Wednesday, December 26, 2007

The Alex Toth Reprint Stocktake Part 9: Chilling Tales and Haunted Tales #19

If, like me, you’re keeping track of all the Alex Toth reprints in the Australian K.G. Murray comics, then like me, you’ll be interested to discover Chilling Tales, a one-off issue, reprints “Eternal Hour!”.

But don’t get too excited, because before too long, like me, you’ll stumble across one of the best-kept Toth secrets in the land of KGMania – Haunted Tales #19, which features no less than three Toth reprints:

Computerr from The Witching Hour #8, May 1970
The Turn of the Wheel! from The Witching Hour #3, July 1969
Eternal Hour! from The Witching Hour #1, February-March 1969

I’m not going to wax lyrical about the sheer beauty and inventiveness of Toth in some of these pieces. Suffice to say that if you’ve ever marvelled at Toth’s art, chances are you’ll find something else, something more, something new to appreciate in these samples.

But be aware in the middle of the three instalments is the underwhelming spectacle of Toth inked by the one and only Vince Colletta!

2 comments:

Fat Boy said...

Toth wasn't an easy penciler to ink but from the stories Vince Colletta inked, I'd say that he did just about the best job of it.

spiros xenos said...

Yes, that may be true, but even that sounds a bit like a back-handed compliment...

I'm not really interested in bagging Colletta. For the record, I believe he could be quite a fine artist, for example on some 1950's romance comics I've seen, and I appreciate his inking over Kirby on Thor even though many don't rate it... but, as I understand it, Colletta also hacked it out when required to do so, and this has, understandably, affected his reputation.

But specifically regarding the inking on Toth in the example discussed above, it does not help Colletta's cause that it appears flanked by two full-on Toth jobs, which just makes his contribution look second-rate in the context.