Steve Ditko, 1927 – 2018

I first met Spider-Man in the early 1970s. I would have been six or seven, and our next door neighbour, who worked at a newsagent’s shop, brought home a Spider-Man comic that hadn’t sold that week and gave it to me. Considering my life long love affair with Spidey ever since, I should imagine I was smitten as soon as I saw the cover.

Back in those days, when my mother still used a mangle to squeeze water out of washed clothes and the rag and bone man on his horse drawn cart was still a regular visitor on our street, getting your hands on an American, full colour comic was only slightly less difficult than finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

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What we British kids had to make do with were black and white reprints, the story lines several years behind their American counterparts.

But I loved those comics and so my father put in an order for The Amazing Spider-Man, and every Friday when I got home from school, there it was, the latest issue. And I would devour it in minutes.

At this stage in Spider-Man’s career John Romita Sr, or simply John Romita as he was known back then because John Romita Jr was still a kid and had yet to make his own mark on the world of comic book illustration, had been illustrating the Webslinger’s adventures for a couple of years. With a background in working for romance comics, Romita had at first seemed an unusual choice for a super hero book, but he soon became a fan favourite.

It was only when I started going back, looking for those adventures that I had missed, that I discovered Steve Ditko.

To be honest, at first I wasn’t that impressed.

Ditko gave Spider-Man’s action scenes a certain awkwardness in the way he posed them, whereas Romita’s drawings were much more fluid and naturalistic.

But as I worked my way through the Steve Ditko era back catalogue I gradually warmed to his illustrative style and came to appreciate it.

Ultimately I became a fan.

Since hearing the sad news about his death I have been looking through Ditko’s work again.

And I think some of his work should be hanging in art galleries.

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