Born June 25, 1928, Alex Toth was truly an artist's artist, encouraged early on to pursue his talent enrolling in the High School of Industrial Arts, and making his first professional sale at age fifteen, illustrating pieces for Heroic magazine. Inspired by the great newspaper cartoonists Caniff, Raymond, and Foster, young Alex wanted to follow in their footsteps but found that the industry was "dying" as he moved on to comic books. In 1947, Toth was hired by Sheldon Mayer at National Periodical Publications where he worked for five years on the Golden Age characters, Dr. Mid-Nite, Green Lantern, Atom, and Flash before ghosting the western Casey Ruggles strip for Warren Tufts. Moving to California in the early 1950s, Toth worked for Standard Comics drawing romance, war, and crime yarns, before being drafted to the U.S. Army. While stationed in Toyko, he drew the strip Jon Fury for the base newspaper, the Depot Diary. Next, working for Dell Comics upon his return to Los Angeles, his superlative storytelling led him to work in television on the Space Angel cartoon show and his eventually landing a position at Hanna-Barbera Studios. His work in design and storyboards on Space Ghost, Birdman, and other classic cartoons for the company made an indelible mark on the medium and inspired many of our finest artists today. Later the artist worked for DC, Warren, Red Circle and other companies until his passing by a heart attack at the drawing table in May of 2006 at the age of seventy seven.
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