Steve Ditko: Classic or Dud

Ditko used to creep me out, especially the Dr Strange stuff - ditto with Kirby's deep-space artwork - I found it hard to look at for long. The artists I liked back then (Byrne and Perez included) were somehow more earthbound and reliable.

I've never read any late 70s/1980s DCs to speak of, I should check some Aparo and Garcia-Lopez out to see if it holds up.

I didn't "get" Kirby until I was well into my 30s. I still haven't gotten Ditko yet, not really. There's a lot of kinetic energy there, but I feel he falls back on a lot of often-repeated visual licks.

Despite my childhood love of Spidey, I always wished that Kirby would have drawn him instead of Ditko. Now I'm just happy that it all got done the way it did. Silver age marvel is stone cold classic, as is silver age Ditko.

Ditko is great, but I do think that you have to kind of grow into an appreciation of him; I didn't like him that much when I was a kid either...

I wonder why that is. Conversely, some of the artists I went apeshit for when I was about 11, like Todd McFarlane, look appallingly fussy to me now. Though I still love some of the same people, like Sienkewicz and Mazzuchelli.

Siencewicz knows how to draw and has an appreciation of art history-- he puzzled me as a kid, semi abstract and occasionally very scary...but intriguing because of it.

The less said about McFarlane and his spawn the better.

...Except that anything good about him he got from Art Adams, who can't be held accountable for what he wrought.

^right. Both McFarlane and Liefeld started out as Art Adams clones y/n?

why is this thread here and not on ILC?

It predates that board I think. I could move it if everybody wants, or leave it to try to lure in the curious.

eh no bother it's just odd...

I couldn't make it to the end of the essay, although it was definitely interesting. but moerover I jsut see Ditko's devolution as kind of sad. it's weird that his technique has actually DECLINED over time, and not just due to age.

I only read ILE and ILM so I wouldn't have seen this thread.

Art Adams, IMO, is in the same fussy lineage as Byrne/Perez/Starlin, though he has much more sense of style than those two. Y'all are probly right that he begat the stupefying hashmarks and penis-fists of the Image dudes, and right that he can't be blamed for it.

Besides Perez/Byrne et al, we all adored Michael Golden at that age too (circa his early Micronauts) which is interesting bcuz he was more of a clay-ey Wrightson kinda thing. I haven't looked at his shit in a long time but I might be able to admire it today...

Art Adams (over Bob Burden roughs and character designs) on the Gumby Summer Fun Special is one of the all-time greats.

Please keep it here - I never remember to visit ILC.

Had forgotten all about Art Adams - used to love his stuff. Wonder how it holds up now. Liefeld is horrible.

xpost that Gumby special was great! So was the one Rick Geary drew.

The Gumby one was the first thing I ever saw by AA. Loved it. I would agree (though I hadn't thought of it before) to put him coming out of the Byrne/Perez school but he injected a sense of fun and charm into it. I don't know that I'd call him a classic, but I'll keep my good memories of staring at Adams' pages.

re: why kids hate Ditko -- I just think his draftsmanship is a bit grotesque and unheroic...which is what made him so great on Spiderman, but if you're coming off John Romita's version of the character, let alone Todd McFarlane's*, his art is going to seem impossibly obscure and ugly.

There's more I want to say on this, and I think it's a really interesting topic, but I would have to search up on old Ditko Spiderman panels (I've yet to read his Dr. Strange stuff) and I'm not really up for that at this exact moment...

*I actually read somewhere that McFarlane had drawn Spidey in much more arachnid poses than anybody else had...so while his style was unabashedly heroic/dynamic, he probably did get closer to a certain alien weirdness that Spiderman embodied when drawn by Ditko

I just think his draftsmanship is a bit grotesque and unheroic...which is what made him so great on Spiderman

so otm.

art adams was my god, when i was 11.

"grotesque and unheroic"--it served him well both on Dr. Strange and the Tales of Suspense/Journey into Mystery shorts as well.

Ditko's work on Dr. Strange >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Spiderman imho

when romita started drawing spidey, it really underlined pete's switch from skinny dweeb to a college kid who could score with gwen and mary jane.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QdqzY9glBkE/Su_AnLlFnPI/AAAAAAAAB9g/wsoq82In8Gg/s640/Doctor+Strange+Steve+Ditko.jpg

His Spider-Man covers are brilliant.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_DSs2bX13hVc/S7abqQbbKPI/AAAAAAAAB6U/kyaBa-IdUt8/s1600/planes.jpg

http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/comicbookcartography/77oKN0RfG4xZR1fgIqIsIUDZkSaICgPhDQ9F7VlhtF91h1mqabqodspTwr9D/DrSEternity3ST146.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg

I was about nine when I first saw those Dr Strange issues - scared the hell out of me.

right there with ya, Shakes. Two of those panels were featured in Douglas's excellent book. I mean, how can you not love an artist who incorporates Dali and Lovecraft* into the Marvel Universe?

*Lovecraft might have been more Stan Lee; I don't know...

