes one can certainly love Monet and Goya equally. Or at least hold both in high regard. The people who get locked into only one style of art, one style of music, one style of literature...it's sad. It's like people who grew up thinking some garbage hair metal band was the greatest thing they'd ever heard at age 13, and by age 55 they are still going to see the fat, balding members of Whitesnake playing their two hits at a New Jersey bar for 200 people and still exclaiming "That was when rock was good!"
Toth’s Batman and Black Canary were great.
Since Weezy was married to Jeff Catherine Jones and Walt Simonson, I am fully prepared to believe she cared enough about the art to place that particular image on the inside front cover/better paper.
Very cool stuff, thanks for sharing! I had no idea Toth had drawn these, really different than his usual work. And that Batman Black and White cover may be ultra minimalist... but also it was the best cover of the series. I would love to see a comic in that style. The closest we may have gotten was a few years earlier with Matt Wagner's first Batman/Grendel mini-series. The early 90s Matt Wagner reached his Tothian peak before experimenting with painted comics and then settling into his modern style.
I completely forgot that Louise Jones had been married to Jeff. Regardless, even if she hadn't been I don't doubt that she would have been sensitive to Toth's artistic wishes. I think she certainly cared enough to place the image on the interior cover. What I was wondering is simply if she had communicated that to Toth and he specified that exact page because it needed better paper quality. In fact, he specified the page with the fat assailant instead (based on the note on the OA that states it is for the frontispiece) but she went with the page with the onyx priestess instead. Again she may have spoken to him about it before making that change. This is some super nerdy minutiae we're getting into of course ;)
Also great point that it is quite similar to Matt Wagner's approach for awhile. Of course you would be aware of that. The Toth B&W cover was maybe my least favorite when I first bought that series. Then again I also didn't like Miller's cover, which I think aged far less well than Toth's. BWS' was the one I liked most. Also thanks for commenting and for actually paying attention.
@@GodLovesComics The BWS cover is a close second for me. Jim Lee's cover is of course supremely competent... but also dull. Miller's felt phoned in. The talent inside those pages though... it's one of my favorite experiments DC ever published. The more recent sequels weren't bad either, nothing like the talent in the first though. Munoz, Moebius, Otomo, Zaffino, Kaluta, Bisley, Bolland, etc. Just an incredible array of talent.
Very enjoyable video. Toth definitely did not suit Conan. But his minimalist style was perfect for animation. You could argue Toth’s animation work had as much design influence in animation as Kirby had in comics.
Thanks! Yeah, the margin note where Toth says that he's "tryin'" his best I think is very telling. I think he may have enjoyed taking a stab at Conan, but it did look and feel outside of his milieu. That said, the illustration he wrote that note on with the "Ottoman" assailant, and the frontispiece are good enough that a Toth Conan GN or one-shot could have been fascinating. But I think he had a very old-fashioned moral code and wouldn't and couldn't embrace the sort of violence needed for a barbarian. As beloved as Toth's animation designs were (and are) I don't know if they could possibly have the broad and expansive influence in animation that Kirby had on comics. As you say, it is arguable, but Kirby's hand spanned almost a half-century of enormous influence over the medium and innumerable imitators.
Toth and Kirby were really flip sides of the same coin.
Kirby started out in animation and brought the sense of motion to comics. Toth started in comics and brought a more literal style to animation.
They worked well together as when Toth inked Kirby on Uncanny X-Men or when Kirby contributed character designs to Thundarr the Barbarian.
They may have worked beautifully together. But there is the suggestion that Kirby's hyper-dramatic dynamism set the standard for how superhero comics should look and that rendered Toth's style too antiquated by comparison. Maybe the problem was simply that superheroes came to dominate the mainstream strangling out all other genres over time. It does often look like Toth was occasionally trying to dip his toes into superheroes but not getting received as well in comics as he did in animation.
The mongols figures in the second Conan image remind me a bit of Corben. I never thought of Toth as a potential influence of his. Is it possible Toth was influenced by Corben a bit with these images? At the point this portfolio was published Corben had been printed in Heavy Metal in the US.
Any Toth/Corben connection is one too terrifying for me to have ever even contemplated. But actually Toth's and Corben's work appeared in the same issues of Eerie on several occasions, so Toth surely was aware. And you know who the Assistant Editor of Creepy was at the time? Louise Jones ;)
this channel is so underrated! please never stop making videos!
Incredible. I’ve never seen this Toth portfolio. Thanks for sharing. Your channel is an amazing comic resource. Thanks
Yeah, I was very surprised when I saw the credits for this issue as well and glad I was able to track one down. Thanks for watching.
Just found the channel. Keep reading comics, man its great. I found you from your Swamp Thing read. Keep up the channel and the good work. ✌️🙏
Hey! Thanks a lot I appreciate it. The Swamp Thing reading was my favorite. Alan Moore's run on that book was incredible.
