The Final Issues (Amazing Spider-Man #36-#38, Annual #1 and #2.

And here they are, the last of my copies of The Amazing Spider-Man, by Steve Ditko. Although the character as here seen was created by Steve Ditko, written by Steve Ditko, Penciled by Steve Ditko, and inked by Steve Ditko, ownership of this property was stolen by his publisher. Today, it generates--quite literally--billions of dollars in profits. Of that, the character's creator receives virtually nothing. Most people who read the modern comics and see the films starring the character are unaware of who Steve Ditko is, much less that he was the man who created the character they so adore.

Yes, I know that there are greater crimes committed in this world. But this is a crime, and the fact that it goes not only unpunished, but is rewarded only increases the injustice of it.

Continued from #30-#35.

I'm not sure what was going on with the issues directly after the Master Planner storyline. However, it seems relatively clear to me that Ditko was going out of his way not to create much in the way of new characters for Marvel Comics. I will assume that he had decided to take his leave of Goodman and Lee, but may have been hedging his bets and hoping that they would do the right thing. (No chance.) In this story we are yet again greeted by a cookie-cutter villain, the Meteor Man. This guy gets super strength due to his exposure to a pocket of mysterious gas trapped inside a meteor that he is examining in a museum (where he works). He does have an added gadget of a helium balloon in a backpack that he can activate and escape from the scene of a crime. Spider-Man kicks his ass and turns him over to the cops.

Recall what I said about Ditko hedging his bets? Well, with this one he was turning his hand to deepening the mystery of the Green Goblin and was hinting at future developments and giving us more clues as to who he might really be. And the Goblin's genius henchman here has developed some advanced robotics that he uses to try to defeat Spider-Man, including an amoeba-like robot that has to be one of the coolest ever created for comics. But apparently between this issue and the next, the proverbial shit hit the fan and Ditko was ready to walk.

Ditko didn't even deliver a cover for this, his final issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. Or if he did, perhaps Lee rejected it and it was never used. However, I've always thought that this was a pretty darned cool cover and it attracted me like crazy when I saw it on the newsstand at the local drugstore in my neighborhood in Decatur, Georgia. So much so that I bought it instead of waiting to get it for free from my dad's bookstore. They created the cover by taking images and panels from interior Ditko illustrations and putting them on the cover. It works. I did an essay on this book once before, but I may do another one.

 

This book is pure fun. And it was a really HUGE comic book. The heft of it is impressive when compared to annuals from later years. They really packed it with great material, most of it new. Ditko delivers lots of pinups and various inside information about Spider-Man and Peter Parker. Plus the new story wherein Spider-Man battles six of his most dangerous foes.

Although a brief story, the new one in this annual is one of my favorite Spider-Man yarns. It guest stars Dr. Strange, Ditko's other major creation for Marvel Comics. Even the thief who helped to steal all of Ditko's work at Marvel admits that he had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of Dr. Strange. And, yet, somehow, his name is all over the character as "co-creator". If you're not disgusted, you're either a moron or without a sense of right and wrong.

FANTASTIC FOUR #27

The only time there was likely any input from the editor or the publisher on the comics created, written, and illustrated by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko was on the occasion of crossover stories. To pump up sales on other titles and to make sure that the casual reader realized that the company's new characters were all under one umbrella and not associated with a rival publisher, there was likely the suggestion that each creator use characters from other books within their titles.

Thus, Steve Ditko might use Daredevil in a storyline. Or Joe Orlando might use Ben Grimm in Daredevil.

But it was Jack Kirby who seemed most adept at this type of thing. Or it could even be that it was his idea to maintain all of the characters within a single Marvel "universe".

Kirby was already using both the Human Torch (created by Carl Burgos) and the Sub-Mariner (created by Bill Everett) in the FANTASTIC FOUR title. In fact, within the first 33 issues of FF, Prince Namor had made no less than six appearances, rivaling him with Dr. Doom as the most utilized antagonist on the title to that point. Of course Namor wasn't precisely a villain. He was already a quasi-good guy. More of an anti-hero than a true villain. Of course this was the way Everett had first shown him to be as far back as 1938, so Kirby understood that was the way the character should be handled.

In the issue I cite here, #27, Kirby uses not only the Sub-Mariner, but also Steve Ditko's creation, Dr. Strange. Perhaps he just wanted to borrow Ditko's character for the yarn, but I'm betting that Goodman wanted the crossover to help pick up sales of STRANGE TALES which featured not only the Human Torch, but also Dr. Strange. I would be curious to hear from some comic book historians to understand how this story--and others like it--came about.

My copy of FF #27

Kirby had long meant for Susan Storm to be a sex symbol. He constantly used her as such, often making her a damsel in distress in the storylines. It was only after he gave her new powers--the ability to make things other than herself invisible, and to create powerful invisible force fields--that she ceased to be used as such and became at least the equal of the other members in power and ability. By the time #27 was out, Susan had only five issues under her belt with her new-found force field powers. She does use them briefly in this issue.

