Blake Bell's Blog, page 5

#31DaysOfDitko Dave Sim reviews 1950s Ditko

Crack open your three volumes of my Steve Ditko Archives series, because Dave Sim (creator of Cerebus and Glamourpuss) is going to seriously break down some 1950s...

“The Library of Horror”
THE THING #13 (April 1954)

The really interesting thing about this one, and something that I had never seen before, is the similarity of Steve Ditko’s early drawing style to Joe Kubert’s work. It’s particularly noticeable in Ken’s posture in panel 2 on page one, Allen’s face in the next panel, Ken’s figure in the last panel on page 4, the panel where Ken and Marion Welles meet for the first time on page 5.

 If you had showed me those panels on their own I probably would have guessed Kubert (around the time of the first run of TOR). As far as I know Joe Kubert was in the business before Ditko but certainly not much before Ditko. Does Ditko count him as an influence? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. Creators who enter the field around the same time that you do tend to have a magnified presence in your life that isn’t apparent to others. The fact that Bill Sienkiewicz was the first person to make a splash in comics who was younger than me made my Bill Sienkiewicz phase inevitable. I remember Jeff Smith telling me that he sensed that kind of relationship with Mike Allred since they both arrived on the comic-book radar screen at the same time and were both working in a brush style that was further over in the direction of “cartoon-y” relative to everything else that was coming out. I don’t know too many people who would think of Jeff Smith and Mike Allred as sharing a context but as soon as its pointed out to you, you go, “Oh, right, of course.”

Ditko and Kubert. How could I have NOT seen it until this story?
I’d have to say the best panels in the story are panel 3 on page 6 and panel 4 on the same page. Of all the “otherworldly” panels this one shows the nascent Ditko style to the best advantage and shows what’s coming up ahead.

The story itself limps around a little bit with Ken being the only one (including the reader) who really doesn’t get what’s going on and, consequently, is also the only one who ends up being surprised by the ending. Too many “gods out of the machine” on the last page to qualify as “playing fair” with the reader, a basic necessity in twist ending horror stories.

Same Kubert look on “The Vanishing Martians” (MARVEL TALES #147 June 1956). Absolutely amazing.

“Build Me A Machine!”
ASTONISHING #53 (Sept. 56)

This is an interesting one, particularly with the extensive use of extreme close-ups which would become something of a hallmark in Steve Ditko’s work. Page one panel one, page two panel one and panel 4, page 3 panel 5, page 4 panel 3 and panel 6. Most especially panel one on page two, though: so extreme a close-up he can only get one eye into the panel for each character! It’s also interesting to see the extent to which spotted blacks have gone the way of the dodo in his work since the Kubert look of two years before. These guys had to be productive and that must have always been a question mark: why am I composing these pages with proper balances of black and white when someone is just going to put lousy colour on top of them anyway? And, by lousy colour, I mean unbalanced colour – a huge swath of purple in the upper left corner with everything else done in pastels, so your eye is drawn to the huge swath of purple no matter what the artist has done in balancing the areas of solid black.

Of course, these guys all came from the same background (Raymond, Foster, Caniff) so looking at the work of their own heroes, they would always get drawn back to doing good drawings. But they did end up having at least two different drawings styles: a spotted blacks style and an open style. This is Ditko’s open style. Coming from a background where all of my decision-making was in black and white I’m terrifically impressed when someone can put together a page with seven (count ‘em seven) panels like page 3 of this story composed entirely of single brush strokes and with only a handful of spotted blacks and have it WORK. I don’t know what colour they had on panel 5 on this page (Screaming Crimson? Chocolate Brown? Deep Purple?) but there’s the argument against spotting blacks. Even with the colour knocked out of most of it (as Blake has done here) the panel is like a compositional black hole sucking your eye into the bottom left corner.

Not a bad shock surprise ending although saving a crucial piece of information until the fifth last panel is a bit of a cheat, still it’s like the Superman origin story told sideways.

“The Faceless Man”
JOURNEY INTO UNKNOWN WORLDS #51 (Nov.56)

The open style again and this time unmistakeably Steve Ditko and you can see his thinking starting to come through in terms of “How do you make your artwork immune to the ill effects of lousy colouring?” Something he would use pretty extensively over the years is cranking up the wind machine. The key point of the story is the unsettled nature of the title character so the best way of portraying that is to crank up the wind the moment he steps outside, to have it mussing his hair and causing his tie to flap around him and leaves to be blowing past. Even the most unsympathetic colourist can’t un-do any of those things. The leaves need to be coloured (although I bet a lot of them just had a flat colour dropped over them), the tie needs to be coloured (you can picture Ditko begging, mentally, PLEASE give me a solid yellow on the tie or something that stands out – I wouldn’t bet the farm that the tie wasn’t done in more than one colour depending on the panel and a colour that just blended in with the surroundings) and the reader is instantly going to see the page as having an unsettled mysterious quality.

The mussed hair is a little more problematic. For what the colourists and separators were getting paid you were still more likely to just get a blob of colour as a giant halo around the guy’s head (close enough for government work) but you can still see Ditko working to minimize that risk by doing a) very clearly defined locks of hair b) to use very few of them c) to make sure they’re all curling in different directions and d) that they are rendered as sharply defined brush or pen strokes with the open areas for colour kept as far away from the hair ends as possible. It’s interesting the extent to which this became part of Ditko’s iconography – Ditko Hair.

It’s a pretty good story, good twist ending and you can see Ditko responding to it with his best drawing chops.

