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.

Searching for the Lightning

After Steve Ditko left Marvel for points elsewhere, it is obvious to anyone who has observed his career and his work that he was going to do his best to top what he had done with The Amazing Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. Both of those characters had been works of near-genius and he was out to prove to the world (and especially to Martin Goodman and Stanley Lieber) that he could do it again.

When you look at the power of the work he was creating for Warren Publications you can see that Ditko was spreading his creative wings and trying new things. When you see the art he was putting down on the page for Charlton it was obvious he was doing his damndest to duplicate the magic of Spider-Man within a different world and with similar characters.

But it was with the things he created at DC that one tosses aside any idea that he wasn't out for blood, so to speak. Ditko was going to prove to everyone that lightning does strike twice, and he was the man to cast that thunderbolt down.

Alas, it wasn't to be. With The Creeper, he was doing his best to recapture what he had done with Spider-Man. It ultimately failed, not just for reasons of content and not having the right voice, but due to Ditko's health problems at the time, which were apparently severe.

One project that held a lot of promise for both Ditko and his fans was THE HAWK and THE DOVE. This was a heavy-handed attempt at political commentary by Ditko. On philosophical and political lines it failed because Ditko held ideas and expressed philosophies that I can only describe as neo-Fascist. There's really no other way to term them. His intent was to try to give voice to both sides of the war/anti-war struggle then running through America's collective psyche. But because Ditko was such an adamant right wing extremist, he could not adequately do justice to what was otherwise a creative and honorable attempt. His readers, the base to whom he was aiming the book, were more than likely to be leftists, and Ditko's fascistic rants just rubbed them the wrong way.

And so, the book being a failure on so many other levels, it failed on the level that mattered most: the bottom freaking line. The book lingered for six issues, most of them under the draftsmanship of Gil Kane, but it was finally cancelled. And so, what had begun with so much fanfare and so much optimism--Ditko's move from Marvel to DC--ended up as a bit of a whimper.

Ironically, though, all of the characters that Ditko either created or reimagined for Charlton and DC have had extended lives for the corporation that ended up owning them. The Hawk and the Dove still flit through the pages at DC. The Creeper rises now and again to lay claim to the copyright and thrill the modern fans. Ditko's Blue Beetle has enjoyed many great runs under the authorship of other artists and scripters. And The Question reigns supreme of his post-Marvel creations. It not only has the Question enjoyed great status and sales on its own, but was copied by Alan Moore and became the most popular part of DC's THE WATCHMEN as the thinly veiled analog, Rorschach.

The lightning finally did strike again for Ditko. Unfortunately those thunderbolts landed decades later than intended and exposed gold for those other than the man for whom they were meant.

My copy of THE HAWK AND THE DOVE #2.

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!