Alex Toth passed away last year after a 60 year career in comics. He worked on the golden age DC comics, "The Flash", "Green Lantern" and "The Atom", as well as a highly regarded comics adaptation of "Zorro." But he is perhaps best known for the late '60s superhero cartoons for Hanna-Barbera that he designed- "Space Ghost", "The Herculoids" and "Super Friends".

Toth was an imaginative draftsman, and his character designs reflected his consummate skills. But the designs were a challenge to animate convincingly, and unfortunately, Hanna-Barbera in the late '60s was the nadir of quality, cranking out cheap, factory-made programming on a tight schedule. Toth's ambitious designs were left in the dust. To add insult to injury, today, Toth's characters are taken out of context and subjected to ridicule as "kitsch" in current TV programs.

Toth doesn't deserve that kind of treatment. Check out our image gallery of Toth model sheets, and try to imagine what cartoons might have looked like had Toth worked in the golden age of animation, instead of its dark ages.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:44:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments