Pop stuff: Alex Toth, Emil and the Detectives

What I've been reading, watching, hearing, etc.


Genius, Illustrated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth This is the second of IDW's massive hardcovers dedicated to the art and biography of Toth, an "artist's artist" in the word of comics. It picks up Toth's story in the early 1960s, when he drifted away from comics and entered the world of TV animation, designing the classic adventure 'toons of the Hanna-Barbera stable: Notably Space Ghost, Johnny Quest, the Herculoids and other fondly remembered by Baby Boomers series.

Toth's dazzling ability to convey character and action with an economy of lines was perfectly suited to this new medium. At the same time, he kept a hand in comics with occasional adventure, war and suspense stories for DC, Marvel, Charlton, the fledgling Warren line and others.

The book includes a wealth of art from these stories, often from Toth's original penciled and inked pages. A highlight is "The Case of the Curious Classic," a masterclass in comics storytelling that Toth wrote and illustrated for, of all things, DC's toy-associated Hot Wheels series in 1970. Over 16 pages -- each with a uniform, eight-panel grid -- Toth tells a rather complex, tightly plotted mystery tale that engages his love of classic automobiles and adventure and never lets the reader slip his grasp.

A couple of Toth's classic war stories -- "Burma Sky" and "White Devil...Yellow Devil" -- also are included in full, original art, along with his tutorial on how TV animation is produced from the 1970s "Super Friends" tabloid edition DC published in 1976.

The story of Toth's life woven throughout is nearly as triumphant as art. The artist was famously temperamental and troubled, which accounts for his inability to stay under the thumb of any one employer for long. But we see him mellowed and happy after a second marriage to a woman he adored. After Guyla Toth's death in 1985 there are dark times again and Toth becomes reclusive and, apart from occasional covers and pin-ups, inactive in comics art. But, again, there's light again as his grown children draw him, helping him enjoy another happy period at the end of his life.

A third book in this unprecedentedly detailed look at an American comics artist's life is still to come and will collect images from and provide more detail about Toth's years in animation.


Emil And The Detectives We bought and streamed this 1964 film for family movie night last weekend. It may be the only live-action Disney film I missed seeing as a kid, not sure how. But I do recall very much enjoying the book it's based on.

It's an unusual Disney production -- shot entirely on-location in Berlin (the Emil book was first published in Germany) and has a very European feel and look to it. The performances by kids and adults in the cast are all entertaining and excellent and the story doesn't feel dated at all -- just a simple adventure/mystery tale about a group of young boys who blunder into a bank robbery scheme.

It's a notch above many family and children's films we've screened -- new or old -- and well worth a look. The transfer looks great, too.

One note: You can't rent and stream the film via Amazon, but you can buy it for $9.99. It's also available on DVD. Not on Netflix, unfortunately.