“Mystery Planet”
STRANGE SUSPENSE STORIES #36 (Mar. 58)

Okay, now we’re back to some serious black spotting. I’d have to guess at who he had been looking at. Judging by the machinery in the first panel I would say Wally Wood’s EC science-fiction stories…

(I had a mental question a while back about Wood’s legendary space ship interiors. Didn’t Wayne Boring do basically the same things in Superman? I checked some of my old Superman Annuals and, sure enough, there they were. What was the earliest Wayne Boring space ship interior and what was the earliest Wally Wood interior? Of course Wayne Boring’s aren’t a patch on Wood’s when Wood really decided to go nuts on the submarine pipes and dials and tanks and things. The only person who really tried to compete with Wood on that – and ended up kicking his ass around the block -- was Frazetta with one of his FAMOUS FUNNIES Buck Rogers covers, but it would be interesting to see who was first into the pool with the concept.)

Panel 5 on page 2 is very uncharacteristic of Ditko and shows what I think is a Dan Barry influence—particularly the hatching on the goggles and the thin lines of white painted through them. The space ships – both the angles they’re shown at and the thin motion lines have a Dan Barry quality to them as well. Ditko ordinarily didn’t go that thin with his motion lines.

Page 6 panel 3 – ordinarily Ditko would not go that close with a foreground figure in an action panel and seems to have done so to prove he can do Dan Barry glossy highlights in the alien eyeball with the best of them. Which he can. Dan Barry was huge at this time with what he was doing on the FLASH GORDON daily strip. Julie Schwartz’s avowed ambition in the mid-50s was to make everything he edited at DC look as if it was pencilled and inked by Dan Barry.

The rest of it is one hundred percent primo Ditko.

Silly-ass story though, I must say.

“There It Is Again”
STRANGE SUSPENSE STORIES #35 (Dec. 57)

The really nice thing about Steve Ditko and the reason that I’m looking forward to Blake’s omnibus volume is that just when you think you have him pegged (open line style/fuller spotted black style) he’ll suddenly throw you a curve ball like “There It Is Again”. Just turning to it as the next story in the pile brings me up short.

What the HEY?!

First of all it looks SO different from the works I’ve just been looking at so I flip through to see if it’s just the splash page. No, the whole story, all five pages are like that. What to call the style? Ditko Iconic – that might fit the bill nicely. It is unmistakeably Ditko but it’s as if some Aristotle of The Ditko Style has found a way to strip it down to its bare essence so that it’s just made up of distinctively Ditko touches but with virtually no enhancement. That’s the challenge – how few things can you have in each panel and still have it be unmistakeably Ditko? After reading the story, it becomes obvious that the style has been tailored to the story. Ditko himself has read the script and gone,

“What the hey?”

Joe Gill writing? That would be my guess. Basically what the writer has done is to take Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN as an archetype and strip it down to five comic-book pages, 30 panels. Just picture trying to do that.

So what Ditko has done is to say, “Okay, successful or unsuccessful, that’s what the script is – FRANKENSTEIN in 30 panels. Now, how do I DRAW that?” That is, how do you take the weird effect that stripping FRANKENSTEIN down to 30 panels is going to create and play to it and enhance it? Obviously, you strip your own style down, flatten everything out. Go Iconic or go home. The creature is seen once from behind (panel one) eight times head on, twice in profile and twice in three-quarter rear view. His creator, by dramatic contrast, twists and turns in every panel where he is depicted with the creature, all exaggerated Ditko hands and gestures. And that’s pretty much it. And if you had to strip Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN to a core iconic image (and where else but comics would the occasion come up?) that would do it. Why over-think something that’s pulling you in the opposite direction thematically? FRANKENSTEIN in 30 panels, here we go. The result is gorgeous.

If Michael Chabon gets around to writing a fictitious history of the comic-book field in the 1950s as a companion piece to KAVALIER AND CLAY, that would be a good way of expressing the entire decade: FRANKENSTEIN in 30 panels.

“Panic!!”
STRANGE SUSPENSE STORIES #35 (Dec. 57)

This one interested me because of the splash page where panel one is rendered -- almost exaggeratedly -- in Ditko’s open line style. He’s darkened up the hair on three people in the crowd but the rest of them are pretty much done in basic outline. And then he goes on to spot blacks through the rest of the story.

What the hey?

I mean it would be a bit of a time saver rather than having to spot blacks through (let me count them here) fourteen people but Ditko’s a master of knowing exactly how little solid black you can get away with and still look as if you’re doing primo Milt Caniff or Joe Kubert. You will find very few examples of overt time-saving devices in his work at any point in his career.

So, the only thing I can come up with is he might be turning the tables on the colourists who have been ruining his best stuff by presenting them with an unsolvable problem.

“Here, colorist: the crowd scene is rendered in single line weight and I’ve spotted blacks not only through the rest of the page, but the rest of the story. Now, HOW are you going to colour that first panel and how are you going to colour the rest of the page?”

It’s a theory. If that is what he was doing, I’d be willing to bet that he wasn’t very happy with the results he got back. There is just no way that an artist could sabotage a colorist to the same extent a colorist could sabotage an artist.

I’m really glad that I never had to deal with the peculiar vagaries of Sparta colouring on my comic book pages.

“The Man With the Atomic Brain”
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #52 (May 59)

This one was really good. You can tell by looking at the artwork whether Ditko was fully engaged with the material and he is definitely fully engaged with it here.

It’s definitely “in tune” with his own sensibilities, having the same set-up as a super-hero origin story but with the unique difference that the super-hero, while ostensibly being admired is actually secretly despised and feared (“You must come with us! It’s for everyone’s safety!”). Needless to say, a devoted reader of Ayn Rand like Ditko is going to take to this treatment of the super-hero like a duck to water. This is really the earliest example that I’ve seen of what I would call the High Density Ditko style that he used on Spider-man – nine-panel grid, three tiers of three panels each with each panel pretty much filled – not a lot of use of white space.

