People will say he was a great craftsman, and they'll be right, but what Toth did was a little further along than that. Toth reached that scary point where it felt dangerous to look at some of his best work; you ran the risk of being pierced by a force that practically shimmered on the page, that inhabited every image, like a master chef's dessert so rich it made your eyes water in protest, or a singer's voice so pitch-perfect it made you want to leave the concert hall, if only to catch your breath. His handwriting exuded an element of purity in cartooning that could outclass other artists' fully-rendered sequential art. Toth's black and white work in particular displayed an almost transcendent understanding of drawn art as a visual story component. When we as readers come to a greater understanding of the effect that great art has on the reading of comics, Toth's reputation is likely to grow even larger than it is today.

Permalink Posted: 12:46 AM EST