Simple but not easy. Dissecting a comic panel by ALEX TOTH

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:01]Welcome back to my channel and welcome back to another installment of penalysis. This is the video series where we look at one particular panel of comics and analyze it, dissect it, and appreciate everything that is great about it and bring some of that excitement and energy into our own work, hopefully. In this episode, we're going to be looking at a panel from Alex Toth, one of the greatest to ever draw comic book panels. And we're going to be looking at that panel in all of its glory from this Bravo for Adventure Artist Edition. So, we get to see the panel at full-size artist edition version, the best way to really appreciate comic art, in my opinion.

[00:00:44]I look at a lot of original art from artist editions on this channel because for me, I'm just really inspired by looking at original comic art and I noticed that for you guys watching out there, there's a real resurgence and appreciation for original comic art.

[00:01:02]Just making artwork in general by hand on paper with pens and pencils and all that good stuff. And if you happen to be an artist like me who has been spending less time drawing on a screen, moving much more back into the traditional way of making art, you might really appreciate the sponsor of this video, Eon Art Products. I've been using the Eon Bristol board paper for a while now and I'm really loving it, especially on this whole journey of drawing traditional again. It feels so great to like draw comics on a sheet of paper, get ink on my hands, be able to hold up an original page of comic art and really kind of feel like accomplished at the end of it. Working on paper with traditional tools has really pushed me to to go deeper into my process and understand how to make comics and illustration again in a much more efficient kind of way. And working with really great paper is a big part of that process. Eon offers a variety of different types of Bristol board paper.

[00:02:12]You have the vellum finish, which is what I prefer, the smooth finish, which is what some comic artists really like to draw on. And then they also have the blue line pre-ruled comic art boards, which are really great for specifically drawing comics. It really gives the page and the whole process of drawing comics that really like professional touch. It feels like official when you're drawing on those pre-ruled pages. Eon also offers inks, sketch cards for all of you convention artists out there who offer sketch card commissions. They have a really great website where you can just peruse and see what they have to offer.

[00:02:52]I will leave a link to that website in the description of this video. And I want to thank them for sponsoring this video.

[00:03:02]>> [music] >> So, the thing about making these penalizes videos is there's like a a challenge to it, which is that I think of the artist that I want to talk about and then I try to pinpoint a panel of theirs that might encompass everything that is great about them. And then I start going through various comics and panels that they have drawn and the challenge isn't trying to find a great panel. The the challenge is trying to narrow all of their great panels down to just one. And when looking at Alex Toth, I could make a different penalizes video on like, I don't know, 70 or 80 panels within this book. But I try to pick a panel that allows us on this channel to talk about a certain technique, a certain approach that hopefully we can be inspired by and and maybe take a bit of that into our own work and and hopefully that the panel can also like answer some questions, bring up some other topics and have some really good like jumping off points from.

[00:04:06]And so I've had this artist edition now for probably about a year or so and I've looked through it many times and every time I crack it open I get really inspired by it. But there is one particular panel in here that really stands out to me and seeing it in like artist edition form at this size has been really like inspiring and kind of like thought-provoking as well every time I look at it. So this is the panel that I want to share. As far as a video goes this might be a difficult panel to like sell to get people's attention. There's really nothing flashy about it. And I think that's sort of like how you would describe Alex Toth's work at large. He's often been described as the artists' artist and I feel like this panel that we're going to look at in this video is very much for the artist. So for you diehards out there, you practitioners perhaps out there, you might enjoy this one. We could kind of nerd out and get into the weeds.

[00:05:07]So when I was younger I used to really love Batman The Animated Series. It was my favorite cartoon growing up and I would watch an episode and I would be like so inspired and want to like draw afterwards because that cartoon was so dark in terms of visuals. There was like a night sky, moonlight. I would go to my paper and have my pencils and maybe some pens or something like that and the challenge that I would always run into would be how do I draw something and make it look like it's dark, look like it's night time the way they make it look in the TV show.

[00:05:44]And the interesting thing is is that to this day I still find that to be a challenge. My very early childhood inclinations were to make the whole page dark. But would I make it dark with colored pencil or would I just pour ink on it? Not too many artists, at least not the ones I was looking at in the 90s when I was growing up, were really literally just blacking out the sky. A lot of the night time effects were done with color. There was shadows and shading that were in consideration of for instance like a moonlight or something like that. But when I got introduced to Alex Toth's work, he was able to approach it so seemingly simply.

[00:06:24]Like yeah, it's dark out. It's a dark sky, so it's just going to be black.

[00:06:29]Seems simple, but the simplest way is often times the hardest way to execute.

[00:06:34]And so I wanted to key in on this particular panel because not only is he drawing a black sky to indicate night time, but he's also drawing black silhouettes on top of that black sky. It seems like a impossible task and something that most of us would try to avoid at the risk of turning the whole panel into like a black inky muddy mess.