His attention drops dramatically with the mystical/Utopian ending but right up to the big revelation scene he’s firing on all cylinders. I particularly liked panel 2 on page 4 “The Dead Ancient City of Kora”. Nobody does “one-panel weird” like Steve Ditko does “one-panel weird”.

The other thing that I (ahem) marvel at is the dramatic transitions from panel to panel. “I’ll transport myself to where they’ll never find me…the Moon!” And sure enough there’s the earth in the background and there’s Ted in the foreground hovering over the Moon with a couple of curved motion lines to indicate he has gone from the one to the other. In one panel.

As Arnold Stang might’ve put it: A fella could get a nasty whiplash he doesn’t watch out.
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Come back tomorrow to read Dave Sim review some 1960s Ditko! In recognition of the debut of my latest book, Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives vol.3 this month, May is "31 Days of Ditko" where I post highly entertaining content re: the co-creator of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Mr. A, half of #BeforeWatchmen, and many more.

#31DaysOfDitko: Dave Sim reviews Ditko

Back in 2007, I restarted work on my Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko book and, upon learning that Dave Sim (creator of Cerebus and Glamourpuss) was an ardent admirer of Ditko, I sent Dave a whack of late 1950s/early 1960s Ditko material. I asked him to review it on my old Ditko Looked Up website, in exchange for links to his Cerebus trades. I thought I might get a page worth of words, generalities, but Dave sent back a lot of words, with a lot of specifics.

He also sent an introduction for his reviews that I share with you here too. Dave used to do a blog back then, so he posted the intro. there and then linked to my site for the reviews. Only Dave could write an intro. like this...
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Okay, we’re all the way up to February 24th in the Mailbag at this point so I either have to start answering these letters in a more cosmetic way or find a seamstress to “let out” the top drawer of the filing cabinet. Let’s see what do we have here?

Oh, right Blake Bell. Well, so much for a “more cosmetic way”. Blake writes:

“Dear Dave,

Inspired by your fantastic blog entries on Steve Ditko’s MR.A, here’s some British B&W reprints of Ditko’s Charlton and pre-Spider-man Marvel work that I won’t be using for my 2008 Ditko book from Fantagraphics, along with some other assorted work from Ditko’s career (including a couple of pages he inked for fetish artist, Eric Stanton).

Note those numbers on the Charlton books: SSS #36 (Mar ’58) is well before the two from SSS #35 (Dec. ’57).

If you have time, Dave, I’d love to be able to post your thoughts on the work on my web site, Ditko Looked Up. In return, I’d be happy to post a permanent link to your Blog and Mail, as well as list your books for sale (as you do on your Blog and Mail entries).

Of course, I’m torn because I, too, would love to see new work out from you by Christmas!

Take care, can’t wait to see the new work, and I hope you’ve fully recovered.

Sincerely,

Blake Bell.”

Actually, I’m still mostly deaf in my left ear but the patches of numbness around the top of my right arm seem to be going away (several of them to the top of my LEFT arm, so go figure), but again it isn’t anything that I can’t work around.

18 MAY UPDATE: Turns out Chester’s been having a little discomfort at the top of his right arm as well. Not pain, but definitely a sensation that doesn’t belong there. He also tripped and fell outside the grocery store a week or so ago – banging his big toe severely and then his knee on the way down: both swollen up dramatically – a few days back and finally went and got x-rays. The toe isn’t broken, just painful and swollen.

Then we talked about our respective root canals. One of his, he bit down on a Korean dish of some kind out with John Tranh and ended up with a mouthful of tooth and filling. Turned out there wasn’t enough tooth left to save so the dentist just pulled that out. Our respective ailments have become a substantial part of our conversation when we get together now. While I was buying a flossing wand in the drug store, Chet was trying out the different canes they had for sale. He had actually thought of buying one when he smunched his toe. What a couple of decrepit old men we have become.

Tell you what I’m going to do, Blake – I’ll take the next few days writing reviews of the work that you sent me and then get Sandeep to e-mail you all of my writing on the subject and you can post it all at once on your Ditko Looked Up website. So everyone reading this, when they get to the bottom of this installment will suddenly realize that you’ve got the whole works posted to your own site and you’ve had it up there since May 20 or so. So, they’ll not only be able to read today and tomorrow and Thursday’s Blog and Mail elsewhere before they can read it here, I’ll also be chasing my entire audience away on the exact day that I finally have a new book in the stores.

It’s just that kind of cagey marketing savvy that has led to me being balanced precariously on the brink of oblivion. No, please, it’s the least I can do in exchange for the Ditko material that you sent. Coincidentally, I also got in parts five and six of Steve Ditko’s latest essay in Robin Snyder’s THE COMICS, so I’ll even be able to talk about that and I may NEVER get my audience back. First the intro:

Dave Sim is a comic-book iconoclast who was the author and co-artist and self-publisher of the world’s only 6,000 page graphic novel available in 16 volumes in most comic book stores (where he would prefer that you buy them) or from the below e-mail address (Win-Mill Productions’ www.followingcerebus.com) with PayPal capability (if you insist). Blake Bell, Your Obedient Website Host here at Ditko Looks Up really honked Mr. Sim off a few years back by writing a book called “I HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS GUY” in which comic creators’ wives and spouses discussed their personal lives with the creators in question. What honked off Mr. Sim was that he was the only EX-husband to be so “honoured”.

After cutting Mr. Bell dead on the spot on a couple of occasions, a temporary case of Alzheimer’s seized Mr. Sim at TCAF in 2007 and he offered his chair to someone with a friendly face who looked sort of familiar and who turned out to be Mr. Bell. Mr. Bell, taking this as a sign of uncharacteristic grace and forgiveness (rather than as the outward manifestation of early-onset senility that it was) later engaged Mr. Sim in conversation, asking his forgiveness, mentioning as he did so that the two individuals in the comic-book field who Mr. Bell held in the highest regard are Mr. Sim and Steve Ditko and that he had managed to honk both of them off abominably. Which was just touchingly funny enough to square things with one of them, anyway.

