One cannot overstate Alex Toth’s significance to comics and animation art. In comic books he 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. Produced with the cooperation of Toth's family, this ambitious three-volume series is the definitive statement on the restless genius and timeless legacy of Alex Toth.
Alex Toth : Genius, Isolated
By Dean Mullaney and Bruce
Canwell
Introduction by Mark Chiarello
"Genius,
Isolated is…an astounding achievement. Through
thoroughly researched text and a gob-smackingly great selection of
visuals, Mullaney and Canwell have done what the best biographers
should: Both illuminate their subjects life and decisively show
what, precisely, made him worthy of their (and our) attention.
"This
book is, for me, a game-changer: The first (literally) expansive
visual biography of a classic comic book artist that manages to
show and tell just what made the man and the work.…
"Anyone with an interest in the medium should own
and study this book. It’s one of those."
—Dan Nadel, The Comics Journal
"This isn't just
a home run. It's a grand slam....Simply brilliant. It is a 'must
read' for anyone serious about comics."
—Jeff
Vaughn, Fandom Advisory Network
Created by the Eisner Award-winning team of
Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell who produced the ground-breaking
Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel
Sickles—Genius, Isolated is a lavishly
illustrated book that includes the first biography of this giant
figure. The book has been compiled with complete access to the
family archives, and with the full cooperation of Toth's children.
To flesh out the complete story of his life and art, Mullaney and
Canwell have spent more than two years conducting wide-ranging
interviews with Toth's peers, friends, and family members. This is
the beginning of a comics biography everyone will be talking about
for years to come.
In addition to art and photographs from the family, Toth fans and
friends throughout the world have loaned original artwork
reproduced in the entire series. Included are many examples of
Toth's art, from twenty-one complete stories to rare pages, as well
as—incredibly—a previously unknown, unfinished, and
unpublished penciled story from the 1950s! The tome covers
his earliest stories at DC in the 1940s, his defining work at
Standard, his incomparable Zorro comics in the 1950s, and
a special section collects—for the first time—the
Jon Fury pages that Toth produced while in the army, a
section that alone is worth the price of admission.
Genius, Isolated details Toth’s life story and work
through the early 1960s, when he began his sensational move into
animated cartoons. The second book in the series, Genius,
Illustrated, continues the story.
Oversized 9.5" x 13" hardcover,
328 pp. with bibliography, $49.99.
ISBN: 978-1-60010-828-0.
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.
"With Scorchy
Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles, IDW Publishing's Library of
American Comics imprint redefined the standards for art
retrospective books. Now Dean Mullaney and Bruce
Canwell have upped the ante with Genius, Isolated, the
first volume of three comprising their comprehensive new biography
The Life And Art Of Alex Toth. Buy it now."
—Scoop
"What Mullaney and
Canwell have done here is nothing short of wonderful. They've
presented a well chosen selection of the first full decade of
Toth's career, arguably his most creative period, in a beautifully
designed volume that conveys the artist's evolution - an
astonishingly brief transition that happened in barely five years -
from talented beginner to absolute master."
—Howard
Chaykin The Los Angeles Review of Books
"Toth's "legacy, with
this project, [is] no longer isolated from its natural audience."
Canwell creates "a vivid, living portrait of Toth… Moreover,
[he] knows the milieu and history of comics inside and out. The
Golden Age and subsequent two decades are brought movingly and
nostalgically to life.…
"Mullaney's selection of art is just phenomenal. He picks out key
sample pages from all aspects of Toth's career, as well as deciding
which crucial stories to reprint in their
entirety."
—Paul Di Filippo, Barnes and Noble
Review