Kirby kept open the mystery of who was physically the most powerful character in the early Marvel Universe. Was it Ben Grimm? Was it the Sub-Mariner? The Hulk? Thor? It kept the readers coming back and created endless debate within fandom. And we see in this issue the constant romantic triangle between Susan Storm, Reed Richards, and Price Namor.

Dr. Strange makes his appearance and agrees to aid the Fantastic Four.

George Bell was not the best inker Kirby had. Not the worst, but he just didn't have the skill to maximize Kirby's brilliant layouts and pencils.

STRANGE Additions.

I'm also slowly picking up all of the Ditko issues of STRANGE TALES. I mainly want these for the Dr. Strange stories. Again, I only want the issues that are by the man who created, wrote, and illustrated the character: Steve Ditko. I don't  care to see what was done with Dr. Strange after Ditko walked away from his creation, leaving it to the thieves who claimed ownership.

I'm always reminded of the fact that Ditko was never allowed to do a Dr. Strange cover of STRANGE TALES. He was, even then, making demands that he be given credit for the work he was doing on the characters that he had created. This was causing friction between Ditko and Lee who was stretching the concept of "writer" to ensure that he took home more of a paycheck. Since covers paid relatively well, Ditko was obviously denied the chance to do these for the title. In the meantime, the readers got stuff like this awful cover by, I assume, Bob Powell, who was at the end of his career (and his life) during this period, and whose talents had largely faded by this time.

STEVE DITKO CREATED DR. STRANGE!

Marvel Comics and Stan Lee have always done a good job of perpetuating the myth that Lee created the original Marvel Universe. Those of us who have studied the situation in those early days of the company know better. But most of the rest of world does not. I'll never forget how it hit home to me when I bought my first pages of Jack Kirby artwork that were done in the first year that he was so busy creating new superhero characters and new titles for Martin Goodman's company.

You could plainly see in those pages that he was leaving notes for the editor on exactly what was going on and roughly what needed to be placed in captions and word balloons. This was not the actions of just a pencil artist, but an artist/writer. In fact, in the case of Jack Kirby, a creator/artist/writer. He didn't need any help writing or creating. He was just putting up with the reality of having an editor.

One thing that Lee did so early on (that kept him from backtracking) was admit to others that he had nothing at all to do with the creation of Steve Ditko's major character for Marvel, Dr. Strange. So, having once admitted that the creature was Ditko's own, he couldn't realistically claim otherwise. Of course that has not stopped Marvel over the years listing Lee as "co-creator" of Dr. Strange. Even though that isn't true.

One of the curious things about this resulted, I think, in the fact that Dr. Strange never once appeared on the cover of the anthology title in which his adventures were featured. STRANGE TALES, like all of Marvel's other early titles, had been a comic that contained monster and science-fiction stories, most of them done by Kirby, Heck, and Ditko. When Ditko premiered a new superhero in Strange Tales, he named that character "Dr. Strange". It would seem only natural that Dr. Strange should be cover-featured on the comic that bore his name, right?

No.

Not once during the run of the comic under the pencil and brush of its creator, Steve Ditko, did Dr. Strange get the lion's share of the cover! I've always suspected that it was because Lee had coughed up the fact that he hadn't had a hand in creating Dr. Strange. Added to this was that I think relatively soon after this Ditko and Lee began to butt heads. I think it was probably just spite that kept Ditko's creation off the cover of Strange Tales in a major way. Instead, Nick Fury (Kirby's creation) got the limelight while Strange was relegated to inset panels or lower border panel appearances on the covers. It was only after Ditko left Marvel that Dr. Strange was featured in a full cover display on STRANGE TALES.

Ditko's creation was always relegated to second-class status on the cover.

STRANGE TALES #115

I love this comic. Not for the cover story, but for the backup tale. By this point in the title, Lee and Goodman had relegated the monster stories to very few and far between. I have always assumed that there was still a backlog of work that had already been completed and paid for by Marvel, but by this time the superheroes had completely elbowed that material out of the way.

So issue #115 had a Human Torch story followed with a Dr. Strange tale.

The Torch story had art by Dick Ayers. Mostly when Heck or Ayers had worked with the superheroes at this point it was over layouts by the unstoppable Jack Kirby. But the artwork in this one is so crude that I suspect that it was all done by Ayers, including the layouts.  Mr. Ayers was a decent inker, but he was not among the most skilled of pencil artists. I always found his work to be very crude, and this story is no exception. The only thing that stands out about the tale is that the villain of the piece is The Sandman, from the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man comic as trumpeted on the front cover.

The backup story, however, is pure gold. In this one we see the origin of the character Dr. Strange. Strange had made his first appearance in issue #110 of Strange Tales, so his origin story was overdue. And Strange is one character that even Stan Lee admitted that he had nothing to do with creating. Even by the blowhard's own admission, Ditko was the sole creator of Dr. Strange, although that has not stopped him in later years from taking half the credit (none of which is due to him).

Sometimes Ditko would produce work that was--even for him--unusually adept. This story is one of those. Ditko's artwork in this story is pure magic. It holds up favorably with the finest of the stories he produced for The Amazing Spider-Man, and those are, to my way of thinking, the best superhero comics ever done.

