Steve Ditko - Outer Limits!

The Steve Ditko Archives Volume 6 is titled Outer Limits, and this final volume in the Fantagraphic series showcases Ditko's work for Charlton in the years 1958 and 1959. The stories in these volumes have been arranged according to the order in which Ditko produced them and not in the order they were published. The science fiction and fantasy stories have hit a formula at this point of a disenchanted protagonist must confront the weird and unusual in order to be punished or find enlightenment. As the years have gone by and comics under the Code have drifted further and further from the EC Comics mode, enlightenment is more common than cruel cosmic justice. 

There's a lot of space opera and oddly as a counterpoint quite a few western tales. These stories are from issues of Charlton's Black Fury and Rocky Lane's Black Jack series, both of which starred coal-black stallions as they main character. In these simple days of Roy Rogers and Trigger, such comics were not uncommon at all, a somewhat bizarre mini-genre of its very own. While he did not interior work for Cheyenne Kid, Ditko doe supply a cover for the series. 

Of the covers produced in this time are some of my very favorite Ditko images. The lyrical and delicate image of an undersea realm for Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds is astounding in so many ways. It's at once beautiful and compelling as we see our own civilization stumbling across this weird and strangely lit undersea world filled with creatures new to our experience., 

 

I've remarked elsewhere about this Out of this World cover, my all-time favorite Ditko cover image, so tender and so elegantly composed. You'd never think this showcased a battle, a battle I imagine fought in complete silence. 

A little more rooted in the pulps is this Outer Space cover. Some folks really hate the practice at Charlton to mar their cover art with blurbs for contests and such. I find these ads all part of the cover experience and clearly Ditko has left room for these announcements. Covers were meant to get you to buy the book and not just a piece of art for its own sake. 

This sidewalk creature on this Unusual Tales cover is one of Ditko's weirdest concoctions and an urban nightmare for certain. I wonder if folks adrift inside the digital worlds of their cellphones think of the landscape like this when they inevitable crash into some of their surroundings. 

The Steve Ditko Archives from Fantagraphics were lovingly put together by Blake Bell, a man dedicated for many years to achieving a clearer understanding of the elusive Ditko and his art. These tomes are a wonderful gateway into the earliest years of one of comic's greatest talents. 

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Steve Ditko - Dripping With Fear!

Dripping With Fear is the fifth volume in the Steve Ditko Archives from Fantagraphics. It presents work which was produced and appeared in Charlton Comics in 1958 and 1959. The stories are of the classic sci-fi whimsical variety with a strong moral message delivered when the protagonist either wins his heart's desire or is punished in some weird way for his improper desires. 

And speaking of improper desires, 1958 was an important year for Ditko in that he landed a studio with Eric Stanton, an artist who specialized in fetish and bondage art and comics for that shadowy market. Stanton and Ditko maintained a studio together for a decade, right through to 1968. As we well know it was in these years that Ditko's style matured and he fashioned the heroes which were to make him a legend in comic book lore. In fact there's some suggestion that Stanton might've had a small had in designing elements of the Amazing Spider-Man himself. The stories are conflicting, not helped by the fact that Ditko always seemed to want to downplay his involvement with his studio mate's work. 

That work found an audience which to put it bluntly was not mainstream America. To find that "Sturdy" Steve Ditko the co-creator of Spidey was also helping out on pages in which dames in various states of undress fought or held sway over one another is something the Comics Code approved world might think a bit too kinky. But there seems little doubt looking at some of the pages that Ditko did indeed assist from time to time on features like Sweeter Gwen and others. It's always struck odd that a man of such strong convictions as Ditko held about the value of work would be so squeamish about owning his "work" here, seeing as it was the quality of the craftsmanship that should matter and not the content. 

Ditko also was moving away from just doing science fiction and fantasy tales and was working on westerns as well. This collection features the stories he did for Blackjack and Outlaws of the West and even closes out with a tale from Robin Hood and his Merry Men. 

But it's still those offbeat, weird tales from This Magazine is Haunted, Strange Suspense Stories, Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds and Outer Space that supply the bulk of the material here. Ditko is also doing relatively few covers for these magazines as well, concentrating it appears on his storytelling. There is a sixth and final volume in this series and I'll take a look at it in due course. 