I remember reading an interview with McFarlane where he said he based his Spidey look on what he remembered of Ditko's - big eyes, more webs, red & black with blue highlights. When he actually looked back he realised he'd got it not-quite-right - the eyes weren't in fact so huge etc.

Loved McFarlane as a 14-year-old (didn't think much of Ditko then), and his Spidey work still looks all right, mostly. He was good for a dramatic cover, but the two-page webswinging panels in every issue look gauche now. Can't stand his noses - or his faces in general. I associate him with a period when characters began to be drawn differently by every artist - so Peter Parker is identifiable only as 'the guy with brown hair' (think hair has always been the major signifier of character in comics, mind you; certainly all female characters of a similar age are anatomically identical otherwise). His Mary Jane in this respect was his worst crime: suddenly she had a perm and was usually seen prancing around in early-90s lingerie. Ditko, of course, never got to do Mary Jane, her first real appearance supposedly being held back until they had someone who could draw a genuinely sexy woman (i.e. not Betty Brant).

Jon mentioned Michael Golden upthread, and I think he's the urgent and KEY artist for most of these 80/80s dudes that ppl have been mentioning - i mean, art adams is basically michael golden figurework + george perez-like detail rendering (a adams also seems to be one of the first mainstream american comic bk artist to show some manga-influence, esp in terms of his cartooned faces/expressions.) jim lee has def studied p closely m golden's work, esp whenever golden was inked by terry austin (whose post-giordano, ultradense inkline is again HUGELY influential on the whole Image look.)

ppl are also right to mention the sheer power and spectacle of kirby's marvel and after career, but up to the point the abstractions (of bodies and anything resembling a recognisable interior space) took over, kirby's work often had supreme elegance and grace, too - especially in pencil form.

http://www.imgspark.com/icache/0109/683eb1475af4e06eb8787d3c66fa4227_l.png

i'm not quite sure why shakey mo seems so surprised that ditko's technique has declined over time. the sheer hard fucking work/concentration/hand-eye co-ordination required to make a great comic bk artist p much always makes it a young person's game, especially when yr on the monthly corporate comics treadmill. the only artist i really thinks draws better in old(ish) age than at any point in their career is r. crumb - and that's part of what makes crumb so exceptional. ditko was v. ill in the late sixties - the details, as ever w ditko, are somwhat obscure, but the illness meant he left DC and took refuge at Charlton Comics, where he spent most of the seventies cranking out routine ghost stories for pitiful rates and minimal editorial interference. i don't think he was ever quite the same artist after that period of ill health - just after he left marvel, prior to his illness,ditko did a handful of black-and-white stories for warren that are absolutely superb, maybe the peak of his career - he never again drew with such care, variety, attention to detail or imaginative intensity. but i love lots of the later stuff, especially Mr A:

http://schulzlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/witzendmra.jpg?w=435&h=652

i'm not quite sure why shakey mo seems so surprised that ditko's technique has declined over time. the sheer hard fucking work/concentration/hand-eye co-ordination required to make a great comic bk artist p much always makes it a young person's game,

yeah I don't disagree with this at all, it's just that with Ditko it seems like more than just age at work - that essay linked above practically makes it seem like an ideological decision on his part to make his art cruder/more simplistic

also OTM about Crumb

Kirby definitely declined in his later years (as he was well aware), although he was definitely still brimming with ideas

I can't bear to look at the stuff he did after leaving animation to go back to comics -- recycling the Fourth World ideas over and over again.

his 2001 series is a thing to behold, I'll say that much

Yeah, that was pre-animation, I'd like to find .cbr's of that and Devil Dinosaur.

this thread is making me incredibly happy today

There should be a video version of the "What If...?" title.

What if Steve Ditko went into animation storyboarding instead of Jack Kirby?

What if Chuck Jones had done Jonny Quest instead of Doug Wildey?

Yeah, that was pre-animation, I'd like to find .cbr's of that and Devil Dinosaur.

I have the first few issues. It's such a weird concept - a series adaptation/expansion of a motion picture that was already 10 years old at that point. Takes some serious conceptual liberties (as you might expect) but a lot of the artwork is still a ton of fun. I think I also have some issues of Silver Star, which was later iirc...

Vaguely challopsy, i actually prefer Jack's 70s Marvel comics - Eternals, Captain America, Black Panther, 2001, Machine Man, Devil Dinosaur etc - to his stiffer 70s DC comics, on the whole (tho' i do have a big fondness for The Demon, a weird black magic horror comedy that seems to me quite unique within and without kirby's kareer.)

By post-animation, i'm guessing WmC is talking abt the stuff kirby did for Pacific Comics (Captain Victory, the semi-interesting Silver Star.) Certainly by that point the scripts were increasingly incoherent and eccentric and the artwork had declined severely - not helped by some fuckin' awful inking - but again, i think it's the 80s DC stuff that represents the real nadir of kirby's career, especially his revisited Fourth World comics, just dreadful.

the last volume of the Fourth World reprints contains that last Fourth World graphic novel, and yeah the decline is really apparent - the figures are simpler, the script less coherent, the composition falters. Even so it does contain one of my all-time favorite Kirby double-page collage spreads - the one depicting the destruction of Apokolips, which is just amazing.

