Book Review - The Toxic Avenger: The Art and Making of the Movie

The Artbook Collector
Nov 11, 2025
5 min read

November 11th 2025

The Toxic Avenger made a return at Fantastic Fest in 2023 and then hit the big screen in 2025, bringing back the over-the-top character and gore the cult classic was known for. The new take on the mutant hero from Legendary Pictures was met with high praise and now fans can find out how the movie came together in the new book, The Toxic Avenger: The Art and Making of the Movie!

A copy has joined the collection courtesy of its publisher Titan Books and I’ve been able to dive into this book that comes with engaging content, but is not quite as advertised.

Build Quality

The book comes as a 28cm x 31cm oversized hardcover, bigger than most and the cover feels strong too. It has good quality paper inside and the binding works well, allowing the pages to fully open and lay flat. It has 160 pages, slightly lower than most books of this type, but this and the size of the book is certainly what helps the pages open nicely. It’s well-made and I like the cover too, the green of the logo and Toxie stand out on suitably the black background.

Content

This is where things get interesting, but I’ll start with the positives before pointing out the glaring issue with this release.

Author Dan Jolin has done a fantastic job, there is a huge amount of insights and details here, both through what he has written and through interviews with the team behind the movie. You get some fun and interesting commentary from Director Macron Blair, Producer Alex Garcia, Toxie actor Peter Dinlage, Toxie’s physical performer Luisa Guerreiro, Elijah Wood, and more.

These insights and interviews cover everything from how working on the movie began and the changes made to the character, to how the actors came on board, working with Millenium FX, and how it was filmed. It has pages for each character and location, which even includes the mutant bird, highlighting its puppetry and creation. The back of the book has a section on the visual effects and a chapter with the making of the original movie from creator Lloyd Kaufman, that is a very nice touch.

A chapter I was fond of was for Luisa Guerreiro and her physical performance as Toxie under the prosthetics. Appropriately noted as the star of the movie, it’s a wonderful testament to her performance, even with the conditions she worked under, such as extreme heat and having to wear an earpiece so she could actually hear people.

All of this comes with a huge amount of set photos, movie screenshots, and a look at the prosthetics. It highlights that the movie used as little digital effects as possible, going practical where they could. There is a chapter on the effects though, which does detail where CGI was used and notes that 200 digital shots were used where practical wouldn’t quite work. Film buffs and fans of the movie will like seeing the behind the scenes inclusions shown here and as a ‘Making of’ book it’s very good.

However, the book falls flat for me with what should have been a highlight—the art. Historically, even movie artbooks simply called ‘The Art of’ have been a 50/50 split of artwork and photos which can be misleading, but that’s what I hope to see in ‘The Art and Making of’, or at least a 70/30 divide. This book forgets its title though, because if you’re after concept art, especially for the characters, you’ll be left disappointed.

It almost feels disingenuous to review this as an artbook, because it clearly wasn’t the intent to be one as expected, but as it’s in the title and that was the reason for this review, it’s only fair to point out to that you don’t get that here.

To speak on what you do get, it’s mostly artwork for the locations and graphic design. You get some nice poster art and logos for the movie title and companies in the town of Tromaville. The location art consists of a look at interior room designs and ariel views of their layouts too. There is also a concept of the ‘Nutzmobile’, van of the band Killer Nutz, as well as some medical equipment concepts.

The most frustrating lack of art is for the characters, because there are only the 2 pieces seen below. Both are for Toxie and they aren’t large either. I was hoping there would much more as the designs are interesting in the movie. Now by far the biggest point of confusion is that concept art is actually mentioned for the characters… but not included. Blair did concept sketches for Monster Garbinger and the mutant bird for example, which just makes the whole thing even more odd and it’s clear this should have been called ‘The Making of the Movie’.

Blair is quoted as saying the following in the book; “Before we got a greenlight, there was a long period of time where I did a lot of my own concept art, just little sketches and watercolours.” Seeing these would have been great, but the book is very much focused on production design and set photos, with around a couple dozen concepts that are included amongst the hundreds of images used. It ultimately let me down from the art side, despite the title and description of the book.

Credits

The Toxic Avenger: The Art and Making of the Movie notes on the page that Vanessa Menendez and Millenium FX did the concept pieces for Toxie, but elsewhere the artist names are not included. It is likely that Millenium FX is responsible for most of the concepts, but without confirmation that is just a guess. It’s sadly inconsistent for the specific pieces that you see, despite there being so few of them.

Use of Space

The page design throughout is excellent and they are filled nicely too. You won’t find wasted space and they layouts vary from page to keep the book interesting. The large pages allow everything to printed at a good size and the backgrounds swap and change colours throughout to prevent it from being sterile, which wouldn’t suit a book for such an odd film at all. Overall, the team that worked on the page design did a fantastic job.

Value

The book comes with an RRP of $39.95/ £29.99 which is about right for the size and type of book this is. Titan Books have always had some of the most reasonable pricing and this is no different. As always, I compare the prices on Amazon for consistency and have seen that ahead of its release, it can already be found with 24% off in the UK, a big early discount. Nothing in the US, but prices do fluctuate and the UK is typically early to pull the trigger on price reductions. Even at full price though, those that loved The Toxic Avenger won’t feel overcharged, bearing in mind they are aware it’s primarily a ‘making of’ book.

Verdict

The Toxic Avenger: The Art and Making of the Movie delivers an in-depth look at this new take of Toxie, offering an interesting read and putting the spotlight on the teams and people that deserve the recognition. However, on the art side I felt let down by the lack of early concept art outside of graphic design and room interiors. To mention art and not show it doesn’t line up with the books title and description, making it only recommendable to those that are looking for production details, as opposed to a wealth of concept art that many would be expecting.

If you are interested in reading about the making of The Toxic Avenger, you can order the book here;