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Steve Ditko - Impossible Tales!

The Steve Ditko Archives Volume 4 is titled Impossible Tales and as this collection of Ditko tales from the latter part of 1957 and into 1958 show, the title is well chosen. Long gone are the space operas and the gruesome horror tales. They have been replaced by light and bouncy stories of science fiction and fantasy which focus on the destiny of one man. This is a collection filled with tortured souls looking for explanations for why they suffer of who they are. We have misguided robots, time travelers, befuddled scientists,  mutants and more.

These are stories mostly from Charlton and magazines such as Tales of the Mysterious Traveler and This Magazine is Haunted. It's the latter that really stands out in my estimation, since the host of that comic Dr. Haunt has become a real favorite of mine in these readings. He's visually provocative and Ditko increasingly uses him in more and more creative ways fusing him into the stories. He does it with the Traveler as well, but somehow Dr. Haunt is a bit more engaging to my eye. I should also say that two stories from the earlier volume in the series are reprinted yet again because of some pages dropped in that first outing. 

One comic seems to be all Ditko, the St. John comic title Do You Believe in Nightmares. This is a heady book, almost in many ways to my eye what Dikto will do when he turns his sights on Marvel. There are two issues of this comic, the second features work by Dick Ayers and apparently both were the result of Al Fago, longtime Charlton editor selling these tales to St. John's when he was fired by Charlton. 

The rest of the stories appeared in Charlton comics such Unusual Tales and Out of this World. Ditko is exceedingly well represented in the Charlton line at this time but his covers do seem to diminish as he spends more and more time on the stories within. The covers he did produce though are real winners. 

The next volume will continue with Ditko's 1958 work and will also bring to light one of Ditko's most whip snapping aspects, his days as a pornographer of sorts. 

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Steve Ditko - The Mysterious Traveler!

The third volume of The Steve Ditko Archives from Fantagraphics is titled Mysterious Traveler after the character and comic which much of Ditko's better work from his period was featured. That period is 1957 and this is the second of three tomes to gather up his work from this most fertile year. 

The stories in this volume are evidence that the style of comic book storytelling was well and truly changing in the face of public scrutiny and the Comics Code as the stories here, a mix of science fiction and fantasy are far more whimsical and far less bloody than what had been the focus of these kinds of comics in times before. This is also a time when Ditko was rejuvenated after his year-long bout with tuberculosis and his vigor is evident in the pages he generated using mostly Joe Gill scripts to guide his path. 

In addition to the Mysterious Traveler as a host we have also Dr. Haunt of This Magazine if Haunted, a post-Code replacement for the much more grisly Dr. Death. In his green cape and green slouching hat Dr. Haunt is a figure of absolute mystery who tells his brief yarns of fear and dread with aplomb and a zest which adds to the whole experience. He has a weird cane with an enormous handle which reminds me of a crystal ball of all things. Unlike the very human looking Mysterious Traveler, Dr. Haunt is possessed of a distinctly blue skin making him utterly alien in all respects. Whatever he is, he ain't human. 

In some wacky stories featuring agitated centaurs, bewildered mermen, displaced Nazis, persistant mystics, and many many hapless folks both good and bad, we have hosts who dig in and tell the stories with vigor. Not content with just showing up on the splash page and in the finale panel, Ditko's hosts are omnipresent, slithering between panels and hovering over the pages with if not menace, then omnipotence. It really makes for some visually stimulating comic book pages to read. One caution though, there are two stories in this volume which are missing a page each. Both "The Menace of the Maple Leaves" and "The Forbidden Room" are again reprinted in the next volume in their entirety. 

There will be one more volume dedicated to Ditko's most fecund year, but that's next time. Here are the covers in this volume. 

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Steve Ditko - Unexplored Worlds!

The second archives volume of early Ditko comics from Fantagraphics is titled Unexplored Worlds. This is work by Steve Ditko after the advent of the Comics Code of America, and so the work is of a more benign nature than that which had preceded it. These are light stories, often little morality dramas and not unexpectedly upbeat endings. Comics now existed in a world in which the good guy wins or at the very least the bad guy is properly punished. There had been plenty of punishment before, but just as in real life the relative goodness of an individual didn't necessarily preclude bad outcomes. [It should be noted that two of the stories in this volume are from Atlas (not yet Marvel) Comics produced for Stan Lee in a short period when Charlton Comics was out of business due to a devastating flood which destroyed the plant. I'll have more to say about Ditko's Marvel work in this era in later posts.]