In addition to working on a secret comics project, Mr. Sim has been writing the daily blog the Blog and Mail since 13 September 06 even though he isn’t hooked up to the Internet. He accomplishes this by writing roughly three weeks’ worth of blog entries in a three-day period and then having them posted one at a time (by long-time Cerebus reader and Cerebus Yahoo Newsgroup Co-Administrator Jeff Tundis) (Take a bow, Jeff) to create the illusion of daily blogging. In exchange for tapping into the Vast Ditko Looked Up Audience and the bribe of a permanent link to the Blog & Mail from Ditko Looked Up and a plug for his sixteen trade paperbacks and two Collected Letters volumes, Mr. Sim has agreed to review several Ditko stories that didn’t make the cut for Blake Bell’s forthcoming Steve Ditko volume soon to be published by Fantagraphics.

While Dave Sim is unbecomingly curious if Mr. Ditko is a) STILL honked off at Blake Bell and b) foisting Blake Bell upon Mr. Ditko as the author of the Big Ditko Coffee Table Book is just another example of Gary Groth’s insidious back-stabbing wit, Mr. Sim is too much of a gentlemen to address such a thing here at someone else’s website.

18 MAY UPDATE: Chester thought that the reason Steve Ditko was honked off at Blake Bell was BECAUSE of the coffee table book: that Ditko’s notorious urge for absolute privacy rebelled at the idea of any kind of biography. Hey, it’s a theory! I had also written about how Blake had expressed contrition over his treatment of me as an ex-husband now that he is an ex-husband himself. Then I tried to call him and there was a female voice on the answering machine. Hmm. Maybe I imagined that part. No, Chet told me that Blake is out of his marriage and into a new relationship. As someone once said, that represents the triumph of hope over experience.

And so, to the capsule reviews:

Oops. Out of space for today. Click over to Blake’s “Ditko Looked Up” website and he should have them all posted. Or you can read them here where I’ll be posting a few of them at a time, without illustrations.
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(Blake again) We'll post the reviews tomorrow, as it's late and I have to go search my brain for memories of all that "asking forgiveness" and "contrition" that I allegedly did in our 2007 TCAF meeting, but why argument semantics when there's pre-Spider-Man Ditko to be reviewed and reveled in. Plus, unlike how Dave gets painted, he was extremely charitable then, and since, given how my Have To Live With This Guy! likely would have landed with anyone in a similar position (I have questioned myself as to the purity of my motives in some of the choices made in that particular chapter), so grace for grace, indeed.

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In recognition of the debut of my latest book, Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives vol.3 at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this weekend, May is "31 Days of Ditko" where I post highly entertaining content everyday on the co-creator of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Mr. A, half of #BeforeWatchmen, and many more.

#31DaysOfDitko: More on Dave Sim and Ditko

Yesterday, we posted Dave Sim's review of my 2008 Ditko bio/art book, Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko. He first read that review to me in a phone conversation that was one of the most emotional comic-related moments in my memory.

I had hit upon Cerebus in 1987, just after issue 105 (of 300) and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Easily moved to my favourite current comic, easily moved Dave into that trinity alongside Ditko and Everett.

Dump me on a desert island with nothing other than Ditko's run on Spider-Man, and Cerebus #11 to #136, and I'd be entertained for life.

And Dave was the 1980s equivalent of Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols: a legit, street-cred, no-nonsense rock star/shepherd. He was the Jack Kirby equivalent of his generation; the "Godfather" of the indie movement, influencing and inspiring too many creators to count. That all changed when Dave let his point of view on gender relations all hang out in Cerebus #186.

I bring this up because the consequences of that POV informed my 2008 phone conversation with him. Dave didn't look fondly upon the Deni Loubert/Dave Sim chapter of my first book, I Have To Live With This Guy!, from 2002. Still, two subsequent meetings had buried the hatchet. That led to various exchanges including what was this whirlwind of a conversation re: Ditko.

Dave felt (correctly so) that Ditko had been consistently belittled, insulted and relegated for his Randian viewpoints mainly because the whole world just wanted Ditko to roll over, do Spider-Man and Dr. Strange again, and have his blood sucked for where "all the bodies are buried" at Marvel.
This 2008 conversation started well. Hey, when one of your heroes says about your book, "I think that Strange and Stranger is probably the best book of its kind that I’ve read," it's tough not to feel a sense of accomplishment. But as the reading of the review unfurled, and Sim clearly was empathizing with the arc of Ditko's career that had been deeply informed by the expression of his philosophical viewpoint, the tone began to change, and my momentary sense of joy sank with each passing word out of Dave's mouth.

When Dave finished reading the review, there was a prolonged silence. Ever been caught in the ocean's undertow, spun upside down? Was I offended? No, not really. Had my balloon burst? Maybe a little, but it certainly gave me pause to think and re-examine my motives based on this new perspective (especially when delivered in such a heart-felt manner).

It was the follow-up that I won't forget. Dave elaborated on how he felt Ditko had been treated by fans, the press, and the industry, and it became increasingly clear that he was talking about himself too. A wave of sadness came over me as Dave became choked up, especially while relating my "tip of the cap" to him in the Acknowledgments section.

