Genius, Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth

by Mullaney, Dean; Canwell, Bruce; Toth, Alex

• ISBN13: 9781684059478
• ISBN10: 168405947X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2022-09-27
• Publisher: IDW Publishing

Summary

This lavishly illustrated biography documents the life and art of one of the most significant comics and animation artists of all time.

In comic books, Alex Toth was the foremost proponent of modern design and composition. Starting in 1950, his work influenced almost every one of his contemporaries and has continued to work its magic on the generations that followed. In animation, his 1960s model sheets for Hanna-Barbera are still passed around as swipe sources from animator to young animator in the 21st Century.

Now in paperback, this biography was compiled with complete access to the family archives and with the full cooperation of Toth's children, this biography features many rare comics pages, photographs, and drawings. It also reproduces 20 complete stories, including a previously unknown and unfinished story from 1950, most printed from the original artwork.
 
Updates include clarification on Toth's early married life in the 1950s and the first appearance of the recently disovered final page that completes the special section collecting Jon Fury, the comic strip Toth created in the army, a prize long sought by even the most ardent Toth collectors.
 
Winner of the Harvey Award for Best Biographical Book.

Author Biography

Born in New York City in 1928, Alex Toth attended what is now the School of Visual Arts and broke into the comic book field as a teenager. During his sixty-year professional career, he became known as the "artists' artist"—he became very much like his great hero, Noel Sickles—the guy all the others wanted to draw like. In the 1960s he entered the animation field and became equally well-known and respected for his groundbreaking designs for Space Ghost and The Herculoids, among other series.