Alex Toth
Alex Toth was born at half past midnight on June 25,
1928 in New York City. His parents were Sander (Alexander) and Mary
Elizabeth Toth. Both could ill afford the happy event but still
managed to make the best of it with their only child. His parents
were both artistic and musical. Their small flat was always filled
with music and singing. While his mother sang as she did the dinner
dishes, his father would accompany her with his cimbalom (an Hungarian
instrument) until the neighbors would bang on the steam pipes and
pound on the walls--critics. With so much time to fill alone, Alex
began to doodle at the age of three. His mother would draw pretty
girl profiles and watching her may have led him to copying them
and later to draw his own. But it was the Sunday funnies, comic
books, and after- noons spent listening to daily radio adventure
serials that helped a lot to fire up his imagination. Without the
advent of television, Alex sat next to the radio sketching characters
to match the voices of the characters from his favorite serials.
A teacher from his poster class in junior high took time to urge
that he make art his craft. So, even though his family was against
it, Alex enrolled at the High School of Industrial Arts and studied
illustration. While in high school he received his first paid freelance
art assignment from Steve Douglas at "Famous Funnies".
After school Alex would spend most of his time at his drawing board
doing two or three pages for "Heroic Comics". In 1947,
after graduating from high school, Shelly Myers hired him at D.C.
and he worked there until 1952 when he moved to California. Alex
was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1954 and was stationed in Tokyo,
Japan. While in Japan he wrote and drew his own weekly adventure
strip "Jon Fury" for the base paper. Re- ~ turning to
the U.S. in 1956, Alex settled in the Los Angeles area and worked
for Dell Comics until 1960. Prior to joining Hanna-Barbera in 1965,
Alex did animation and comic book work including ghosting "Casey
Ruggles" in 1950 and also "Roy Rogers" in 1960.
Alex worked for Hanna-Barbera until 1968 and then again in 1973
when he was assigned to Australia for five months to produce the
TV series "Super Friends". Through the years Alex has
worked for D.C., Marvel, Standard, Dell, Funnies, Inc., Whitman,
Western, and numerous pulps, ad and illustration accounts on both
coasts. He has illustrated and written his own stories for Warren
Publications (Eerie, Creepy). One of his best known works is "Bravo
for Adventure" which was serialized in two separate issues
in The ROOK by Warren Publications. Later on it was published in
its entirety with an additional four pages of intro by Dragon Lady
Press (Canada). It was also published in Europe where it was greatly
received and was translated in three languages.

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