Alex Toth, a maverick figure in the comic book world whose mood-driven, highly stylized work influenced a generation of artists even though his strong-willed ways left him underused within the industry, died at his home in Burbank, Calif., on May 27 at his drawing table. He was 77.

Toth’s most enduring contribution to pop culture came through television, as his character designs for Hanna-Barbera Productions including “Super Friends,” “Space Ghost,” “Herculoids” and other heroic series of the 1960s and 1970s created signature images. His thousands of drawings for those series were used to pitch the shows or set the visual standards for animators and now are prized by collectors.

That lucrative but limiting work in animation came after decades of achievement and frustration in the comic book field, where Toth bounced from company to company.

Comics publisher and critic Gary Groth described Toth as an irascible figure with “rigid principles,” and a nuanced drawing style that didn’t always suit the bombastic story lines of comics.

Jack Kirby, the most famous comic book artist, created densely detailed landscapes of alien worlds that jumped off the page with kinetic fury; Toth’s genius was in composition, economy of line and quieter moments of suspense.

“Toth was one of the most brilliant artists ever in comic books, but also someone who was the odd man out in many ways, which made him bitter,” Groth said. “He was never associated with a particular character and he was pushed off to marginal titles.”

The restless Toth not only constantly changed his style with a zeal to learn more, he seemed to sabotage himself with personality conflicts with editors and harsh, public critiques of peers. In a 1970 interview with Graphic Story magazine, Toth said of his career: “I expected to have done a lot more with it than I have. I am my biggest disappointment.”

Toth was born in New York City on June 25, 1928, the son of a house painter. He developed his childhood love of sketching at the High School of Industrial Arts where, even before graduation, he was making money drawing short stories and small illustrations for “Heroic Comics.”

In 1947, he got a big break when Sheldon Mayer, an editor at DC Comics, hired the teen to do some work on Green Lantern and Dr. Mid-Nite. But Toth’s guiding passion was not heroes in tights; his style was shaped by Hollywood swashbucklers, the romanticized adventures in Milton Caniff’s “Terry and the Pirates” comic strip and, perhaps most powerfully, the vivid work of illustrator Noel Sickles in both magazines and the “Scorchy Smith” comic strip.

He sharpened his skills and, by 1950, had become “the finest artist that comics ever had,” as Gil Kane, his far more successful peer would write in a 1977 essay. Kane added: “His focus was on picture making and its elements, drawing, composition, pattern, tonal values, depth of field and shape. Toth’s investigation into stating form and design with utmost economy lifted the craftsmanship level of the entire field.”

By the end of the 1950s, after a stint in the Army, Toth settled in San Jose, a rare decision in the comics and cartoon industry that was intensely concentrated in New York. Working for Dell Comics, he became a specialist of sorts in titles that adapted television shows and film, among them “Sea Hunt,” “77 Sunset Strip” and, perhaps most memorably, his run on “Zorro,” based on the Disney TV series.

Far from Manhattan’s ink and paper community, Toth gravitated toward California’s animation opportunities. In 1964, by which time he had moved to Southern California, he did his first work for Hanna-Barbera, where his affinity for economical composition was put to good use.

“For 50 years he did what he wanted to do — smoke cigarettes, sit on the couch and draw,” his daughter Dana Palmer said. “But in his final year there was such a great spirit in him and he had made peace with everybody on Earth that he needed to make peace with.”