Loving the Fascist Loon

All comic fans know that the Silver Age of comics began when DC made a concerted effort to revive the superhero genre by redesigning The Flash in Showcase Comics. It was a success, soon spinning off into a renewed title. They then followed suit by reviving a newly realized Green Lantern which was equally successful. Then followed things like the Justice League, etc.

Estranged from his editor at DC, Jack Kirby had retreated to working at Martin Goodman's outfit (which was not then called "Marvel"). He had been trying to talk his editor is allowing him to create superheroes at the nascent Marvel the way they had done it at DC (including Kirby's Challengers of the Unknown). Finally, with Goodman threatening to shut down the comics arm of his publishing business, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were given the task of creating, writing, and illustrating a raft of new superhero characters.

Kirby, of course, created most of what we would later call the Marvel Universe; and Steve Ditko also made tremendous contributions.

But Spider-Man and Dr. Strange were not the first superheroes that Steve Ditko created for a publisher. A full year before Kirby changed everything with his Fantastic Four, his co-worker had already had a hand in creating a new superhero for Charlton Comics:

Captain Atom.

Captain Atom was a classic superhero transformed by radiation into something more than human. In his case, he was Allen Adam, a technician who, accidentally launched into orbit in an experiment craft, has his body destroyed, but whose existence is altered by radiation so that he is able to reform his atoms and consciousness. His powers were explained as being of nuclear energy origins and he quickly becomes a super-powered agent for the US government. (If this sounds familiar, Alan Moore slightly altered the story for his own version of Captain Atom as Doctor Manhattan in the comic book THE WATCHMEN.)

The creation is officially shared between writer Joe Gill and Steve Ditko. But I have always wondered about the details and know nothing of them. I can only surmise from the collaborations between the two how much credit should be attributed between them. Sometimes it is obvious in Ditko stories that are credited to Gill that he, in creating the dialog, had almost no idea what Ditko had written--for the dialog sometimes bears no relation to the illustrated story! This is not the case with the Captain Atom tales, with the dialog generally being logical to the sequential storytelling, if somewhat campy and sophomoric.

But one thing that does stand out in these stories is the right wing politics and subtle philosophy that comes through. This aspect of the comics makes them classic neo-Fascist Ditko polemics. Yes, most politics in late 50s and early 60s comic books was right wing, but Ditko's take on politics is almost unique in the industry. That wacky sense of the sociopath as hero does glimmer between the cracks. And so I am left wondering if the writing was actually all Ditko, with only the dialog being from Joe Gill.

It would, of course, be a familiar story for Ditko and Kirby very soon after.

My personal copies of Space Adventures starring Ditko's Captain Atom.

 

 

 

Fantastic (Ditko) Giants

Today I picked up a copy of one book that should have been a part of my collection a long time ago: FANTASTIC GIANTS. Illustrated by Steve Ditko and scripted by Joe Gill, it's a Charlton Comics publication. You can see on the cover where they announce Ditko's name that the company was trying to capitalize on the artist's burgeoning reputation as a fan favorite in those days (mid-60s).

The book is mostly reprints. It features the reprinting of KONGA #1 and GORGO #1, both books based on monster movies from some years earlier which had been adapted for comics form by Ditko and Gill. I already own both of those books, but not this reprint volume joining the two yarns. In addition, you get two new monster stories from Ditko (and, I presume, Joe Gill) that are probably much harder to locate.

The two non-film stories are "With the Help of Hogar" and "The Mountain Monster". The Hogar yarn is a classic Ditko-esque story featuring a twisted leader out to exploit his position with the addition of a monster which he controls. The other one is also a moral fable with a kind of Frankenstein's monster as the sympathetic protagonist. The art in both of these stories is more modern and refined than in either the Konga or Gorgo tales, showing off the evolution of Ditko's style since he'd first illustrated the film adaptations.

One reason I think that I never got a copy before now is that my dad just had so many of them in his back issue stocks. There seemed to have always been twenty to thirty of them floating around the store or warehouse when I was a kid. So I never really looked upon it as something rare or hard to find. Thus, my disdain of having a copy for so long.

The cover of my copy of FANTASTIC GIANTS.

The splash page for the Konga story.

Splash page for the Gorgo part of the book.