Someday I may upgrade my copy of Strange Tales #115, but for now at least I have a copy.

My low-grade copy of STRANGE TALES #115.

Strange Tales Here!

Of the old Marvel anthology titles, STRANGE TALES is likely the cheapest one to purchase when it comes to the post-hero numbers. The most valuable issues are #101, which was the beginning of the stories featuring the Human Torch--Jack Kirby's version of the Carl Burgos character, and #110 which was the issue that was used to introduce Steve Ditko's creation, Dr. Strange. Since I only want the pre-hero issues featuring the work of Ditko and Kirby, and the ones containing Dr. Strange chapters by Steve Ditko, this will likely be the easiest to complete of my Marvel titles. I already have the toughest to purchase Human Torch/Dr. Strange issues, so now I just have to concern myself with buying up the books preceding #101.

Annual #1. This is a very cool book. Square-bound and packed cover to cover with Kirby, Ditko, and Don Heck artwork. And tremendously silly stories purportedly "written" by Stan Lee. His hilarious names are painted on the title pages of each of them--that alone is almost worth the price of admission.

Issue #96. These multi-panel covers were common on Marvel titles in the late 50s and very early 60s. I have to assume that they were Kirby's idea, as so many of them were illustrated by him. Of course it could have been an editorial request--much the same as DC's common use of gorillas on the covers of their science-fiction titles. It must have increased sales since it was used so often.

Some of the most childish superhero stories occurred in the changed anthology titles. Obviously thrown together under heavy deadline pressure by the likes of the overworked Jack Kirby and with dialogue tossed in haphazardly and in a hurry by editor Lee. It's a rare story here that wasn't goofy beyond belief. These certainly were for young kids. Quite often the artwork was by the likes of Dick Ayers over very spare Jack Kirby layouts.

This issue is kind of difficult to nab in an auction. Fortunately my main back issue source, Earl Shaw, landed me a copy at a good price. One of the first cover appearances of Capt. America since the mid 1950s during an earlier attempt to revive superheroes at Marvel/Atlas. When you read the story, however, you learn that this guy is not Capt. America, but merely a criminal acrobat pretending to be Cap.

Ditko did not get a chance to do very many superhero covers other than The Amazing Spider-Man. I've never figured out why this was so, unless he just wasn't prolific enough to do covers for other titles, or if Lee didn't like Ditko's covers, or if he was just too darned busy doing other work. My suspicion is that Lee just didn't care much for Ditko's cover work.


And speaking of strange tales...you can get my new zombie novel THE LIVING END at your favorite online bookseller or have your local bookshop order a copy!

Steve Ditko Made This

Well, we're counting down the hours until we leave for Yellowstone. We just have some house cleaning to do and some final packing. And of course I am frantically working on the novel, to the detriment of the blog. Oh, well. I always said that the only reason I keep a blog is to spark my creativity for my fiction. It's worked well, so far.

Today's brief post concerns part of my comic collection. One of the things I collect are just about any comic which features work by Steve Ditko. Philosophically and politically, I find Mr. Ditko to be absolutely monstrous. He tends to lean so far to the right that he is, to my way of thinking, a fascist. This also serves, unfortunately, as a way to describe most of his fans whom I've had the utmost displeasure to meet. I find his beliefs to be interesting only in the way that it's fascinating to examine the workings of evil. But I'd never embrace his hideous rantings as anything other than the diseased mouthings of a truly sick individual.

One of the titles I'm trying to complete is his run on the old Marvel comic book, STRANGE TALES. He wrote and illustrated a lot of material for this comic, going back to its early days as a horror and science-fiction anthology. But with issue #110 he created a new quasi-superhero character known as Dr. Strange. I'm getting close to having all of his Dr. Strange stories in their original formats and appearances.

For some reason, Dr. Strange never got a solo cover on Strange Tales when Ditko was writing and illustrating the stories. Occasionally Strange would get a cover space, but never all to himself. I've never been able to figure this out, save for the possibility that the editor-in-chief (who shall remain nameless here) figured that Dr. Strange wasn't the selling point of Strange Tales. Who knows?

What galls me more than anything are the credits placed on the character of Dr. Strange. First of all, Dr. Strange is the complete property of Marvel Comics. That was the deal in those early days and Ditko accepts that and lives with it. So far, so good. (Or bad, in my opinion--I'd never do anything but fight for my intellectual property. But that's me.) But here's the real kicker:

Whenever you see credits listed for the character of Dr. Strange, it will say "Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko". Now, even by Lee's own admission, he had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of that property. It was wholly created by Steve Ditko and not even Lee can dispute that with so many comments confirming this over the years. It's a matter of historical record that no one helped Ditko along, and that the only editorial changes made were to the dialogue after Ditko had delivered the pages of artwork for those early stories.

But there it is--Lee getting the credit for something he did not do.

I shouldn't let things like this bug me, but they do. Steve Ditko created Dr. Strange. No one else. And certainly no other name should be placed before Mr. Ditko's concerning that comic book property, The Master of the Mystic Arts.

The genius of Steve Ditko.
(And Steve Ditko only.)