steve Ditko

Published on July 7, 2018Leave a comment

Steve Ditko had died as he lived, alone.

Dormammu takes on Eternity, courtesy of Steve Ditko

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.)

Squirrel Girl

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.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 11: Essential Spider-Man vol 2

Published on September 21, 2010

cover of Essential Spider-Man Vol. 2

Essential Spider-Man Vol. 2
Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, John Romita and friends
Reprints: Amazing Spider-Man #21-43, Annual 2-3 (Februari 1965 – December 1966)
Get this for: Lee, Ditko & Romita on Spider-Man– five stars

After finishing Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1 I needed to finish the rest of the Lee-Ditko run on Amazing Spider-Man, so onwards to Vol. 2 I went. This includes the last eighteen issues plus annual Ditko worked on the title, as well as the first few of John Romita as his replacement. The changeover from the stylistic mastery of Ditko to the much more conventional prettiness of Romita is jarring and when read straight after each other, Romita comes off looking the lesser artist, almost bland even. Not that he’s a bad artist of course, but he lacks the personal investment Ditko brought to Spider-Man.

The story of why Ditko left Amazing Spider-Man is well known of course: he objected to taking the Green Goblin and make him into somebody in Spidey’s supporting cast like Stan Lee wanted him to be as that would make for a better story, rather than having him just be a nobody as Ditko wanted as that fit his philosophy of crime (heavily influenced by Ayn Rand) better. Ditko quit with the issue in which Lee wanted the big reveal rather than compromise his principles, Romita was brought in and Spider-Man would never be the same again. So much of what would make Spider-Man Spider-Man later on was only brought in after Ditko left, the most important perhaps being a certain little gal called Mary Jane Watson! (One risk of reading these volumes back to back is having Lee’s speech patterns rub off on you. But that’s a risk I’m taking for you, the dedicated reader. (See what I mean?))

With Romita Spider-Man went even more into soap opera, lost some of the easy humour of the Ditko days as Peter Parker’s struggles were taken more seriously and the cast was expanded. For most of Ditko’s run there’s only a relatively small supporting cast: Flash Thompson and Liz Allen plus unnamed hangers on at Peter’s high school; Jolly Jonah Jameson, Betty Brant and Frederick Foswell at the Daily Bugle, plus of course Aunt May. Even Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy only come into the picture at the end of the Ditko issues. With Romita on board, the cast becomes bigger and more important. It’s quite a difference.

Moving back to why Ditko left the series, it has been interesting to see, knowing his reasons, how he had been weaving his thoughts on crime and the losers who commit in the series before. In the previous volume there was the crime boss The Big Man, who Spider-Man suspected was actually Jameson himself only for him to turn out to be Foswell, while this volume has the saga of the Crime-Master, where Spidey is again wrong in his suspicions, now thinking Foswell has gone back to his old ways when it turns out it’s somebody he actually never saw and nor did we. In both cases it turns out our ideas of who could be this big, important villain don’t matter as they turn out to be nobodies, which is what Ditko wants us to learn about crime. With the Goblin he had been careful never to show his face before and was on his way to repeat this trick, but Lee had other plans. A pity in one way, though Lee had a good case that storywise, it’s more satisfying to have the revelation of the Goblin’s identity be more meaningful. In the end, because Norman Osborn is only introduced a few issues before anyway, any shock value of his being the Green Goblin is slight.

One of the strangest stories in this volume is issue 24, where Spidey thinks he’s going mad because he keeps seeing hallucinations while some psychatrist has written an op-ed in the Bugle that he must be insane to be Spider-Man. It’s not the story itself which is strange, as the logic behind the premise. Even before Spidey sees things, the mere mention that a psychiatrist has declared him insane was enough for him to doubt his sanity. That’s the kind of childlike logic more suited to a Superboy story, where any autority is always immediately believed by the hero and his friends, no matter how ludicrous.

Ditko or Romita, Spider-Man is addictive. I have to imagine what it would’ve been like to read these issues straight from the newsstand back in ’65, having to wait a month to read the conclusion of the Master Planner story, Ditko’s zenith on the series. So good to be able to just flip the page and start reading.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 10: Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1

Published on September 20, 2010

cover of Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1

Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1
Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and friends
Reprints: Amazing Fantasy #15, Amazing Spider-Man #1-20, Annual 1 (August 1962 – january 1965)
Get this for: Duh Lee & Ditko on Spider-Man– five stars

The problem with talking about the stories in Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1 is the same as with talking about the first Fantastic Four volume. Many of the stories have been reprinted, recapped, retold so often that you think you know them, until you read them all cover to cover in one sitting again and discover that actually, Lee and Ditko were actually quite funny.