Classic Ditko monster. The same kind of story that he had done for so long at Goodman's outfit before he created Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.

Ditko's maturation as an artist is on display.

Golden Age Kirby

I landed another hard-to-find Golden Age Joe Simon/Jack Kirby comic for my collection. This one is WIN A PRIZE COMICS #1. Simon and Kirby were trying anything and everything in the years they were working to be largely independent creators. Buy the comic and send in your name and address for a chance to win a prize! I think this title was part of the material that Charlton Comics bought from Simon and Kirby when their own publishing scheme faded.

The title failed, but it's an interesting package. Contained are stories of war, science-fiction, mystery, humor, drama, classics. Included are the type of yarn that Kirby later did for Marvel that were claimed to have been written by his editor there. I'd laugh, but it's all too said.

I had initially purchased this comic with an eye toward re-selling it for a profit (I got a really good deal on it). However, it's such a neat book that I think I'll keep it as a permanent part of my Kirby collection.

The cover to my copy of WIN A PRIZE #1.

Simon and Kirby! I suspect Kirby inked this. Not sure.

What a wacky yarn! With typically wacky Kirby characters!

Charlton Sustains Ditko

I used to refer to Ditko's work in the 1970s and 1980s as his later period. Of course he has continued to work without interruption ever since, so I need to stop thinking of that period in his career in those terms. When Charlton Comics ceased publication, it had to be a tremendous blow to Ditko. He had worked for them since he had become a professional comic artist until they closed their doors. Their page rate was notoriously low, but Ditko could always be assured of steady work at Charlton. He did a lot of covers for them, and since they must have paid more for covers than interior art, Ditko could generate some income by doing those in quick order. You can see that the creativity and dynamism of his art was not affected by the corners he was obviously cutting when compared to his earlier work. But the fine detail was missing. A smart move for a draftsman seeking to finish a job and get on with the next task.

The books he did for Charlton during this period have been relatively easy for me to locate and purchase at reasonable prices in even higher grade. But I suspect that situation will change in the future, so I continue to buy the issues I need whenever I encounter them.

Mr. Ditko's Question

Ditko is one of those fellows who never stopped creating. Apparently he's still creating new comic characters even now, in his 80s. Jack Kirby's health finally slowed him down, but Ditko keeps finding ways to work through the physical limitations of old age to come up with original stuff.

After Ditko left Marvel he continued to come up with new, bankable characters. Almost everything he did after he left Marvel are still being utilized by the various publishers who own the rights to them. His version of the Blue Beetle was revived, as was the Creeper, the Hawk & Dove, etc.

The most personal of his creations that ended up out of his hands has to be The Question. Philosophically, the superhero character Question is very similar in many respects to the Ditko-owned character Mr. A. Unlike Mr. A, The Question was owned by Charlton Comics and fell into the hands of DC Comics. With DC, the character had a pretty long run in his own title, but I don't recall ever reading any of those. I probably cracked the covers now and again, but without Ditko at the helm, it just didn't interest me.

The Question is a classic Ditko work. The hero sees everything in black and white, good and evil, and is typically a Fascist (as most Ditko characters are). This makes for some queasy reading, but excellent storytelling.

Charlton flirted from time to time with superhero comics, but I'm not sure what their sales were like. Captain Atom had a long run and has stood the test of time. After Ditko left Marvel he worked quite a bit at Charlton trying to generate some momentum based on his then-status as a fan favorite. But, as we all know, comic book fans are notoriously fickle. That status apparently did not translate into further success at Charlton and DC, even though the characters and the stories were every bit as good as those he created and generated at Marvel.

To my knowledge, this is the only comic that Charlton produced that featured The Question. The entire book is devoted to the character, which was introduced as a back-up feature in one of Charlton's other superhero titles, The Blue Beetle. Classic Ditko philosophy on display. The work here is like a bludgeon, hammering away with rightist, neo-Fascist dogma. At Marvel, Ditko had to deal with his editor complaining that the Amazing Spider-Man comic had too much Peter Parker and not enough Spider-Man. So Ditko would have to create ways to bring Spider-Man into Parker's life. In this particular comic, without very much in the way of editorial interference, the superhero featured on the cover hardly shows himself at all! Most of the book is taken up by his alter ego, Vic Sage, an investigative journalist. Ditko would later use much the same tactics and scenarios in his feature at DC Comics, The Creeper.