I had put in there that my admiration was unending for Cerebus #11 to #136, in a similar fashion to Ditko's Spider-Man run, and he questioned if that was not read as a back-handed complement - similar to how Ditko views people who like his corporate comics vs. that from his own independent mind. I stood up for myself on this point, saying that my love for that part of Cerebus was an objective fact and that it was unfair to categorize my comment as a negative commentary on his personal beliefs that came out in full force in issue #186. Just as I had criticized Ditko's later work for being too didactic, for letting the message overwhelm the story, I believed the same had happened with Cerebus to the extent that my enjoyment, while never stopping me from buying the book to #300, did decrease in a comparative sense. I also opined to Dave that I don't think Ditko would appreciate people buy his Objectivist-heavy work just to support him because "he was Ditko". An acquaintance of Ditko once told me that Ditko had said he'd rather read a review of someone who hated his work than someone licking his boots, and I think that stuck with Dave as an appropriate counterpoint to his argument offered in the review.

I must have been channeling the Holy Spirit because I think the way that I conveyed myself broke through his defenses, in terms of sobering him up to the fact that he was being judged solely on the merits of his work, and not on his socio-political beliefs, and that this was rare for him in the past 10 years. It was clear to me that this had taken a toll on him: going from likely the most "he's my guy" figure in alternative comics to pariah/outsider.

I think we left the conversation with a better understanding of the other person's point of view. What else can you ask for? We've had some interactions since, but none for awhile and I wish I had the time to sit down and re-read Cerebus from start to finish for the first time in a decade. My other "dream book" to write would be "Dave Sim and The Rise of the Independents" just because I'd get to read those books again and bask in the glow of that era where everything seemed possible if you were an indie creator. We were going to triumph en masse over Goliath. Sim proved you could make it all on your own: a complete artistic vision, and business model, from start to finish, no interference in that vision from anyone (including a dwindling fan base). That's why comics are #1 for me. Can any other medium allow a creator the ability to get their vision across in such an unfiltered manner, from concept to consumer?

This conversation with Dave must have happened circa June of 2008 because I remember sitting down one night with Gary Groth and Mike Catron in their hotel at the San Diego Comicon that year, right after my Ditko book had hit bookstores and the first print run had sold out almost immediately. Gary said, "So, basking in the glow?" I then started to recount the Dave conversation and Gary said, "What motivates you to talk to him?" (Not in a sarcastic way at all, just out of curiosity, given how "out of vogue" Dave was with the comic-book intelligentsia.)

I said something like, "'Grace,' I guess. When someone had meant so much to you, I'm not quick to the impulse to toss them overboard because the wind changes direction. If I'm looking for a sinner to judge, and we're all sinners, I'll look in the mirror first."

I still feel this way. The number one thing that God has been working on me since being Born Again in Feb '11 is my blind self-righteousness. This is the (unfortunate) ability to see and call out sin in everyone else...except myself.

All the internet seems to have accomplished in this regard is allow me as a sinner to have my own couch potato pulpit to judge others (from a distance), all the while very likely not being worthy of the same judgement. Jesus was full of grace and truth. That's the same grace that I don't know if people have afforded Dave, but would be probably be begging for themselves if the tables were turned when one of their viewpoints became unpopular next week.

And I struggle to condone the linkage between the expression of a differing viewpoint and what an extremist might do with that viewpoint just from hearing it. I've been so convicted by God on the point that the worst kind of blind self-righteousness is believing myself so smart above all that I have to "protect" the supposedly-gullible from themselves; in this case, lest they fall "under Dave's evil spell and commit heinous acts against the innocent in Dave's name. I struggle with that being a biblical, or Randian, sense of personal accountability I can espouse. I struggle with voting a brother off the island because I claim to be tolerant, and demand tolerance, of my own viewpoints and not others.

I perfectly understand the notion that the offense Dave caused others means they do not care to associate with them, but I struggle with understanding the blind self-righteousness that this makes him an "evil" person, or me the same for daring to associate with him. I just don't think the world is a better place with that mindset in play, and it's certainly not part of my Faith. Especially since, to avoid being a hypocrite/pharisee, I'd probably have to sanction bombing Iran, or closing our doors to China and a zillion other countries that actually perform human rights' abuses, no? Or vote to ban abortion, since it's killing babies, right?

It's easy for me to shoot fish in my barrel, like Dave or Ditko, and not have to live up to that sense of morality on a consistent basis. It might interfere with me getting my cheap consumer goods, made by some penny-an-hour kids in factories in some overseas cesspool, just far enough from my eyes to relieve me of our sub-conscious guilt...and as long as I have people here like Ditko and Sim to bash and ridicule, I can sleep at night, feeling I'm righteous enough in this area to make up for my blindness elsewhere in matters of truth and justice, right? If you've read any of Ditko's non-corporate comics over the past 20 years, you know which side he lands on.

Not surprisingly, with the return of Ditko to producing his own comics since the release of my book (Ditko has published sixteen full-length, 32-page comics since 2008), and the return of the print fanzine, Ditkomania, Dave has said much more about Ditko and his work, plus has contributed a number of covers to Ditkomania. Tomorrow, we'll feature Dave's review of some of Ditko's 1950s work that I had sent him.
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In recognition of the debut of my latest book, Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives vol.3 at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this weekend, May is "31 Days of Ditko" where I post highly entertaining content everyday on the co-creator of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Mr. A, half of #BeforeWatchmen, and many more.

#31DaysOfDitko: Dave Sim and Steve Ditko

What's a boy to do when three of his "heroes" are Steve Ditko, Dave Sim and Jesus Christ? (Now there's a Last Supper!) How did I stumble onto this collection of individuals vilified for their beliefs (or, at the very least, how they express them), each seeing no "gray", no compromise, and no middle ground. And what does it say about me?

Oh well, I'll save that for my first non-comics book but, for now, let's look back for a few posts on my relationship with Dave Sim, creator of the 300-issue comic Cerebus, as it intersects with talk of Ditko.

