Steve Ditko: Classic or Dud

With great robot, comes great... uh....

was flipping though the first issue of Kirby's Silver Star - had totally forgotten this contains a dozen-page long full-color backup feature by Ditko called "The Mocker" which basically looks exactly like 60s-era Ditko. 1981, I think...?

cool find!

d'oh, number 2, not number 1

"According to Ditko1, he first started working with the concept in 1981, drawing the first ten page story and working on the breakdowns for the next episode. The page story found its way to Pacific Comics and was published in Jack Kirby's Silver Star #2. Ditko was not aware of this sale and was not pleased with the format. (The story was meant to be magazine size, or twice the size of a comic book page; and had been colored when it was meant to be published in black and white.) The original story (restored to black and white) and the others were published in a 1990 graphic novel published by Ditko and longtime partner Robin Snyder.

The originally intended format of the book influences much of its look. Planned to be published in a black and white magazine, the art is a study in various methods of adding texture with pen and ink. The Mocker's special power is signified by squiggling thin lines, various characters have an affinity for pinstripe suits or polka dots or have distinctive facial hair patterns that display the various skills Ditko had mastered in decades of comic work. The book was never published in magazine size, however, so the sixteen panels per page are slightly cramped.

Much of the dialogue and especially contents of thought balloons is in sentence fragments. The basic concepts floating around in the characters mind are tied together with commas, partly to display the characters' confused, unfocused, state, and quite possibly partly due to economy of space in the small panels."

color is actually really nice

http://carlscomix.com/when-i-got-a-letter-from-steve-ditko/
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Screen-Shot-2015-06-28-at-5.02.16-PM.png
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Screen-Shot-2015-06-28-at-5.02.34-PM.png

!

love

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.