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.

Stealing Ditko's Thunder and the Sweat of his Brow

One rumor surrounding the departure of Steve Ditko from Marvel and his relinquishing of the reins of his title The Amazing Spider-Man is that there was contention over the developing plot concerning the Green Goblin.

The popular story (and unfounded rumor) maintains that Ditko wanted the secret identity of The Goblin to be revealed as a total unknown--a nobody, if you will. This same story goes that Stan Lee wanted the Goblin's secret identity to be revealed as Norman Osborne for which the continuing story had been leaving hints. This story is made semi-believable by the myth that Stan Lee was actually writing the book. But it was Ditko who was writing The Amazing Spider-Man and he had not been building up the clues pointing to Osborne for nothing.

Another reason this false story is believed by so many comics fans is that Ditko had already used that plot device in another storyline involving the Goblin. Ditko had introduced a continuing shady character called The Crime-Master and he actually did follow that storyline out to the conclusion mentioned in the myth about why he left the book. In issue #27 of The Amazing Spider-Man, the Crime Master is finally cornered and shot to death by police officers. When they unmask him he turns out to be nobody, a character no one in the series had ever seen without the mask. It was a brilliant stroke on Ditko's part, especially considering that he had left clues that the villain was someone known within the continuity of the book. Ditko was skilled at surprising the readers. This is not an easy thing to do with the formulaic mechanisms of super-hero comics.

Having used this plot device once, there is no reason Ditko would turn to it again less than two years later to wrap up the Green Goblin storyline. He had already played that one out in the Crime-Master series, and I'm sure he wasn't interested in leading his fans down that same path once again.

During the last years of Spider-Man, Ditko did excel at creating villains who were mysterious, who were unknown, and had the readers chomping at the bit to know the bad guy's true identity. He did this with his arguably greatest villain, the Green Goblin. He followed it up with the Crime-Master. And he did it a third time in what became his penultimate work, the Master Planner story arc in The Amazing Spider-Man issues #31 through #33. And in that one he played the story like a fine instrument and the secret identity of the mystery villain was revealed to be...a well known villain from past issues of the book (Doctor Octopus). It was a stroke of pure brilliance.

So while the cycle of good versus evil, of the super-hero versus super-villain, was one that Ditko was, by necessity, going to use over and over, he was not a writer to repeat himself at as fine a point in the plot as to use an exact device quick in succession. If he was going to reveal a secret identity again, it was going to be something different--not a rehashing of a storyline he'd used so recently.

After Ditko left Marvel, his creations continued to make vast sums for the company. Indeed, the stories he'd left behind as his legacy were mined again and again by creators far less gifted. Just look to the Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 to see how even small details he added to stories were stolen to produce work credited to others in later years.

But let's put to rest once and for all the myth that Ditko abandoned his most powerful creation, The Amazing Spider-Man, over a quibble with his editor concerning the secret identity of the Green Goblin. Ditko had always intended that it was Norman Osborne. That may have been a surprise to his editor, and to his fans. But it was the plan all along for Steve Ditko.

It obviously took a far more egregious moral crime committed against him to make Ditko walk away from his characters. The nature of those crimes we can only surmise from the clues left behind. And those clues are far more serious than a silly comic book plot. And the villains far more evil than Norman Osborne, for they are real, and their crimes continue even today, years after Ditko walked the high moral ground and took his leave of Marvel and the thieves who robbed him.

But I know the identity of the hero in that sad story, and his name is Steve Ditko.

Who's Hiding Behind the Mask?