R.I.P. Alex Toth

Reader and occasional poster Brian Linnen forwarded me the news... one of the greatest comic book artists ever (and my personal number one favorite) Alex Toth has passed away today. He was 78 and apparently died at his drawing board this morning.

Alex Toth could put more body language and naturalistic expression in a drawing than any ten artists put together... he was a master of spotting and heavy black inks, his vivid portrayal of the interplay of shadow and light was intuitive and simply phenomenal. He could tell more story with ten lines of ink than all the hyper-detail-artists with their hundreds of tiny lines could, combined. He worked on all types of genres: Funny Animal, War, Western, Crime, Science Fiction, Superhero, and Romance comics, for nearly every major publisher from the 1940s to the present. He will be sorely missed and his legacy and body of work will live long after him.

"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal. "
- Albert Pike

Rest In Peace, Alex, Rest In Peace.