My relationship with Dave has its roots back in 2002 when I interviewed Deni Loubert for my first book, I Have To Live With This Guy! She was married to Dave for a time in the 1980s, acted as the publisher of Cerebus and went on to be the publisher of her own company, Renegade Press, publishing some of Ditko's work. I'll save the middle of the relationship story for another time but, in 2008, Dave and I spoke on the phone about my then-just published Ditko biography/art book, Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko. I'll comment tomorrow on that conversation, but the second act of it was him reading me his just-written review of the book. (Hint, the conversation was very similar to the arch of the review.)

On the weekend that sees the release of the Marvel movie, The Avengers, and its contribution (or lack thereof) to the dialogue on Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and the company that continues to make billions off of their creations, it seems fitting to share this. Note: tomorrow, I doubt I'll be able to convey the emotion present on both sides during the 3rd act of the conversation between Dave and me, but I'll try...

STRANGE AND STRANGER
One Man’s View
Dave Sim, © 2008

As I told Blake Bell in a phone message, I think that Strange and Stranger is probably the best book of its kind that I’ve read – certainly preferable to the biography of Wally Wood, Wally’s World that came out back in ’06.

It’s pretty thoroughly researched and annotated, for one thing, which means it’s either the definitive Ditko biography for the ages or the foundational work which subsequent efforts will seek to enhance and amend, develop and correct. At the very least it strikes a very successful balance between the invasion of someone’s private life (a generally unpleasant task made more so by the fact of the subject’s scrupulous maintenance of that privacy), an examination of the art styles and approaches of its subject, capitulation to the intended mainstream audience with Big Pop Art Enlargements of Campy Off-Register Colour (er – that is what the mainstream audience wants isn’t it?), a nice selection of black and white copies of originals and stats (for those of us “weirdos” who are interested in seeing what an artist’s art looks like) (go figure) and a clear chronology of what happened when and why.

To me, it seems pretty straightforward as narrative: this is what Ditko proposes to do, this person or company agrees to what he proposes to do, Ditko does what he says he was going to do and the person or company doesn’t. Ditko goes his own way. At the very least the volume seems misnamed. “Strange and Stranger?” Shouldn’t there be something in the title about Integrity? Particularly given Ditko’s sober second thoughts on all forms of supernatural content (to the extent that he eventually was turning down jobs with supernatural elements, let alone supernatural themes). Granted, in the 21st Century there could be few things more unimaginably strange than integrity – but isn’t that more of a comment on what used to be called the lumpen proletariat than on the perhaps solitary individual still making his decisions based on personal ethics (ethics that get progressively more stringent over the years, rather than more flaccid which is the common route in our society)?

There’s a lot in here that I didn’t know and other things that I had forgotten.

How could I have forgotten that there had been the time when Ditko had offered original Mr. A stories to interested fanzine publishers, gratis, with the only proviso being that they publish the work in a timely fashion and return the originals? Could there have been a more fundamental challenge to the Brave New World of anti-corporate, power to the people rebels? They certainly talked the talk in a way that resonated with Ditko’s rugged individualism. All he was looking for was people who would do what they said they were going to do. The experiment failed miserably, of course, but the fault can scarcely be laid at Ditko’s feet. As with most of his experiments he found that those who talk the talk are legion, those who walk the walk are anecdotal.

They’re all here – or most of them are: like a Greek chorus of Ditko caricatures, all with their rationalizations, their self-congratulation and their mystified expressions. The lessons are all the same, as far as they’re concerned, the bottom line summed up best as “We’re very disappointed in you, Steve Ditko.” It seems never to occur to them to ask why that’s their bottom line, given that Ditko always holds up his end of the bargain. Steve Ditko holds up his end of the bargain – it’s the primary recurrent theme of his self-generated work: the holding up of the respective ends of a bargain, reciprocal satisfaction which results when that takes place, misplaced animosity when it doesn’t – and the people he struck the bargain with end up disappointed in him.

Unfortunately the author and the publisher of the book join that Greek chorus at the end. “We’re very disappointed in you, Steve Ditko.” I kept hoping that there would be a plug for Robin Snyder, the only publisher that Ditko has stuck with and therefore (basic logic would inform us) the only person to hold up his end of the bargain over however many years. Just in case there is a mainstream audience for this and they – or a small fraction of them – are interested in seeing what Steve Ditko has to say about himself, you know? Given that everyone else has his and her say for two hundred and twenty-some-odd pages and the author and publisher have, presumably, made a good buck off of Steve Ditko’s name and stellar reputation and artwork knowing that he implicitly disapproves of what it is they’re doing here…

I get the impression that I’m the only person of my own generation in comics (and possibly of all succeeding generations) who sees the situation clearly. Certainly my primary question for myself was “Where was I?” Back in the 1970s I worked on one of the few successful (that is, it actually came out when it said it would) fanzines, Comic Art News & Reviews. Why didn’t we publish a Ditko Mr. A story since Ditko was making it that easy to do so? Politics, basically. We were all extreme leftists back in the 70s and Ditko, of course, with his ethics which were carved in stone rather than situational like our own, was a fascist, a Nazi. The world couldn’t get far enough, fast enough away from the honour and ethics and morality of a Steve Ditko, couldn’t run far enough fast enough in the other direction. And here we are, as far over in the opposite direction as you can get in just about the kind of world you would expect: inhabited almost exclusively by Steve Ditko caricatures – who turn out not to be caricatures at all. Even back in the 60s, Ditko was drawing accurate portraits of what we were all choosing to become.

Even a nice guy like Blake Bell. I can vouch for him being a nice guy because I’ve spent a certain amount of time in his company and you really can’t fake that gut-level of earnest good guy that Blake exudes. But there’s something about actual ethics that makes even nice guys more than a little loopy when they experience them. Blake writes, “Alas, once again the market proved to be a cruel mistress, and Ditko and Snyder would abandon publishing again after the release, in the summer of 2002, of a comprehensive, 240-page collection of Ditko’s Objectivist comics and essays titled Avenging World that sank without a trace (even most Ditko fans are unaware of its existence).”

