Showcase Presents The Witching Hour by Alex Toth, et al.

Great art, terrible writing

Showcase Presents is DC Comics’ line of trade paperbacks for classic comic reprints, similar to Marvel’s Essentials series. Showcase is the title of a DC anthology series that featured different characters in every issue. The Showcase Presents books, however, don’t necessarily have anything to do with that series. Showcase Presents The Witching Hour was published in 2013. It reprints issues #1 to 19 of DC’s old horror anthology series The Witching Hour. These issues were originally released from February 1969 to March 1972.

Just as EC Comics’ Tales of the Crypt had its Crypt-Keeper as host or MC, The Witching Hour has its own trio of hostesses in the form of three witches named Mildred, Mordred, and Cynthia. The first two are traditional ugly old-crone witches, while their step-sister Cynthia is a hot modern witch. In each issue they have a contest to see who can tell the best stories. This doesn’t really work to the series’s advantage, however, since three to five pages of each issue are wasted on this filler material. The witches frequently bash each other’s stories, complaining about how terrible they are, which unfortunately rings often far too true. The only bright side to these interludes is that they are often drawn by Alex Toth.

As one would expect from this genre, every story ends with a “surprise twist.” In almost all cases, however, the twists are clumsy and disappointing. It’s kind of like when a comedian spends a fair amount of time setting up a joke and then flubs the punchline. And for the better part of the book, every story is like that! You would think from the law of averages that they couldn’t be all bad, but in the first 17 issues there isn’t a single story that deserves to be singled out as impressive from a writing standpoint. Only in issues 18 and 19 does the level of quality start to pick up a little.

The art, on the other hand, is fabulous. I assume The Witching Hour was originally printed in color, but the Showcase Presents series only reproduces the black and white art. Here, however, that’s great, because these stories look beautiful in black and white, and the film-noir feel is appropriate to the genre. This is ‘60s and ‘70s comic art at its best, with old-school masters like Alex Toth, Jack Sparling, Gray Morrow, and Jerry Grandinetti making frequent appearances. Neal Adams and Bernie Wrightson show up a couple times, and Wally Wood once. Not every artist in the volume is a genius, but the majority of the stories are very well illustrated, and even the worst artists in this book are a cut above the average Curt Swan-ish DC style of this era.

I’m not a fan of DC’s superhero universe, but I do enjoy their old comics in other genres, such as their science fiction stories in Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space. (Strange Adventures has two volumes in the Showcase Presents series, Mystery in Space has none.) I thought I would give this horror anthology a try, but I found the quality of stories vastly inferior to the old EC Comics from the 1950s. I really did enjoy the art in these Witching Hour stories though. DC has also published Showcase Presents volumes of their horror titles House of Mystery, House of Secrets, and Tales of the Unexpected. Perhaps one of those books contains more compelling stories than this one.

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The Complete Classic Adventures of Zorro by Alex Toth

Classic character, classic artist

This trade paperback, published in 2001 by Image Comics, reprints The Complete Classic Adventures of Zorro as drawn by the legendary artist Alex Toth. This volume doesn’t provide the original publication dates of these comics, but a little research reveals they were probably produced sometime between 1957 and 1962. Toth drew these comics for Whitman/Western Publishing, which had a distribution deal with Dell Comics. It’s unclear under which of the three corporate names these comics were released. These adventures were published as a tie-in to a Zorro television series that was produced by Disney. All the preceding information is a bit sketchy, because the book’s brief introduction by Howard Chaykin and the equally brief forward by Toth are more casual reminiscences than informative history.

The character of Zorro, created by pulp fiction writer Johnston McCulley, debuted in the novel The Curse of Capistrano, which was serialized in 1919 issues of All-Story Weekly and later reprinted in book form as The Mark of Zorro. The masked swashbuckler soon gained greater fame through movie adaptations starring Douglas Fairbanks and later Tyrone Power. In his forward, Toth expresses a fondness for Power’s interpretation of Zorro, and it shows in his art. The character that McCulley created is a masterful concoction of western adventure, swashbuckling heroes like The Three Musketeers, and romantic lore of Old Mexico. The atmosphere and general parameters of the narrative remain largely unchanged from McCulley’s original novel, though the names of the supporting characters have changed. Zorro is still the alter ego of Don Diego de la Vega, a wealthy caballero who pretends to be a lazy and cowardly dandy so no one will suspect he’s really the masked avenger.