Not to take away from the superheroics of course, as so many classic Spidey villains are introduced here — The Vulture, Chameleon, Doctor Octopus, Electro, Mysterio, Sandman, The Lizard, Scorpion and of course Green Goblin — but the best thing in these stories is the soap opera that takes place around it. It’s all much, much less serious than it would be later on. Lee and Ditko delight in making Peter Parker suffer for being Spider-Man; if it isn’t his aunt May’s health and money problems it’s the kids at school thinking him a coward or Jolly Jonah Jameson’s latest editorial turnign the city against him again. But they don’t pile on the problems like later writers would do and always balance it with a sense of humour. Peter is still able to laugh at himself and his troubles. Some of the scrapes Spidey finds himself in are clearly played for laughs too, as with his teamups/ongoing rivalry with the Human Torch.

Ditko’s art is a great help with this: fluid and expressive, especially with faces. It’s his composition and exegerrated, elongated figures that tend to get the attention, but the way Ditko can show subtle emotions in his faces here is just as impressive. This is something that’s sadly been lost with Ditko over the years as he’s withdrawn in his Randroid fantasies and his art became somewhat of a parody of himself. But here it’s alive and well and never as developed elsewhere. Compare e.g. with the Dr Strange stories Ditko worked on at the same time, where soap opera and characterisation where much less important. The page on the right is the last page of Amazing Spider-Man #7, a nice example of how Ditko can portray both subtle and broad emotion on the same page naturally. It reads even better in black and white, where you’re not distracted by the colours.

On the whole I’ve found that Ditko is an artist whose work, even though meant for colour publication, benefits a lot from black and white representation, much more so than some artists (as do Gil Kane and Jack Kirby). Some artists depend on colour, work with it to give coherence to their drawings, while with Ditko his style is much more clear if left uncoloured.

I should not forget Ditko’s feel for action either. His fight scenes are great, with constant movement, figures jumping around, goons flying everywhere, punches thrown, Spidey ducking and weaving through four, five villains, caught mid-way through a jump, with the action always towards the reader. He creates a feeling of energy and movement few other artists can match while never using layout trickery or even much sound effects (something rare in Silver Age Marvel anyway). Lee meanwhile, of course plasters his dialogue all over this action, but does so without obscuring it or stating the obvious. It’s completely unnatural, but the way Lee brings it, it feels like the most normal thing in the world to comment out loud in the middle of a fight on what you’re trying to do and what your opponent is doing. If you want one example, go find Spider-Man #19 and Spidey’s and the Torch’s fight with Sandman and the Enforcers.

It is all great, great stuff and anybody should take the time to at least read through these — and the eighteen more Lee and Ditko would do together.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 04: Incredible Hulk Vol 1

Published on September 14, 20101 Comment

cover of Essential Incredible Hulk vol 1

Essential Incredible Hulk Vol. 1
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Gil Kane and friends
Reprints: Incredible Hulk #1-6 & Tales To Astonish 60-91 (May 1962 – Arpil 1967)
Get this for: historical value rather than entertainment — Three stars

The Incredible Hulk was the second superhero title an still embryonic Marvel Comics would bring out, as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby hoped to make lightning strike twice after the succes of the Fantastic Four. Instead it was cancelled after only six issues and the Hulk would remain without his own series for more than a year, when he got a stint as the backup feature in Tales to Astonish. If you wonder why the Hulk failed to catch on when the Fantastic Four was such a succes, wonder no more: those first six issues are awful. Lee’s not so much writing, as overwriting the series, the plots are pedestrian and the whole gimmick of the series doesn’t work.

The idea behind the Hulk is great, an updated Jeckyl and Hide with the shy brainy scientist morphing into the monster-hero whenever he gets excited, the execution is just lousy. It’s obvious Stan Lee couldn’t quite make his mind up what to do with the Hulk, make him into a real villain or keep him as the same sort of easily angered anti-hero like the Thing, but it’s all a far cry from the fundamentally innocent childlike nature of the “classic” Hulk. The setting doesn’t help either, much too claustrophobic, each issue’s story having to be set around the army’s continuing hunt for the Hulk and Bruce Banner attempts to keep his being the Hulk a secret. And then there are the villains. The Fantastic Four had the Mole Man, the Skrulls, Miracle Man, the Sub-Mariner and Doctor Doom in its first six issues: Hulk has a Russian spy called the Gargoyle, the Toad Men, Ringmaster, Tyrannus and the Metal Master. It’s no contest, is it?

Once the Hulk returns, in Tales to Astonish, things start picking up. For a start, instead of Kirby as the artist, who made the Hulk too monstrous, it’s Steve Ditko, whose more fluid style fits the Hulk better. Kirby does return later, but by then the Hulk’s look has already been established. Still later there’s Gil Kane, who has an angular, elongated style just as effective as Ditko’s, if completely different.

