Dave, John H, etc....all lost in a time warp somewhere. Since there seems to be only a few of us left here I will respond to myself. Hey James, and did you notice that the word balloons on this story have odd tails within the balloon, aiming in the direction of the speaker. And the misanthropic bent of this story reminds me of the content ofsome of Toth's letters...

The one thing I would have to take exception to is the word "misanthropic", James. Ol' Alex could be curmudgeonly but he wasn't misanthropic, he took a genuine interest in other people and was often very generous and was certainly generous with his time.

Hey James, I also noticed those weird balloons tails, strange but finally really functional!!! on the other way, the pages are full of space, white is making his way very easily through the page. I love that story for its graphics/style, Toth is at his best in that simplification process, really powerfull storytelling. If there's something to learn from Toth, that story and many others from the 80's are a good start!
Dave, glad to see you here again!
Nicolas

Hi, James, Nic!
Those balloons remind me of several stories Alex did in the Seventies and Eighties where he played with balloons as part of the design and layout -- my favorite examples are in the Fox stories for Red Circle/Archie but you can see it in a lot of other stories from the period.
I can't recall ever asking him about this particular one.
Was it a Warren story? If it was it could be that the little dart lines weren't actually done by Alex -- I couldn't mention Warren without him going off on how often he felt tampered with -- most of the times when white typography appears on black boxes he did not do that, it was done by an editor and he was furious about it.
Anyway, the ballons here and in those Fox stories do a lot for keeping the eye moving and getting a sense of progression through space.
Alex was a director -- he cast characters in the stories and moved them to best effect -- he staged balloons that way, too, so that they move to the best effect, whether to move the action across the stage or to convey the action.

The main character reminds me of Dirk Bogarde as the pederast in Visconti's Death in Venice, dying on the beach with his makeup running down his face.

This story came out at the dawn of the AIDS crisis, perhaps Toth was purposefully making this guy seem like a repressed queen.

I don't know if Archie Goodwin's issues had reared yet when he wrote this, but it certainly approaches illness with intensity, for instance that scene with the guy furiously hating on the young roller skaters.

James

I remember seeing the original art to this story. Alex sold it in Greensboro NC at my small convention back in 1985. They are all marker with some balcks in ink put in. And I think they were half up size.
And yes, they were $100 a page.

That last story has some face drawings that remind me of Mort Drucker.

I noticed that myself, especially page 7, panel 5. Perhaps Mort assisted him on this one. The hand on that panel is all Toth, though. On page 3, panel 3, the character on the far left looks as if drawn by Jack Sparling

-benton
http://bentonjewart.blogspot.com/