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community weblog
"I never talk about myself. My work is me."
One crispy Christmas during the early 1960s, Mark, only four or five, asked his uncle to sketch him a picture of a gorilla. Using only a pencil, his uncle cast a spell across the paper, and there he was: Konga, in all his glory. "Uncle Steve," Mark beamed. "You are really good."
–The Secret Life of Steve Ditko: Spider-Man Co-Creator's Family Opens Up by Jay Deitcher [archive].
posted by Kattullus on Jul 02, 2024 at 3:45 PM
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There's a lot less here about Ditko's family than I was hoping for; we just don't know a whole lot about Ditko's personal life. Of course, it doesn't sound like they did, either! The article seems kind of axe-grindy against Stan Lee in a way that, anymore, feels like a red flag to me -- I don't think there's any question that Ditko and Kirby plotted their stories, but it's clear from both artists' work away from Lee that his dialogue humanized the characters in a way the artists would likely not have done left to their own devices. This seems critical to the appeal of Marvel. While I love, for instance, Kirby's New Gods and Ditko's The Question, I think it's significant that these visually striking characters have not had the larger success that the artists' Marvel creations had.
I do have to take exception to the frankly bizarre idea that Ditko pioneered decompression -- in the same passage where the author mentioned Ditko's use of the nine-panel grid. A multitude of panels is pretty much the opposite of decompression, which allows scenes to play out for pages when they could as easily (but with less nuance) take place in a few panels. No one in the Silver or Bronze Ages was drawing decompression. Decompressed comics work best when collected into long books. In Ditko's era, a single issue comic was seen as a vehicle for a complete story.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:10 PM
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Kattullus, thank you for this! i needed some decompression (whoever invented it :-)
posted by HearHere at 5:55 PM
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Ditko was a nut, but he was a talented nut.
Also, that photo of him from the 50s shows that the Libertarian/Objectivist look hasn't changed much at all. All he needs is a katana to fit right in with them today (although I suspect he'd be offended to be lumped in with mere Libertarians).
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:03 PM
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The article seems kind of axe-grindy against Stan Lee in a way that, anymore, feels like a red flag to me
Seems like they had soft gloves on for kinder handling than I'd expect. I also think it's unfair to say New Gods and The Question were somehow lesser because less financial success. That's absurd, some of Marvel and DCs worst outputs still dwarf some independents' best. Sales have nothing to do with quality, a certain degree of quality can even be detrimental to mass success and appeal.
Enjoyed the article, I learned more about him than I had previously. Interesting person, shit politics, but also great at what he made and I respect his absolute unwillingness to work on things he didn't get behind himself, even if his reasons were often crap that I'd exclude working with him over.
posted by GoblinHoney at 6:28 PM
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I'm talking less about sales than about the way the characters have grabbed the popular imagination. I think the Fourth World is among the greatest things to happen in comics, and Mysterious Suspense 1 is one of the greatest single issue comics of all time. But I think a reason these creations lack the populist appeal of early Marvel is that Kirby and Ditko don't speak to the reader like Lee did. Lee, on his own, is not much of a creator. But what he adds to Kirby and Ditko...I feel like the results speak for themselves.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:49 PM
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That archive link has the text all blurred. It can be read by highlighting it, but still, I hate these sites and pages that wield browser features against readers, argh!
posted by JHarris at 8:12 PM
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I once had a complete run of the Dr Strange issues, from the first stories in Strange Tales through whenever the first-run title petered out. Reading through a year or so made for much better entertainment than most of the other titles at the time. I knew about Ditko's politics from those Spidey-at-college issues, but there was something compelling about this artwork and stories that bounced between a claustrophobic Greenwich Village townhouse and the outer cosmos.
posted by morspin at 10:39 PM
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...so was he Cavalier? Or Clay?
posted by From Bklyn at 1:40 AM
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Fascinating article. One (tiny) mistake: Rorschach was based on the Question, also created by Ditko. What I've been told over the years was that the Question, being created for Charlton Comics, was not absolutist enough, thus inspiring the creation of Mr. A.
The descriptions given scream neurodivergent to me, but I'm not about to speculate on exactly what his mental health issues might have been. I do think that Spiderman was not quite as much of a leap as portrayed- the entire idea with the Fantastic Four and similar Kirby/Lee creations was to have characters and teams that had interpersonal conflicts (although it being decades since I read any of the original run of Fantastic Four, I cannot remember how well this was actually portrayed in the comics).
I tracked down some Mr. A at one point in time, probably soon after learning more about Ditko. And I'm sorry to say, but it wasn't that good. Ayn Rand was a hack (among other things), but she was also a script doctor and knew how to make you want to turn pages (at least until you reached the monologues, at which point in time it's time to start turning pages rapidly until it ends). Ditko did not have that same kind of compelling voice.
Still, all in all, a fascinating man, one who I wish things had gone better for.
posted by Hactar at 2:21 AM
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