The writing starts picking up as well. Having less space helps, forces Lee to cut some of the fat, while by now he has a much firmer handle on who the Hulk is supposed to be. A monster sure, but one who is kind at heart, just misunderstood by the world around him. There’s also more continuity between the stories, breaking away from the whole “hide from the army” aspect of the earlier series, though that’s still present as well. You got a great villain in the Leader (starting from Tales to Astonish #63), another man mutated by gamma radiation like the Hulk but who has gotten super intelligence rather than superstrength. You also got two other classic villains in this volume: the Boomerang (TTA #81) , later better known as a Spider-Man villain and the Abomination (TTA #90), an even more hideous gamma ray monster than the Hulk even…

There’s also some sloppiness however. At one point the Hulk is transported into “the future”, where he ends up fighting the Executioner who is trying to conquer the world for some reason best known to himself, but after two issues of doing so he drops back into the present, the Executioner forgotten. In a similar way Rick Jones, the Hulk’s teenage sidekick is a prisoner of the army in one issue, a free boy the next with no explenation other than having general Thunderbolt Ross (the Hulk’s nemesis and father of Bruce Banner’s love interest Betty Ross) instructing his men to keep an eye on him…

So: the incredible Hulk stories are boring, the Tales to Astonish ones are fun if sloppy at times, neither is the best Marvel’s Silver Age had to offer. Not quite an essential volume then, if interesting in seeing how the Hulk is developed, not quite the character we all know yet.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty days 01: Dr Strange v1

Published on September 11, 20101 Comment

Essential Dr Strange Vol. 1
Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and friends
Reprints Strange Tales #110, #111, #114-168 (August 1963 — May 1968)
Get this for: the complete Ditko-Lee Dr Strange — Five stars

I bought my fiftieth Marvel Essential this week, most of which I’ve bought this year ever since a local remainder shop has been stocking them for less than half of their normal price. It’s been great to be able to buy these huge chunks of Marvel’s Silver Age and Bronze Age history for a price you couldn’t buy two modern comics for. To celebrate I thought I’d do some quick reviews of all of them: Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days. And I’ll start with Doctor Strange.

Essential Doctor Strange vol 1 has the complete run of Doctor Strange in the original Strange Tales, from #111 to #168, including the full run of Steve Ditko. Strange Tales was a split title, with The Human Torch and later Nick Fury, Agent of Shield in the front and Doctor Strange as the backup feature. He started out in a couple of five pages stories, then moved up to eight pagers and by the end of the volume has twelve pages to have his adventures in. A lot happens in these short stories, but there’s much less of the soap opera typical of other Silver Age Marvel titles. In fact, the early Doctor Strange doesn’t feel like a Marvel title at all.

Take the first story. It starts with a man suffering from nightmares recalling hearing about how Doctor Strange could help with situations like this. He goes to visiti him, Strange infiltrates his dreams and it turns out Nightmare is behind the guy’s troubles, attempting to lure Strange. into his own realm. While Strange is held off by Nightmare, his pawn wakes up and realises why he was having terrible dreams: he’s been ripping people off in crooked business deals. He decides to kill Doctor Strange, but luckily the latter manages to use his magical amulet to stop him. It ends with Nightmare making threats to get Strange another time, while the good doctor convinces his patsy to turn himself in: “it will be the only way you can ever sleep again”.

Now this is the sort of strange mystery story you could also picture The Phantom Stranger starring in, somewhat of a throwback of what Marvel was doing just before they got into superheroes. It’s also clear that this is far from Doctor Strange’s first case: he’s well known enough that there are rumours about him and people know where to find him to get his help. No origin is given either, which makes him about the only classic Silver Age Marvel hero not to get their origin in their first story. It’s only in the fourth story that we do get the origin story, of how he once was a great surgeon until a car accident, drunk himself into vagrancy and went looking through the Far East to find a mystical solution for his problems but find himself training as a sorceror under the Ancient One instead… Again, not quite fitting in with the science orientated origins of most of Marvel’s other heroes.

What I liked about this volume was seeing Doc Strange being developed by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, how seemingly throwaway references to e.g. Dormammu gets picked up later, culminating into the sixteen issue epic battle between Strange and Baron Mordo/Dormammu which ends Ditko’s run. At this point we’re still only halfway through the volume, with the last Ditko free third being so much less interesting, much more pedestrian superheroics. If you read through this volume in one sit, it’s clear that whatever Lee’s contribution to things, it was Ditko who was the creative force behind Doc Strange. The art as well, though in the hands of capable artists like Bill Everett, Marie Severin and Dan Adkins is a huge letdown after Ditko.

Dormammu takes on Eternity, courtesy of Steve Ditko

What Ditko did with Doctor Strange was create the way in which every subsequent artist would depict magic, creating a whole visual language so to speak to depict other dimensions, magical spells, psychic duels and so on. And he does so while staying firmly within normal panel layouts, not resorting to trickery like breaking panel borders, or unusual layouts or even that many splash pages. It’s all there in the usual three-two-two or three-three-three layout. But when he does do a rare splash page, it’s a beauty, as you can see above…

In short: a great volume of which the last third is not very essential.