Saturday, April 13, 2013

CHARLTON ACTION #11!

I picked up the first part of Ditko's STATIC book from Charlton. This was one of the last comics that Charlton published before they ceased operations and robbed Ditko of a reliable publisher. This was also one of the last relatively coherent books that Ditko would create. There was a hiatus after Charlton closed when the character did not see print, but eventually Ditko would see the adventures continue at Eclipse Comics.

The only time the book was published in color was during the two issues it appeared in CHARLTON ACTION COMICS #11 and #12. Having seen the character presented in both black & white and color, I have to say that I prefer it in color. I've already written a deeper essay on the character and the series, so I'll let that stand for now.


Two of the last superhero comics from Charlton.

4 comments:

Henry R. Kujawa said...

Thanks for posting. Never seen these before! I'll pass 'em on to Nick Simon; Ditko's his favorite artist.

I have read about this character, whose adventures were collected awhile back. One more thing for my ever-growing "git" list. (I got that phrase from Charles Schulz.)


"This is my 'GIT' list. Thiese all the things I wanna GIT for Christmas."
"Where's your GIVE list?"
"My WHAT?"
"Never mind..."

James Robert Smith said...

It's a good book. Ditko was at the tail-end of the height of his powers as an illustrator, and he went all out on this book. He obviously intended it as a more mainstream way to reach comic readers with his Ayn Rand propaganda. It's fun to read because the art is nice--some of it on a par with his Spider-man days--and the dialog and politics are so insane that it's unintentionally funny and completely bat-shit crazy.

The black and white stuff in the STATIC book that you can pick up from him now is good, but I was blown away when I finally saw it in color. Color is the way it SHOULD be seen. I'm not sure if any of the Eclipse books the Static story appeared in were in color. If so, I'll have to search them out.

Henry R. Kujawa said...

I don't think I've ever seen a single B&W comic from Eclipse, so I'd be very surprised if they WEREN'T in color.

James Robert Smith said...

If they're in color, I'm going to have to find and purchase them. Because the color versions of the story (at least as published by Charlton) are superior in every way to the black & white versions published by Ditko and Snyder.