Favorite Comic Artist Countdown #4 - Alex Toth!

Alex Toth might just be the finest artist who ever drew a comic. The reason I say that is he plied his trade with such an economy of lines that he reduced the comic book page to its essential essence, nothing present save that which was crucial. Toth's comic book pages are magnificent celebrations of light and shadow as Toth's uncanny ability to draw forth meaning with contrast dappled across page after page. It wasn't so much that he drew them, but that he brought them forth, the light forth from the darkness and vice versa. Toth had a long career in comics, drawing westerns like Johnny Thunder and Zorro and lots of romance and crime.

And then there's Space Ghost, the finest superhero created for the TV screen, a figure at once mysterious and trustworthy, enigmatic and friendly. You don't know why you trust this stalwart figure but you do, his calm manly assurance captured in his posture and the elegance of his flight. If any hero ever was the pure essence of what Alex Toth wanted to do, Space Ghost is  it, almost not there, but clearly present. Toth did designs for Hanna-Barbera, for the delightful cartoons of my youth and without knowing it was imprinting on his fantastic sense of design as I watched Fantastic Four, Birdman, Herculoids, and of course the aforementioned Space Ghost. Apparently Toth was a raucous personality, a difficult man to be in proximity to for long stretches  but there's no doubt this irascible artist was among the greatest of his generation and among the greatest of all time.

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