The Other Side of Alex Toth

 

Everyone agrees that artist Alex Toth was a genius of comics. Above is a late-in-career self-portrait of the gentleman.

I myself have never owned any drawing by Mr. Toth, but let me show you a page that I came across on the internet.

Mark Howland owns the above page of original artwork and, in his description of it, he writes "As a mere twenty-year-old, Alex Toth penciled and inked this Sierra Smith, Western Detective story which appeared in Dale Evans Comics #6 in 1949. By contrast, when I was twenty, I was lucky if I could find two matching socks. Some have said that Toth is the artist’s artist, in other words, the artist whose work many other artists collect."

Mark adds that Mr. Toth not only drew Sierra Smith, he co-created the character with Joe Millard. This I did not know before!

But wait, there's more to this story.

Collectors of original artwork know that they sometimes get an unexpected bonus. Once in a while a page has additional drawings by the artist on the back of the page. That is the case with the above Sierra Smith page! Here is what is on the back of that board:

Great, right? I invite you to read Mark Howland's full essay on this page of artwork over here.