Steve Ditko had died as he lived, alone.
As I perhaps made not quite clear enough in my review of The Essential Doctor Strange, Ditko’s Doctor Strange is a stone cold classic, as good as his run on Spider-Man, or anything anybody else has ever done on a superhero series. He’d never quite reach those heights ever again; I blame his conversion to Objectivism. He was creative enough afterwards for Charlton, with Captain Atom, the revamped Blue Beetle, Nightshade and of course the Question, but like with the Creeper or The Hawk and the Dove at DC, they never quite caught fire. (Incidently, I never understood how Ditko could work for a mobbed up publisher like Charlton while preaching Objectivism and A=A.)
Instead it seems that post-Spider-Man, post-Doctor Strange, Ditko’s creations were at their best in other people’s hands. The Question went from staunch objectivist crime fighter to long haired liberal snowflake when Denny O’Neil and Denys Cowan got their hands on him –and worse, got him wearing eighties power suits– but he was a hell of a lot more interesting. The same with a late creation like Speedball, a failure in his own title, but as written by Fabian Nicezia, an excellent team player in New Warriors. And then there’s Squirrel Girl, surely the most unlikely of his creations to catch fire as she did.
Not a bad legacy to leave behind.
No Comments