[00:06:58]Alex Toth though somehow or another is always able to make clarity out of what would otherwise seem to just be counter intuitive to most of us. The story indicates that the main character here is encouraging everyone to turn on their headlights. All the cars behind him.

[00:07:18]Because of that, he is able then to have this light source coming from behind the characters creating this kind of like halo around them. So the halo itself serves as a very functional action, which is the light that is shining behind them. From a design perspective though, it allows Alex Toth to create this outline, this white outline that separates the figures from that very black night sky.

[00:07:46]The interesting thing is is that a lot of times Alex Toth is not afraid of going black into black. He was very good at strategically placing objects and figures against a black background in a way where you don't need to draw any kind of halo or outline to separate the two.

[00:08:07]Looking at it here in this artist edition version is really cool, too, because you get to see how he's drawing this not in this very precise, ruled-out kind of way where the white outlines and and light sources are very sharply carved out. It's It's kind of blotchy and you can tell he's kind of doing this on the fly, the way a painter might black in darks and lights. The The heavy-handed way that he's going about adding the shadows and the lights to this panel, it keeps it feeling organic and figurative.

[00:08:42]I really love the way as the characters recede further and further back, they become almost like abstract shapes. Yet, they read so clearly as figures.

[00:08:54]One of the other things that this panel highlights really well is Alex Toth's great ability to design strong characters, very recognizable characters. That might sound weird because you don't really see anyone's face clearly or body in this panel. But, what you do see are very strong, recognizable silhouettes.

[00:09:16]Alex Toth, as many of you who are familiar with his work, would know, was someone who comes from the animation world as well as comics. He worked doing a lot of the character designs for those old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Those character design sheets are works of art really within themselves. But, he had a really great sense of strong character designs, strong character outlines, recognizable faces, and strong silhouettes. And this character, I think his name is Jesse Bravo, is a very kind of like realistic-looking character. He really evokes like an old old-school like action-adventure movie star. But, even as semi-realistically as he's drawn, he's still drawn with very like simple shapes and has a very iconic and recognizable outline and silhouette. So much so that it reads very clearly as that main character in this panel, where he's completely silhouetted. All you see is his profile, but because he's drawn so consistently throughout the comic and Alex Toth has created such a recognizable face shape and body shape that drawing him in this completely blacked-out way is still just as recognizable. So, Alex Toth is definitely showing off that skill set on full display in this panel as well. Same goes for the female character, too.

[00:10:42]She has a very recognizable hair shape and hair-do that's drawn very consistently throughout the comic, so that when he has to draw her completely blacked-out like that, it's still recognizable as her and not just some random woman.

[00:10:58]Like I said, this is kind of a challenge this video to to pick a panel that isn't very flashy or visually descriptive in a very like traditional sense. So, for those of you who hung in there and stuck with me through the analyzing process of this very different kind of panel, congrats. I hope you got something out of it. I think it's a really great excuse to talk about some of these more like in the weeds types of concepts that come up when we're drawing comics. And I feel like Alex Toth is one of those artists that we can always kind of like refer back to. If there's a challenge that you might be wrestling with right now, chances are he figured out a way to tackle that challenge at some point in his career and and figured out the the most efficient and and simple way of going about that challenge.

[00:11:50]So, that's it for this episode of Panel Analysis. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you really dug this one. It's always fun to look at a particular panel of comics, especially when it's Alex Toth. If you enjoyed this one, let me know what you thought about it in the comments below. If you like the channel and you haven't subscribed, please do subscribe to the channel. Also, if you like the channel and you want to keep the channel going, uh consider signing up for the Patreon. These videos are really fun. They do also take of time and energy and I can certainly use all the support I can get in terms of being able to continue making videos like this on a regular basis. And if you're a fan of the channel and you want to help support the channel, the Patreon really is a great place to do that. I'll put a link in the description of this video where you can sign up for the Patreon.

[00:12:41]There's different rewards, too, for whatever tier you sign up on. So, if you're interested and you want to consider it, I will leave a link in the description. You can check it out there.

[00:12:51]Also, I'm doing portfolio reviews. If you are an artist out there and you want to get some feedback and insight from a professional, I've learned a thing or two in my years of making comics and illustration and I'm happy to offer whatever knowledge and insight that I might have gained over the years. So, sometimes that very like unbiased objective feedback can be really helpful. If you're interested in that, there will be a link in the description of this video where you can sign up for one of those as well.

[00:13:21]Once again, I want to thank Eon Art Products for sponsoring this video. If you are on the hunt for some really great paper to draw on whether you're just making illustrations or you want to draw your comics. Eon paper is definitely the paper that I would recommend. They got some really great paper there and like I said they got a lot of other products on their website as well. So if you're interested I will leave a link in the description where you can pick up some Eon art products as well. Thanks again for sponsoring this video. And that's all I got for this episode. As always, thanks so much for watching. I'll catch you in the next one. Take care.