Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Bill Peckmann has recently sent me some comic pages by Alex Toth, and I’ll let him introduce this post:

I thought that with the advent of Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell‘s second volume of their Alex Toth series, ‘Genius Illustrated‘ coming out later this year, that your readers might enjoy a few stories from that time period in Alex’s life that the book will cover.

All three of the short stories that I’m sending you are from DC Comics’ war titles from the early 1970′s.

Alex is firing on all cylinders in these three stories. Always learning his craft and searching to add to the esthetics of continuity art, lucky for us, it all seems to be culminating at this point in his life.

Just prior to each of the three comic stories, I’m posting a sheet of doodles that Alex Toth did, and Bill Peckmann saved. It’s a good way to separate the three war stories.

The first page of doodles. These three pages have
nothing to do with anything here. But they’re a
great example of a brilliant artist’s ramblings.

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Here is story 2 of 3. A short four page story but very powerfully done. Of special note, see how well the hands are executed to further the emotions of the characters, especially the very last panel.

This is the second page of doodles by Mr. Toth.
The guy could draw.

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Here in the third story of this post, Alex was able to combine his love for aviation and his fondness for 1940′s Hollywood movies that had a light touch. The writer of the story is Shelly Mayer, who as editor at DC Comics many years before, broke teenager Alex Toth into the comic book business.

The third and last of the doodle pages.
I hope they were, at least, interesting.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann. The rare comic stories aren’t enough, he spoils us with some private doodles by the master.

- Last week we saw thje first half of Alex Toth‘s comic book adaptation of the Stewart Granger film, Gun Glory. Here, we post the remainder of the story. Bill Peckmann is to be thanked for opening up his archive to us. Here’s his comment:

I’d venture a guess that the quality of Alex’s original pages in “Gun Glory” has to be the same as it was in the original pages of his “Land of the Unknown” Dell comic book, meaning outta sight! (See earlier Splog posting of that art.) Unfortunately, so much just gets lost in the “pulp” printing, arrrgh!!!

His earlier Dell/Western Pub. movie adaptation titles, like “Gun Glory”, are still by far the best of his tenure at Dell. The later titles towards the end of his run there, because of many reasons, mainly lack of appreciation, creativity, monies, etc., seemed like they were just being phoned in.

His best stories for Dell give an inkling of what was to come down the pike a few years later with the black and white pages he would do for Warren Publishing, which was some of the best continuity art that he ever did.

Also after leaving Dell, in the early 1960′s, was just about the time Alex would start to dabble in the art of animation, lucky for us!

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Gun Glory is a 1957 film starring Stewart Granger and Rhonda Fleming. Alex Toth in one of his adaptations to comic book brought some small beat of immortality to this movie, directed by Roy Rowland.

Here is the first of two installments of Toth’s magazine. Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing this cowboy classic.

Comic book cover

Inner cover

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- Bill Peckmann forwarded the following interview with artist, Alex Toth. The comments are by Bill:

In the somewhat early days of comic book fandom, there was a class act fanzine titled “Graphic Story Magazine”, it was edited and published by Bill Spicer. In 1969 all of us Alex Toth fans were given a rare, in depth treat by way of an interview with Alex done by Bill. In the days before the internet and with just the means of out of pocket publishing, this professional looking, many paged interview was pure manna from heaven. Up until that time there were only a few capsulated bio’s printed here and there. Interestingly, the interview now is just a little over 40 years old, which is the same number of years as Alex’s age when the interview was given. It also marks an approximate half way point in Alex’s exceptional career. Enjoy.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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It seems that memories here were getting a little fuzzy on the dating
of the “I Struck It Rich” story. It was published in 1951 and not in the
1940′s when Alex was still in high school. He did amazingly professional
work while in high school, it just wasn’t this story.

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- The collaboration between Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis has proven to be a very fertile one.. Bill Peckmann has continued to send more material to extend the idea, and I take delight in posting it. Bill wrote the accomp;anying notes:

In really reaching and stretching to show more Harvey and Jack “firsts”, I’m sending you the first two covers that Jack did for Harvey’s war comics “Two-Fisted Tales” and “Frontline Combat” along with a Harvey and Jack story from each issue.

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Here is the cover of “Two-Fisted Tales” No. 30, 1952.
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This is the inside cover of “Two-Fisted”. One of the
big treats of EC Comics were their “in house” ads for
other titles. Here is the ad for MAD No.1 done by Jack.
It was great the way EC put faces to your favorite artists.
I’d say the roots for Jack’s future TV GUIDE covers are right here.
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Skipping ahead twenty-two years, (a break in the action)
I’m inserting a Jack Davis TV GUIDE cover from 1974.
(It also has a Korean War theme.)
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Harvey and Jack’s story from No. 30.
(They certainly gave the great aviation cartoonist,
Alex Toth a run for his money!)
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Jack’s first “Frontline Combat” cover, No. 11, 1953.
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Inside front cover of “FC”. It’s an ad for MAD No. 2 done by EC great, Bill Elder.
(Sorry about the front cover colors bleeding through.)
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“Sailor!”, Harvey and Jack’s collaboration for “FC” No. 11.
It shows the horrors of war (as much as you could in a
comic book back then), the realism that was to come later
in films like “Saving Private Ryan”.
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The colors, excitement and dynamics of the cover are just terrific.
Jack makes it look so easy.
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Back in the days before comic book reprints, fans had to do with
whatever copies they had collected. One way to keep comics from
getting battered and tattered was to have them bound in volumes.
Working with Harvey and Jack on animated projects back in the
early 70′s, I was very fortunate and they were very kind to put their
John Hancocks in my bound volume of “Frontline Combat”.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing the material and putting it all together.

