Tuesday, April 8, 2014

THUNDARR Art by Alex Toth

A number of talented comics illustrators worked on the development of Ruby-Spears' 1980 sci-fantasy animated series, Thundarr The Barbarian. Among these were the legendary Jack Kirby and animation veteran Alex Toth. Toth, who had designed such quintessential animated action-adventure characters as Space Ghost and The Herculoids, was responsible for the design of post-Apocalyptic heroes Thundarr, Princess Ariel and Ookla the Mok.

Along with his design duties, the production company also had Toth draw up some Thundarr presentation pieces for the network, including this dynamic action artwork (which was probably originally in color - if anyone has a color scan, please send it along!). It's really too bad the limited budgets of network animation in those days didn't allow for this sort of dynamism on-screen!