The early stories in this volume are light science fantasy, tales of a doughty space hero and his ubiquitous gal sidekick as they confront outer space menaces and always come out on top despite overwhelming odds. They win because they deserve to win. Alongside these are many tales of men who behave badly but just as often as they are punished for that disregard for ethics and the Golden Rule are often forgiven and brought back into society having been chastised. Sometimes greedy bastards get theirs, but usually they learn the error of their ways. These stories are likely written by Joe Gill, the scripting machine who made Charlton Comics operational for decades. I've said before that I assumed as a teenager that Joe Gill was a house name and not a real person, but when I learned differently, I bowed before his stunning industry and found his prodigious output humbling. 

Now the Steve Ditko who drew these stories is a more mature artist. He is older, wiser and chastened possibly by a brush with death. He contracted tuberculosis at about the time the comics industry contracted and spent a year convalescing at his Pennsylvania family home under the care of his parents. When he was finally strong enough to rejoin the workforce, he found Atlas (Marvel) waiting but they did not offer enough quantity of work and so once again he headed for Connecticut and Charlton Comics. This was a Charlton recovering from a flood and despite some likely shenanigans with public funds, they plead poverty and cut their rates making their staff even more eager for work. Men like Gill and Ditko were ready. 

As this volume closes, we meet The Mysterious Traveler, a ghost host with a radio history. More on him next time Here are the Ditko covers collected in this volume. 

In these covers it easy to see the specific stylings which we all associate with Steve Ditko's work throughout the balance of his long career. 

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Steve Ditko - Strange Suspense!

Strange Suspense is volume one in The Steve Ditko Archives from Fantagraphics. This handsome and highly readable tome brings together in chronological order Ditko's earliest work in comics. That order is the order in which the work was produced and not necessarily when it was published, so the reader can watch Ditko's style develop over time. This is his Pre-Code work, the raw stuff which informed comics before the Comics Code was created and leveraged public opinion to make comics more palatable to the parents of the country. These stories are violent, sometimes wildly so. Steve Ditko was a young man, fresh from the military and from his training at The School of Visual Arts under comic masters such as Jerry Robinson. Bringing his adoration for Will Eisner and blending it with a palpable respect for Mort Meskin, Ditko of this early time creates stories filled with movement and vibrant realistic backgrounds. He's drawing for the most part wild stories of science fiction and horror, so his characters are outsized deformities of reality but memorable. I find Ditko's eyes are the feature that seems most dominant to me on his pages from this era. He's drawing for several folks, including briefly the Simon and Kirby studio, but most of the work in this book is from Charlton books such as This Magazine is Haunted, Strange Suspense Stories, and The Thing. (These were titles inherited by Charlton from the going-out-of-comic-book-business Fawcett folks.) The best stories in fact are from the latter, a comic for which Ditko created several very memorable covers as well. 

Now the work here will surprise folks used to classic Ditko, as in these early years he's still developing and hasn't become that distinctive talent we're accustomed to. His work is very like his teacher Robinson and his mentor Meskin. Some say he and Joe Kubert, another up and comer at the time, have very similar styles and in years past have been mistaken for one another. I like this version of Ditko. IT was not only good on horror and sci-fi tales but effective on a single romance tale and one western and a single gangster yarn from his earliest days. I find its use of detail effective for the kinds of stories being told, gothic horrors with a science fiction edge. His eyes are distinctive in particular. My favorite two stories from this period are "Cinderella" and "Rumplestiltskin", two very weird and dark interpretations of the classic fairy tales. The former in particular is a romp with twist on twist and ironically, it's also the subject of Ditko's very first cover as seen above. The story "The Worm Turns" is a ferocious tale with an amazing giant monster creation. Here are the remaining covers Ditko produced in order during this period. 

Steve Ditko had to leave comic book work for a couple of reasons. One was that the arrival of the Comics Code knocked off a lot of the work he'd been getting, and he became deathly ill. More on that next week. 

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