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The Wings of Eagles was a 1957 Action Adventure film directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. Try to get it on Netflix; it’s one of Ford’s classics. Alex Toth was hired by Dell to create the comic version of the film. Bill Peckmann not only saved his copy of the comic but sent a copy to me to post. It’s classic Toth. Part 1 appeared here.

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the End Paper

the Back Cover

As a special treat, Bill Peckmann added these five pages of Doodles by Alex Toth. 1

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing these rare bits with us.

- Bill Peckman continues to delight with some of the brilliant artwork he scans for my site. It’s a pleasure to post it and study it. Here, we have the comic book version of The John Ford/John Wayne film, “Wings of Eagles.” Here’s what Bill wrote:

Alex Toth‘s passion for aviation was only second to his love for art, so he must have welcomed and relished this assignment when it came in from Dell/Western Publishing. It was the comic book adaptation of the biopic movie “Wings Of Eagles” (1957). It also didn’t hurt that Alex was a big fan of the movie’s director, John Ford. Here’s hoping that the backlit computer screen will offset some of the printing press problems of those days of yore (It Does!) and make the pages look closer to what Toth had envisioned. The originals would have been an eyeful to see! Go to the Bruce Canwell and Dean Mullaney book, “Alex Toth, Genius Isolated” to see what Alex’s original Dell art work looked like before quite a bit of it was lost in the primitive pulp printing process.

So here without further ado, is John Ford, John Wayne and Alex Toth’s “Wings Of Eagles”!

The Front Cover

Inner Front Cover

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One of the best pages in the book, too bad the colorist
miscolored the big double panel. The bg. color should have
been the deep blue sea, not the light blue sky.

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- The other shoe drops. A while back I posted the first half of the comic book, Clint & Mac, which was illustrated by Alex Toth from a Disney live-action feature. The book was sent to me by Bill Peckmann, and we’ve just put together the second half, for your amusement. The art’s all first rate, and the story adaptation isn’t that bad either.

Here’s a note Bill sent me with the scans:

This book has been a real pleasant discovery and surprise. I’ve got to confess because of its innocuous title, it’s always been on the bottom of my pile and until recently hasn’t got the kudos it deserves. I know for me it was seeing the recent publication of Manuel Auad‘s very fine Robert Fawcett: The Illustrator’s Illustrator that made me realize just how much of a Fawcett fan Alex was and it really shows in his “Clint & Mac”.

Here’s the rest of the story, starting where we left off with pag. 19:

The magazine’s cover

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Inside Back Cover

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Back Cover

Here’s an additional treat: it’s the original art of the “All American Western” cover, #107, 1949. Dean Mullaney had printed this art in the book Genius Isolated which he co-authored with Bruce Canwell. They were kind enough to send it to Bill for posting here.

The original art

Here’s the color cover as it appears in the Magazine.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for arranging and passing along this rare bit of comic art.

- Bill Peckmann sent some fresh Alex Toth material and with it came some notes. So, I’ll turn the blog over to him today:

In keeping with the celebration of Dean Mullaney‘s book, Genius Isolated, I thought I’d scan some of Alex’s early 1950′s and early 1960′s comic book art.

The first three are DC Comics’ “All American Western” covers from 1949 to 1951. (Wonderful house/publisher coloring.) The character he was doing for the book was called “Johnny Thunder”, a western hero with a Clark Kent duel personality. Alex was only 21 years old at the time of the first cover.

(#121 has been reprinted in “Genius”)

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The following is the back cover of issue #121, it’s an ad, non Toth, I just thought you’d get a kick out of it. . . .

. . . As an 8 year old I remember this premium/give away very well, Donald and Mickey were the prized ones of course. To all us little cookie snappers at that time, anything Disney was few and far between, unlike today!

The following complete story is from EC Comics’ “Two-Fisted Tales”, issue #22, 1951. (This scan is of the cover done by book editor Harvey Kurtzman.)

The story “Dying City” was written, layed out and outstandingly inked by Harvey Kurtzman. The beautiful tight pencils were Alex’s. Both gents were in their best Milton Caniff mode, wonderful job of a very grim story.

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In 1963 Alex was doing “Mad Magazine” type pages for “cartoon car” type magazines coming out of the west coast. It looks like he had an easy time slipping into the skins of Jack Davis and Mort Drucker and seemed to enjoy doing it for a while. These 2 stories are from “DRAG CARtoons” #2. They are take offs of the then popular TV series, “Dr. Kildare” and “The Defenders.

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Both these stories plus all of the rest of this type that Alex did for the “cartoon car” magazines were lovingly and handsomely collected by Manuel Auad (publisher of the new, excellent Robert Fawcett book) in his/this Alex Toth, One for the Road, published in 2000.

Cover – “One for the Road”

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for all the great material in this post.

- In celebration of the new book about Alex Toth, Genius Isolated by Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell, we’re posting some Toth work for Dell comics in the 60s.

Bill Peckman has an enormous collection of comics by Toth, and with the help of Dean Mullaney, we’d like to show how beautiful Alex Toth’s originals look in comparison with the poor quality printing of the comics. You can see how degraded the lines become in the final magazines when placing them alongside the original art.

Here are three comparisons to make from the comic, The Land Unknown.

This is the published cover.

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Look at the soft lines printed on the poor quality newsprint.

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This is the original from Alex Toth.

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Here are a sampling of other magazines done by Alex Toth.

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Alex Toth also did a lot of TV titles such as: 77 Sunset Strip, Sugerfoot, The Real McCoys’, Danny Thomas, The Lennon Sisters… to name a few.

Probably his best remembered title is Zorro from the Disney TV series. This was reprinted not too long ago – the first collaboration between Alex Toth and Dean Mullaney.