It’s hard to imagine a comics artist whose style is more suited to this classic character than Toth. Though these comics were originally published in color, this volume reproduces Toth’s original inked artwork in beautiful black and white. Another artist has added an additional medium-gray tone, under Toth’s direction. The result is a film noir effect that rivals the silvery highlights and shadows of the Tyrone Power movie. Though Toth drew mostly comic books, his style is more in keeping with the artists of the classic newspaper adventure strips, like Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon or Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby. Like these artists, Toth is a master of light and shadow, and wields his ink-loaded brush with an economy of stroke that infuses each panel with life and activity. His figures strike a perfect balance between anatomical accuracy and romanticized caricature. Toth also does a great job capturing the period feel of early 19th-century California—its old missions, picturesque haciendas, and desert landscapes.

Unfortunately, the writing does not live up to the art. Many of the stories are only six pages long, which allows for only the most childish of plots. A few longer entries, up to 26 pages, are more complex and offer a glimpse into the true narrative potential of the character. In his forward, Toth, a notorious curmudgeon, complains about the stories Disney provided him with, and his lack of creative freedom on the Zorro tales. Perhaps his disgruntlement explains the noticeable inconsistency in his art. Some adventures are drawn with intricate detail while others look hastily sketched. In either case, Toth’s art is superb and worthy of five stars. The package as a whole, however, writing included, merits about a 3.5.

A page from Alex Toth’s Zorro comics

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Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952–1954. Edited by Greg Sadowski

What a great artist can do with mediocre material
Setting the Standard is a collection of graphic short stories illustrated by Alex Toth, a master of comic art who chronologically and stylistically bridged the gap between the classic newspaper strips of the World War II era and the Silver Age of comic books. From 1952 to 1954 Toth worked for Standard Comics, where he drew stories for magazines like Intimate Love, Fantastic Worlds, New Romances, and Out of the Shadows. This book collects Toth’s complete body of work for Standard during that two-year period. The stories range in length from one to ten pages. Altogether there’s about 400 pages of comics, all reproduced to faithfully represent the original full-color printings, complete with garish colors, muddy blacks, and blatant dot patterns. A few examples of Toth’s original black and white layouts are also photographically reproduced.

Editor Greg Sadowski has done a fine job compiling this volume. In addition to the graphic content, there’s also an extensive interview with Toth from Graphic Story Magazine, a brief biography, and a section with notes about each story. In the interview Toth comes across as an extreme perfectionist totally devoted to his craft, and a bit of a prima donna. He acknowledges the influence of a few old masters like Noel Sickles, but he brutally critiques many more, including Milton Caniff and Alex Raymond.

Toth’s art often resembles the cinematography of a film noir thriller. His layouts are a symphony of blacks punctuated by judicious silhouettes. His style lends itself well to crime stories, but there’s only a couple examples of that genre included here. There are several war stories, all set in the Korean War. Toth proves himself extremely adept at rendering airplanes, tanks, guns, and the like, but the writing offers little excitement. Mostly there are a lot of combat clichés and anti-Asian racial slurs. The few science fiction stories are also conceptually pedestrian, but Toth does a visionary job drawing the necessary lizard men and flying saucers. The best stuff in the book are the horror stories. Toth’s art really shines in this genre, and the writing is generally pretty good. These stories aren’t as gratuitously gory as the more famous EC Comics of the mid-1950s, but Toth doesn’t shy away from the dark and spooky imagery.

More than half of the book—perhaps as much as two-thirds—consists of romance comics. For the most part these are serious love stories aimed at an adult female audience. It’s unbelievable how many variations the Standard writers could come up with on the familiar scenario of boy-meets-girl. Though some of the best writing in the book occurs in these tales of the heart, the sheer quantity that’s contained in the book is mind-numbing. The effect is similar to a soap opera marathon. Nevertheless, Toth manages to enliven even these predictable love stories with innovative and inspired graphic solutions.

Toth was a real genius at visual storytelling, and in this chronologically arranged body of work one can witness his talents developing and improving over the course of the book. The writing of the stories, on the other hand, is nothing to get excited about. In most cases, the author’s name isn’t even mentioned in the accompanying notes, though the inker’s always is. Clearly Toth’s art is the main attraction here, and today’s comic art enthusiasts can surely find much to appreciate in his historic body of work. Beyond their importance in comic art history, however, can these stories really be enjoyed on their own merits? That all depends on how nostalgic you are for ‘50s romance.
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