Ditko's First Superhero?

All comic fans know that the Silver Age of comics began when DC made a concerted effort to revive the superhero genre by redesigning The Flash in Showcase Comics. It was a success, soon spinning off into a renewed title. They then followed suit by reviving a newly realized Green Lantern which was equally successful. Then followed things like the Justice League, etc.

Estranged from his editor at DC, Jack Kirby had retreated to working at Martin Goodman's outfit (which was then not called "Marvel"). He had been trying to talk his editor is allowing him to create superheroes at the nascent Marvel the way they had done it at DC (including Kirby's Challengers of the Unknown). Finally, with Goodman threatening to shut down the comics arm of his publishing business, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were given the task of creating, writing, and illustrating a raft of new superhero characters.

Kirby, of course, created most of what we would later call the Marvel Universe; and Steve Ditko also made tremendous contributions.

But Spider-Man and Dr. Strange were not the first superheroes that Steve Ditko created for a publisher. A full year before Kirby changed everything with his Fantastic Four, his co-worker had already had a hand in creating a new superhero for Charlton Comics:

Captain Atom.

Captain Atom was a classic superhero transformed by radiation into something more than human. In his case, he was Allen Adam, a technician who, accidentally launched into orbit in an experiment craft, has his body destroyed, but whose existence is altered by radiation so that he is able to reform his atoms and consciousness. His powers were explained as being of nuclear energy origins and he quickly becomes a super-powered agent for the US government. (If this sounds familiar, Alan Moore slightly altered the story for his own version of Captain Atom as Doctor Manhattan in the comic book THE WATCHMEN.)

The creation is officially shared between writer Joe Gill and Steve Ditko. But I have always wondered about the details and know nothing of them. I can only surmise from the collaborations between the two how much credit should be attributed between them. Sometimes it is obvious in Ditko stories that are credited to Gill that he, in creating the dialog, had almost no idea what Ditko had written--for the dialog sometimes bears no relation to the illustrated story! This is not the case with the Captain Atom tales, with the dialog generally being logical to the sequential storytelling, if somewhat campy and sophomoric.

But one thing that does stand out in these stories is the right wing politics and subtle philosophy that comes through. This aspect of the comics makes them classic neo-Fascist Ditko polemics. Yes, most politics in late 50s and early 60s comic books was right wing, but Ditko's take on politics is almost unique in the industry. That wacky sense of the sociopath as hero does glimmer between the cracks. And so I am left wondering if the writing was actually all Ditko, with only the dialog being from Joe Gill.

It would, of course, be a familiar story for Ditko and Kirby very soon after.

My personal copies of Space Adventures starring Ditko's Captain Atom.

Space Adventures 34, the second appearance of Captain Atom.

Space Adventures 35.

Space Adventures 36.

Space Adventures 37.

Space Adventures 38.

Space Adventures 40.

Space Adventures 42.

More Comics

I do collect other comics besides Silver Age Marvels by Kirby and Ditko. Today I landed a super-high grade copy of UNUSUAL TALES #25. Of course the reason I really wanted it is that it has art by Steve Ditko. He did the cover, plus the interior cover story. One exceptional thing about this copy is that it's in immaculate condition. It was sold to me as being in "Fine +" condition. Well, it is better than fine condition. A whole lot better--pretty close to near mint. I'm not into the practice of slabbing comics, but I might have to do that with this particular book.

I don't think Dikto ever really stopped working for Charlton until they went out of business. Even during the times when he was toiling away for Marvel and DC he was still producing creditable work for Charlton, although they paid much lower rates. It's been said he did the work for them because they gave him more editorial latitude. It could be. Hard to say.

I also got an acceptable copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #70. For some reason I had a hard time locating this book.

This is another of the generic villains that Kirby was willing to deliver up to his employers at Marvel. He was going to withhold the best stuff for his own projects from here on in. So instead of something like Doctor Doom or Black Bolt, the readers of the Fantastic Four got the Mad Thinker and one of his androids. In this case, the android was a big, green, faceless galoot. Pretty cool as such constructs go, but not something Goodman and Lee would likely be able to market for tons of money.