Well, you know Robin Snyder just published Ditko’s “Toyland” essays in The Comics in the last year and The Avenging Mind in April. I didn’t even find out about Robin Snyder until late 2006 and managed to buy all of the extant 1990s Ditko material at cover price by mail. So there is a “trace” of Steve Ditko – it’s just that it seems that the largely rancourous, largely unthinking, reflexively leftist comic-book field can’t help “playing to type”: that is behaving like the accurate portraits Steve Ditko has been rendering of them for a good forty years now. Having driven him as far out of the field as we can, just by relentlessly not holding up our sides of any bargain struck with him, we now need to act as if his work “sank without a trace” instead of doing something sort of, you know, honorable (just for the experience – we can always go back to the old way if honour proves to be as unsatisfying as most of us are determined to see it as being).

Like what?

Like “People interested in helping to supplement Steve Ditko’s extremely modest income can do so by ordering his various new works which are in print and available from Robin Snyder, 3745 Canterbury Lane #81, Bellingham, WA, 98225-1186 USA, email RobinBrigit [at] comcast.net."

Now that simple paragraph could have been on every bookshelf in every comic book store and Barnes and Noble and wherever else these books are going to turn up. Instead it will only appear here in a fanzine. And will probably rile everyone up and start a new round of Evil Dave Sim talk, no one will order anything – and those same people will cry a river of crocodile tears when Steve Ditko passes from this vale of tears.

Acting just the way he’s been drawing them for close to forty years now.

Sickening, isn’t it?

----

In recognition of the debut of my latest book, Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives vol.3 at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this weekend, May is "31 Days of Ditko" where I post highly entertaining content everyday on the co-creator of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Mr. A, half of #BeforeWatchmen, and many more.

#31DaysOfDitko: 1959 Ditko Drawing Table

Yesterday, we introduced the notion that Ditko was influenced by the late John Severin, famed EC/Cracked/Marvel Comics artist. We spotlighted a 1959 picture of Ditko in his studio surrounded by 3 Marvel covers (in various stages of production) by Severin, all cover dated Jun/Jul 1957, but there's a couple of pieces under Ditko's drawing table that were really tough to identify. Here's another picture from the same shoot, from a different angle...


Well, wonder no more about the fully-inked cover (being covered by the pencil page that Ditko is about to ink). Not surprisingly, it's another John Severin cover, but this time it's from 1959 (lending a lot of credence to the dates of these pictures)...


Kid Colt Outlaw #86 is cover-dated Sep '59, less than a year after Stan Lee restarted the Marvel Universe with Strange Worlds, Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense with the additions of Kirby and Ditko to his roster. That date should also help narrow down the identity of that penciled page... (to be continued...)

But before we go, never let there be doubt that Ditko didn't draw from his real life...


The above is from Space War #6, Aug '60, published by Charlton Comics. Think about it! Ditko always did.

In celebration of the debut of my latest book, Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives vol.3 at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this weekend, May is "31 Days of Ditko" where I post highly entertaining content everyday on the co-creator of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Mr. A, half of #BeforeWatchmen, and many more!

#31DaysOfDitko: John Severin's Influence on Ditko

In celebration of the debut of my latest book, Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives vol.3 at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this weekend, May is "31 Days of Ditko" where I post highly entertaining content everyday on the co-creator of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Mr. A, half of #BeforeWatchmen, and many more! (That's me on the right - my copies of the book arrived today, and I must say that the designer folks at Fantagraphics Books Inc. have outdone themselves. The reproduction is unmatched again, natch, but the covers and surrounding insides really capture the atmosphere of the artwork and the whole period for Ditko's 1957 Charlton output.)

John Severin's Untold Influence on Steve Ditko
We lost one of the greats on February 12, 2012. Few artists in comic-book history maintained the artistic standard that they set at the peak of their career all the way through their lives. Gene Colan, and Russ Heath come to mind, and so does John Severin. He never lost it, plain and simple. I can't even say that about Ditko. But few people know that Severin had a direct influence on Ditko.

Part of the reason why few people know this is because we have very few documented examples of Ditko actually speaking about another artist's work in any terms. He wrote a fanzine piece in the mid-'60s on the virtues of Mort Meskin (he shared time with Mort in 1953 at the Joe Simon / Jack Kirby studio). Ditko frequently mentioned the impact of Jerry Robinson as his teacher, but barely any others who inspired/influenced him. In the 1959 letters to fan Mike Britt (that we again spotlight unpublished passages in this book), he does say he enjoyed Harvey Kurtzman's The Jungle Book, but that's about it.

But there was a period in 1959 and 1960 where Ditko's work exhibited a detailed inking style - that "word carving effect - that John Severn did so successfully. It's a unique period in Ditko's career but it's perhaps my favourite because of the beautiful detail in the work. What led Ditko down this path? Coincidence, or something more? Well, take a closer look at one of the three photos of Ditko in his studio that he shared with famed fetish artist Eric Stanton in 1959 (click to enlarge)...


Notice the two large-sized covers, one behind this head, and one just off his left shoulder? Okay, now notice the black and white cover under his left shoulder that you can barely see. One problem: none of these pieces are by Ditko. They are, in fact, all pieces by John Severin. They are John's covers (click to enlarge) for three Marvel books in Jun/Jul '57 - Strange Tales Of The Unusual #10 (Jun ’57), Adventure Into Mystery #8 (Jul ’57) and War Comics #48 (Jul ’57).


