STAFF PICKS :: GENIUS ANIMATED: CARTOON ART OF ALEX TOTH :: MAY 21, 2014


Thanks to the success of the Flintstones, cheap limited animation was all the rage. so we were stuck watching things like Breezily Bruin and Klondike Kat. But on Saturday morning, thanks to the success of the live action Batman TV show, Super-hero adventure was prospering. The animation was stillĀ āturribleā and the familyĀ friendly ratio– for each hero there had to be an adorable dog/monkey or precocious child- but theĀ characters looked great. these were iconic designs that made the image of the characters last far longer than the cartoons themselves. The reason for this enormous bump in visual quality was that theĀ designer for many of these shows was comics legend Alex Toth. In the span of a few years, he created Space Ghost (along with two precocious teens andĀ a damn masked monkey), the Herculoids, Birdman, The Blue Falcon and later the good FF cartoon,Ā Super FriendsĀ (two more precocious teens and a damn dog in a cape)and The Legion of DOOM!!!. Those designs live on to this very day. IDW celebrates Toth’s TV work with GENIUS ANIMATED CARTOON ART OF ALEX TOTH HC VOL 03 theĀ final volume ofĀ IDW’s comprehensive over-view of Tothās marvelous career.Ā There are hundreds of character design pages within these covers.You donāt want to miss this massive explosion of creativity (plus monkeys!)