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.

The Later Ditko Years at Charlton

Some of the toughest Ditko items to find are actually some of the books he created later in his career. Steve Ditko worked for decades for Charlton Comics. The page rates there were far lower than with other companies, but the work was steady for him and so he kept at it, working for Charlton when other artists of his caliber would not have done so.

Most of the work he did for Charlton in the 1980s was very different from the kinds of things he had illustrated earlier in his career. Gone was the detail and the obvious expenditure of great labor into his pages. He still showed a definite brilliance for layout and continuity, but he was just doing a draftsman's job at this point and, to me, the heart was not there.

He could still shine brilliantly when he wanted to, but by and large this was just work to pay the bills, and you don't see much in the way of inspiration in the artwork that he did for Charlton during this stretch.

Still, it's Ditko, and just about anything he did is worth looking at, and worth having in my collection.

This book just has a Ditko cover, with no accompanying story by him.

This cover is a busy one and, to me, quite captivating. It strikes me as the kind of thing that would have been rejected in his days working under editor Stan Lee at Marvel, but which passed muster at the less exacting editorial oversight at Charlton.

Reminiscent of the kind of monster Ditko would cook up for Goodman in the old days at pre-hero Marvel.

And occasionally the kind of thing that reminded me of the work of Ditko's youth.

Before Marvel

In late 1959 and early 1960, at least a year before Jack Kirby talked Lee into allowing Kirby to create a new line of superhero titles for Marvel Comics, Steve Ditko was already doing that for the folk at Charlton Comics.

Charlton was a strange outfit. They did lots of comics, but I've never been able to figure if comic book publishing was ever profitable for them. They were mainly a printing company who churned out magazines. And they did comics to keep the presses running between jobs of producing the magazines which made them the real money. From what I hear it was easier to maintain the presses if they were constantly working.

The reputation at Charlton among creators was not wholly positive. They paid very low rates to creators and it was company policy not only to not return the artwork to the artists, but to destroy that very artwork once its purpose had been served in the printing process. But apparently there were some small advantages to working with them. They paid on time (even if the rates were low), they created a lot of work for writers and artists, and they didn't interfere much editorially with the folk making the comics. This would have been key for a guy like Steve Ditko.

Ditko seemed to be all about working. He was a creator who was being paid to illustrate. He had bills to pay and family to support. From everything I've read, he enjoyed the relative freedom of working for Charlton, and he did work for them right up until they closed up shop forever.

One of the characters Ditko created (or co-created) for Charlton was Captain Atom. The official history is that Joe Gill and Ditko created it together. But I've never read either of these guys opinions and history of Captain Atom. The character ran for a long time in various incarnations and was one of the superhero properties bought up by DC when they glommed all of Charlton's copyrighted intellectual property at auction. Captain Atom also was the source of Doctor Manhattan in the Alan Moore graphic novel, THE WATCHMEN.

So even before Kirby had succeeded in talking Goodman and Lee into allowing him to revamp Marvel into a superhero publisher, Ditko was already doing the same (to a lesser extent) over at Charlton.

My copy of SPACE ADVENTURES #36, with Captain Atom!

Trying to Start the Fire

Whenever I look at the comics that Steve Ditko produced for Charlton and DC just at the time he was leaving Marvel, I cannot get over the fact that it appeared that he was doing his damndest to rekindle the magic he'd conjured with Spider-Man.

His recreation of the old Blue Beetle character at Charlton was inspired, as was his character The Question. Both of them live on today not only as major properties at DC, but also as parodies from The Watchmen as envisioned by Alan Moore.

And when you look at The Creeper, it also seems obviously rigged to try to catch the mojo of Spider-Man. More than the brother team he pitched at the public called The Hawk & The Dove.

I think the problem was that each of these characters, with the possible exception of the Blue Beetle, were so philosophically heavy handed that the public just couldn't find anything attractive in them beyond Ditko's unique style of drawing and the iconic figures he created to house the fascist souls with which he invested them.

Still, they're all around these days. They pop up here and there. I haven't looked at the modern comic book scene in a long time, but the last time I checked it seemed that The Question still had his own title, and maybe even the Blue Beetle.

