Let’s take a quick look to see what amazing things arrived at the Geek Compound.
Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954
Edited by Greg Sadowski
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Alex Toth’s influence on the art of comic books is incalculable. As his generation was the first to grow up with the new 10-cent full-color pamphlets, he came to the medium with a fresh eye, and enough talent and discipline to graphically strip it down its to its bare essentials. His efforts reached fruition at Standard Comics, creating an entire school of imitators and establishing Toth as the “comic book artist’s artist.” Setting the Standard collects the entirety of this highly influential body of work in one substantial volume.
Toth began his professional career at fifteen in 1945 for Heroic Comics, but quickly advanced to superhero work for DC. Responding to the endless criticism of editor Sheldon Mayer and production chief Sol Harrison, the young artist strove toward a technique free of “showoff surface tricks, clutter, and distracting picture elements.” Simply put, he learned “how to tell a story, to the exclusion of all else.”
After falling out with DC in 1952, Toth moved west. He freelanced almost exclusively for Standard over the next two years, contributing classic work for its crime, horror, science fiction, and war titles. But perhaps most revelatory to the reader will be the romance collaborations with writer Kim Ammodt, Toth’s personal favorites. “I came to prefer them for the quieter, more credible, natural human equations they dealt with — emotions, subtleties of gesture, expression, attitude.”
To explain his take on comics, Toth would quote such proverbs as “To add to truth distracts from it,” or “The beauty of the simple thing.” He employed these axioms “to make clear how universal this pursuit of truth, clarity, simplicity, economy, in all the arts and many other disciplines really is — and has been for 6,000 years.” These and other observations regarding the comic book form will be collected in an essay based on Toth’s published and unpublished letters and interviews.
Every page of Setting the Standard is restored to bring Toth’s unsurpassed graphics and page designs into full clarity, making this an essential edition for anyone with an appreciation of the art of graphic storytelling.
Another gorgeous, must own book from Fantagraphics!
Firestorm: The Nuclear Man
Written by Gerry Conway
Art by Al Milgrom and George Perez
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For the first time, the stories that introduced Firestorm are collected from issues #1-5 of his 1970s series, plus stories from THE FLASH #289-293. After Ronnie Raymond is tricked into nearly blowing up a nuclear reactor, he and Professor Martin Stein are caught in a nuclear incident. Their personalities merge, forming the being called Firestorm!
Yeah, the Milgrom art is ugly, but Firestorm was always one of my favorite titles.
The Jack Kirby Omnibus Vol. 1 Starring Green Arrow
Introduction by Mark Evanier
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In 1957, Jack Kirby returned to DC Comics to draw the Green Arrow feature that ran in ADVENTURE COMICS and WORLD’S FINEST COMICS, pitting the Emerald Archer and his sidekick, Speedy, against a plethora of foes. At the same time, Kirby kept busy with work on DC’s mystery titles. These short tales spotlighted extraterrestrials and earthly monsters, nuclear threats and super-intelligent animals, magic wishes gone wrong and cities lost beneath the seas, challenging Kirby’s ever-fertile imagination in every story.
Now, for the first time, DC Comics collects all of Kirby’s many stories from the pages of HOUSE OF MYSTERY, HOUSE OF SECRETS, TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED, MY GREATEST ADVENTURE, ALL-STAR WESTERN, ADVENTURE COMICS, WORLD’S FINEST COMICS, as well as a trio of 1940s stories from REAL FACT COMICS.
While not the best of The King’s work–far too restrained for my tastes–it’s still over 300 pages of rare Jack Friggin’ Kirby. On his bad days, he’s still better than most comic artists ever. ‘Nuff said.