Eternals is the business! I haven't been able to find any of the Captain America or Black Panther run though, has that stuff even been reprinted?

http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/dynamics/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/KirbyWorking2e.jpg

man, never seen that pic before, outstanding!

yeah, the eternals, 70s captain americas and black panthers are all available in full colour paperback reprints.

Yeah I agree with Ward-- 70s Kirby is actually my favorite Kirby of all-- his vision had ripened to the verge of decadence but not quite over the edge yet, and I LOVE his dialogue from this era. Cap + Falcon, Black Panther, 2001, Demon, Kamandi, obv 4th World, I live and breathe that shit.

Sad that one can only assume 2001 will never be reprinted due to copyright... some amazing shit in there. Devil Dinosaur has no such legal hurdles, has that not been collected?

Meanwhile a whole separate think-thread is probably needed to address the deep causes of the male child's seemingly universal, instinctive preference for thin, busy or fussy linework (Perez and ilk) over bold brushstrokes.

more drawing = better drawing in the mind of that young man

^^^yep

it's the same childlike logic that concludes that music that has more notes is therefore harder to play and is therefore better

and then you look at shit like Charles Schulz or Joe Matt and it's just as easy to conclude the opposite is true

it's not like I was reading Snoopy at age 13 and marveling at the storytelling...

immature folx live and die by surface elements

anyways I think the grotesque elements of Ditko's style run a little bit deeper than draftsmanship

Thank you for inventing Spider-Man.

90 was a hell of a run.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/steve-ditko-dead-spider-man-creator-was-90-1125489

oh no!

v sad news. his run on spider-man is one of the all-time great works in comics.

steve wilkos still lives

it's kind of wild how much some of the self published stuff resembles Ben Garrison cartoons (though better drawn, obv)

https://blogintomystery.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/awc.jpg

Sending my psychic condolences up the I-5 to Bellingham.

RIP to a truly gifted lunatic

reading the obit now and

Ditko maintained a Manhattan studio until his death, where he continued to write and draw, though how much, and what unpublished material remains, is unknown.

a) why not ask Snyder, his publisher and only trusted collaborator of the last three decades, rather than include this vagueness

b) "how much" can be pretty easily estimated by actually adding up his output. it's very clear that he thought what he published was what was fit to publish, and he's generally been putting out around 100pp a year (!) since getting really busy again this decade.

Comic book creator Graig Weich of [...]

"He wasn't 90. He seemed like a young, cool artist who happened to have an aged body," Weich tells THR. Weich recalls asking Ditko about his relationship with Lee, and says the artist looked down and told him, "We're peaceful."

wtf at using a repugnant scam merchant as your source!!? unchecked and without caveat!

also eeesh, Ditko's latest Kickstarter may have finished the day he died. that's some 'Schulz dying the day his final Sunday was shipping' timing

^ belay that, I misread the "two days ago" bit

Graig is promoting his own new comic in a selfie-stick-shot youtube video titled "STEVE DITKO FOUND DEAD AT 90 - CO-CREATOR OF SPIDER-MAN & DOCTOR STRANGE IN NYC Dies NOT STAN LEE"

May we all have “NOT STAN LEE” on our gravestones

I think he had a bigger impact on me than any other artist of any kind. Meant a massive amount to me.

I'm curious about what will happen to all his unseen art in his studio, I assume it'll never be seen, I though he might have burned or shredded the stuff already because he really didn't want people seeing it, some said there was unseen Dr Strange stuff that were like an unabridged version of the ending he did to his run. Still keeping my fingers crossed that he changed his mind and will let people show it all.

I thought that Graig guy is the one who broke the news?

That doesn't mean you take his reportage of other peoples' words at face value, after the last 20 years of his reportage.

(and the disgusting motivation behind it! is it likely that Snyder had been notified by the NYPD, and knew that Ditko wouldn't want the news publicised?)

Mike Dean obit at TCJ.

aww rip steve

one of the all-time greats both in artistic achievement and total swivel-eyed lunacy

after the last 20 years of his reportage.

― kelp, clam and carrion (sic), Saturday, July 7, 2018 4:10 AM

Is he that well known? I never heard of him until now.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iH7JIpCRKg4/V1Qs3Iv3CwI/AAAAAAAAQQM/uh6EeC4CopM_AjM6g49UUj4XnKfH-MCOgCLcB/s1600/ditko_spiderman_creation.jpg

<3

I thought you meant Weich's reportage.

I really liked this Jeet Heer thread about Ditko and Kirby, also the Gail Simone thread he links to

1. This is a good tweet in a good thread & I want to expand on this point. Kirby & Kirby both had styles that were curiously at odds with their politics. https://t.co/5kJacKlCwB

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 7, 2018

xpost: I did.

yeah, good stuff - lot to chew on there

I think sometime during the mid-60s Ditko made his characters bolder and more handsome and it was good and different but perhaps not quite as compelling as the earlier look. But there's something different and special about many periods of his work, at least up til the mid 70s when there is a noticeable decline.