But for a time it looked as if Ditko could grab that brass ring one more time. Alas, lightning rarely strikes twice. Especially when it started a fire as bright and as intense as The Amazing Spider-Man.

BLUE BEETLE #1 from Ditko (at Charlton Comics). Another iconic costume, plus an enduring mystery man: The Question!

Ditko Charlton Books

I've been collecting Steve Ditko comics for a number of years, now. I try to get at least representative work from as many parts of his very long career as I can. He worked for so many of the comics publishers that there is quite a lot of material to choose from. He may not have ever been as productive as Jack Kirby, but he was still amazingly prolific.

One of the companies he worked for the most was Charlton Comics. In fact, Charlton could easily be the company for which he produced the most pages. They did not pay very well, but the work always seemed to be there when he needed it. And toward the end of the company's existence, they pretty much gave Ditko a free hand to do as he pleased with his own characters. Thus, we had something like STATIC by Ditko when he probably could not have created that title with any other major comics publisher during that time. STATIC is right wing crazed insanity with Ditko's wacky dialog intact. (I've covered that title in at least one other essay here, so I'll move on.)

One of the nicer things about the work he did for Charlton, especially during the 1980s, is that I can find most of these books for relatively low prices, even in very high grade. Charlton was probably the last major comics company to mainly sell comic books that featured very few superhero comics. It just wasn't their bag, and they were able to maintain some respectable sales figures with the kinds of comics that the other publishers had largely abandoned. Therefore, Charlton was still creating ghost comics and monster comics and TV tie-ins and such books when these were had to find from the other large players on the newsstands.

In recent years I've been able to pick up a number of Ditko-related Charlton comic books. It's one of the few companies for which he worked that I'm still able to find for very little expense.

Later Ditko work that displays the economy of his style that he developed in the 1980s.

An earlier work from a Ditko Charlton book. You can see that at this point he was still expending quite a lot of effort for what was probably not a lot of money. He cut down on this kind of economic silliness as he got older and wiser.

Mysterious Traveler Interiors

Good ol' Ditko!


I said that I'd try to post some interior shots from my latest acquisition to my Ditko collection, so here they are. I've picked out some striking images for review.


TALES OF THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER is classic stuff. The stories are all told from the point of view of The Mysterious Traveler. He's merely a foil, a dour character who recounts with impassive tone the things that he has observed. This kind of thing would appeal, I think, to the Objectivist tendencies of Mr. Ditko who was, I have been told, already under the influence of Ayn Rand's twisted philosophies by this time.


I was interested to see several things in this book. First of all, the inking is different from one story to the next (all penciled by Ditko) and I have to wonder if he inked them all himself, or if the pages were handed off to others to be inked. Or it could be just that Ditko wanted to experiment with various inking styles so that he could convey differing emotions from one story to the next. It's hard to say, since I don't have the critical eye, nor the knowledge of Charlton's artist stable at that time to say one way or the other.


One thing that I can say is that I'm really happy to have been able to add this book to my collection.

Ditko is well known for using the human eye as a motif in his work. Here we see that even in the mid-1950s he was already getting a lot of power by using this gimmick.


Ever true to his individualist tendencies, Steve Ditko managed to get his name featured in many of his stories and covers. It was important to him--unlike with many other artists of this period--to let the fans know who was creating this singular work.

The dour, emotionless Traveler as narrator. Just the facts, ma'am.

Ditko had a stable of interchangeable physical types that he used often over the course of his career in mainstream comics. Faces and forms that conveyed a certain kind of personality. This one, a precedent to the character we later knew at Frederick Foswell from The Amazing Spider-Man.


The character of "the old fool" was a deceptively simple display of Ditko's talent as an artist. Only someone with a great understanding of anatomy and physics could have so simply illustrated an old man bent by toil and years in so effective a manner. You can also see why this story would have appealed to a guy like Ditko and made him expend perhaps just a little more effort than Charlton's low page rate would justify. Here we see the individual as wise, while the masses are nothing more than a mindless mob: this attitude is the template of the fascist mind.

I have the impression that Ditko inked this one, but it's a lot different from the simpler style used in some of the other stories in this little volume. Once again, the comic art fan cannot be but impressed at the brilliance of Ditko when it came to putting emotion and power into each and every panel of a simple story.