While Ditko did do 19 stories for Marvel in 1956, it's startling to see this Severin artwork in this format (not the comics themselves, but the covers at various stages of production). How did Ditko get a hold of those two completely finished covers at this size? Were they stats just collected from the Marvel offices? And what about the black and white cover? Did Severin, or someone at Marvel, just give them to Ditko, so Ditko could practice / observe Severin's work? And Ditko is still referencing them in 1959? Now, about that piece of original art under Ditko's left hand... (continued tomorrow)

#31DaysOfDitko: Byrne Notice

In celebration of the debut of my latest book, Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives vol.3 at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this weekend, May is "31 Days of Ditko" where I post highly entertaining content everyday on the co-creator of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Mr. A, half of #BeforeWatchmen, and many more!

John Byrne: What Do You Think?

Right: Steve Ditko, 1959, co-creator of "Spider-Man"
Left: John Byrne, co-creator of "Ret Con"

Having achieved his fame as the penciller of the Uncanny X-Men in their heyday, Byrne also inked Ditko

Ditko Archives v3 debuts at TCAF! May is "31 Days of Ditko"

My latest book, Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives v3, is making its debut in my hometown of Toronto this weekend at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. The festival goes both days (admission is free!) and is located at Toronto Reference Library (on Yonge St, just above Bloor St). I'll be at the show from 2:30pm to 3:30pm, so if you see me, I'll be happy to sign your copy.

I am very excited about this release because it really is Ditko at the beginning of his peak that ran from 1957 until the mid-to-late 1960s. This volume also features a never-been-published Ditko drawing from 1959, plus more unpublished musings to a fan by Ditko from that year.

Want to see the book in action? Check out this video preview of the book, and here's an 18-page .pdf preview. You cannot beat Ditko on his two 1950s signature titles: Tales of the Mysterious Traveler and This Magazine is Haunted and this volume has tons of both!

How/When to Buy
Should be in comic-book stores next Wed May 9.Should be in bookstores and on Amazon.com week of May 14.Pre-order now from Amazon.com at 38% the cover price for a limited time.
What is "31 Days of  Ditko?"
To celebrate the release of this volume, I'll be posting a new blog entry everyday in the month of May. And not just some cheesy, 140-character tweet, but some good, hardcore never-before-seen-on-this-blog stuff that'll blow your mindhole. Follow me on Twitter and watch for the hashtag #31DaysOfDitko to get even more tidbits or join the Steve Ditko Archives Facebook group that houses lots of original material. To get us started with 31 Days of Ditko, here's a hummer from Kelly Sue DeConnick and Neil Gaiman...

Ringo Starr enjoys the taste of Ditko
That's the image we used for my Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives v2, seen here as a U.K. reprint in the 1960s from publisher Alan Class who reprinted a lot of Ditko Charlton and Marvel work under different titles...

Dick Ayers, 88 Years Young Today!

Famed Marvel Comics artist Dick Ayers is 88 years young today! Dick is primarily known for his work on the Sgt Fury strip for Marvel (Fury set to appear in the Avengers movie, played by Samuel L. Jackson), as well as the go-to inker for many 1960s Marvel books drawn by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. But he started in comics in the
He also "inked" Ditko on the first issue of Iron Man that featured Ditko's seminal redesign of Kirby's clunky armor into the version that still lives on (also in the Avengers movie, Iron Man played by Robert Downey Jr.) almost 50 years later. I put "inked" in quotation marks because Ditko would do very sketchy pencils, adding most of the details when he inked his work. Problem is that Stan Lee started using Ditko like he had being using Jack Kirby - get a new feature going, ensuring the strip was drawn "the Marvel Way" before another penciller/inker would finish it off. As you can see on the original art to Iron Man #48, Ayers whited out the part that suggests he only inked the issue, so that it read "Art by Steve Ditko and Dick Ayers". The issue is also known for having been "watered down" in that the name of the villain was originally called "Mr. Pain" but was changed to the less frightening "Mr. Doll".

I was blessed enough to get to know Dick and his wife, Lindy, in 2001 and interviewed them for my first book, "I Have To Live With This Guy!" A few years later, when Dick was doing his auto-biography in graphic novel form, he drew me into his book (yes, I am that dashing)...



Read more on Dick's career here and here, and scroll through the vast collection of original art and covers on the Heritage Auctions website archives. Happy Birthday, Darlin' Dick Ayers!








1st Row: original art to Tales of Suspense #48 (Dec '63); published version of TOS #48; original art to pg 17 of TOS #48 (all pencils by Ditko, inked by Ayers)
2nd Row: Jimmy Durante Comics #1 ('48); original art to Sgt. Fury #33 (Aug '66); pen & ink of "The Unknown Soldier, 2001 (owned by yours truly)

Steve Ditko Archives v3 - First Look!

Advance copies of my next book, Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives v3 have arrived at the publisher, Fantagraphics Books Inc. The book is destined for an early May release. This volume features Ditko's best artwork to date, thanks in large part to the copious amounts of stories from Ditko's two best titles of the 1950s, Tales of the Mysterious Traveler (based on the old radio show) and (my favourite) This Magazine is Haunted. The introduction, and insertion, of a narrator in both titles really sees Ditko open up his page layouts beyond a 6 or 9-panel grid.

The 240-page book is all from 1957 (Ditko's output exploding that year to almost 500 pages of pencils and inks; a feat he matched in 1958, as well) and Ditko's line is far more assured than in previous years. This period in his career is unique; he draws heavily on his Eastern European heritage for the ethnicity in his faces, settings, manner of dress, etc. He also developed many of the motifs seen in his 1960s Marvel work during 1957. Click on the above image to see a larger picture of the physical book. Fantagraphics has an 18-page preview on their website (where you can pre-order the book) that shows the immaculate restoration work that has gone into this volume.

You can order the book via Amazon.com at a whopping 38% off the cover price for a limited time. If you're looking for a sample of Steve Ditko's work at its finest, give Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives v3 a look!