Toth’s influence on the art of comic books is incalculable. As his generationwas 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 tographically strip it down its to its bare essentials. His efforts reached fruitionat Standard Comics, creating an entire school of imitators and establishingToth
as the “comic book artist’s artist.” Setting the Standard collects this highlyinfluential body of work in one substantial volume.
Toth began his professional career at fifteen in 1945 for Heroic Comics, butquickly advanced to superhero work for DC. Responding to the endless criticismof editor Sheldon Mayer and production
chief Sol Harrison, the youngartist strove toward a technique free of “showoff surface tricks, clutter, and distractingpicture 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 twoyears, contributing classic work for its crime, horror, science fiction, and
war titles. But perhaps most revelatory to thereader will be the romance collaborations with writer Kim Ammodt, Toth’s personal favorites. “I came to prefer themfor 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 beautyof 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 observationsregarding the comic book
form will be collected in an essay based on Toth’s published and unpublished lettersand interviews.Every page of Setting the Standard is restored to bring Toth’s unsurpassed graphics and page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.