Maybe his reputation for being a guy who called a fool a fool kept him from big 2 gigs?
Yeah, that probably played a role as well. I mean he became incensed with Gary Groth almost immediately into an interview and hung up never to talk to him again. But he also seemed incredibly pleasant in margin notes that he wrote on his original pages and in correspondence with editors. However, he also stamped his address on every assignment expressly stating his OA was to be returned. A smart move on his part, but potentially alienating when dealing with editors.
Where can his Conan work be found? I have a few Toth books, and they don’t appear in any I have.
The portfolio is in Savage Sword of Conan #64 (you can see the cover at 0:14). I got my copy on Ebay for around $10.
Great video with thoughtful observations & writing. Subscribed!
Thank very much. I appreciate the comment and the subscription. ;)
Ah yes, the cartoonist on the syncrovox nightmares Space Angel and Clutch Cargo. 😮😮😮
😱Sacrilege time , ready? Cover your eyes Kirby fans but I favored Toth over Kirby! Personal preference so don't assail me with "evidence" , "examples" , etc to exorcise my eyesight from its evil enchanted entanglement😄! The "Conan" type genre was one that Toth didn't particularly care for , he stated so in one of his many sketch commentaries when speaking about his( exceptional ) Hanna- Barbera model sheets referring to the ones for Mighty Mightor and Dino Boy ( my favorite segment from Space Ghost ; What? 😱Another sacrilegious statement? Can't seem to evade them can I ?) ; he "hated" the prehistoric style genre but being the professional he was he completed the assignments. As far as not being suited for the Bronze Age I disagree , his style "fitted" alongside two of my favorites from the Filipino Wave of the 1970s : Alex Nino and Gerry Talaoc. Enjoyed the show.
Not sacrilege at all. Kirby's fan base is larger for obvious reasons but Toth certainly has a number of hardcore acolytes particularly among artists and critics. That's an interesting tidbit about his dislike of "prehistoric" material. I think it was pretty obvious that the sword and sorcery of Conan was not his comfort zone (as he hinted at on the page where he wrote the margin note to Weezy that he was "tryin his best." As for the Bronze Age: I suppose I can see some similarities between Toth's and Nino's marks at times, but they seem very different artists to my eyes. I would also say that while I love Nino, he didn't get very much high-profile work in the Bronze Age either. He was slotted more in the Warren stuff and then on the DC fringes in the mystery and horror anthologies. I feel like the juggernauts of the Bronze Age--Starlin, Brunner, Smith, Perez, Golden, Byrne/Austin etc. rang in a new era of detailed art that clearly looked different than most of their Silver Age predecessors and shaped the tastes of most readers at the time that steered them away aesthetically from Golden and Silver Age holdovers like Toth, Frank Robbins, George Tuska, and Mike Sekowsky, even as Kirby, Kane, and Kubert sort of straddled the eras successfully. I don't recall much of anything looking like it was noticeably influenced by Toth at that time until Mazzuchelli came along on Year One and Daredevil, both of which I think technically were Copper Age. And as stated Toth wasn't getting the call for much superhero work outside of that brief Detective 442 story which was in 1974.
No one will ever draw Conan as brilliantly as Barry Smith.
Conan has had a number of amazing artists, but Smith is still my favorite as well. I have all 24 of his original issues ( with a few fill-in artists) and of course the classic Conan Treasury as well. I even have the full series of Pocket Books that reprinted the series black and white.
I read that Toth generally turned down assignments during this era, sometimes after leading on the editors for a while?
That certainly wouldn't be a surprise either, given that it didn't take much to trigger Toth.
Feel like the god that would have loved Toths comics the most would probably be Thoth : D
Ha! Almost pronounced the same. However, apparently the Egyptian name for Thoth was actually "Djehuty."
Arnold 😂
Speaking as a fan of Alex Toth, I think this was a bit of a fail. As fantastic a figure artist as he was, these Conan figures are clumsy looking. As with the "I'm tryin'" comment, I think he was out of his comfort zone in this genre. When you're working with a licenced character the expectation is that you maintain the tried and tested approach, some of these stylised invented characters Toth has created just do not fit into the Conan world. It's a shame, but Toth was a master of many things but superheroes, extreme action poses and sword and sorcery were not his cup of tea. And it sort of shows in all honesty.
I think we're in near total agreement on all of that. Toth did good work with other licensed characters but they were usually in his wheelhouse. And I do think that some of these Conan pages--like the one where he wrote that he was "tryin'" --look quite good (granted I think he was doing his Buscema there), but overall the genres you mention never seemed suitable for Toth , or of much interest to him.
toth did a xmen. Issue
I think he did so over jack Kirby layouts though and it wasn't the greatest of issues to say the least.