Steve Ditko Visionaries My Take Overall!

Hello All,                                                                                                                                                        Sometimes, it will takes more than words of dialogue to propell any comic book forward...it also takes line work of a wooden tool called a pencil. It also takes a piece a art board that is eleven by seventeen in size, and of course an idea to be put to the art board. Today I am going to be talking about comic artist Steve Ditko who I am still trying to find the right words to talk of his passing from a few years ago. I want to share my thoughts on his body of career work from back in the days of when he was working for a magazine publisher known as Marvel comics. In the end of last month while at Adventures Underground, I had decided to include in my comic buying to include this very trade seen here 

 held by one of two of Steve's creative creations for the company known as Spider-Man!                                                                                                        Now let's break into this great bit of Steve's legendary work by letting you know that it has seventeen superhero tales of that era called the nineteen sixties to the early nineteen nineties, to be specific to 1992 the year after yours truly had graduated from high school... it also has ten non superhero tales in this as well that ran from December of nineteen sixty one through till April of nineteen sixty three. His main other character that he was famous for Co-Creating Stephen Strange better known as the master of black magic DR. STRANGE, which is also on the cover of this very trade.                                                                   A majority of these stories in here are written by the man who got a start at Marvel when they were still known as TIMELY Comics all the way back in nineteen thirty nine, when he was seventeen years old and his name was Stan Lee. He along with both Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby started a revolution in nineteen sixty one by changing the company by writing about superheroes....   Steve was working for Marvel when they were known as Altas comics in nineteen fifty six and because of sales of comics were nearly nothing  was laid off with all the other freelancer artists in the following year of nineteen fifty seven... then was rehired along with the other freelancer artists a few months later in the following year.                                                                                                                                               The one of Steve's works before his creation of Spider-Man in the final issue of Amazing Fantasy ongoing magazine cover dated August #15,1962, which was released in July... I want to talk about this book 

  seen here. As you can see the title of this isn't Amazing Fantasy at all, it is Amazing Adult Fantasy which was the ongoing title from as far back as November of nineteen sixty one. 

 In fact there is a huge connection in these anthology stories in all of Amazing Adult Fantasy/Amazing Fanstany that is well how can I not reveal a twist of fate endings to each one, very much like a certain television series running on the air at the time? Yes I am of course talking about the one and only Twilight Zone!  (Which is coming very soon for a review of the first twisted season....)                                                                                                       Here is the opening image of one those very stories from Amazing Adult Fantasy number seven that most comic readers may just put off as another simple comic tale...              

called JOURNEY'S END this five page yarn has a simple crook that has definitely found a way to elude the law after he has done something very irredeemable and uses a time machine to get away from his problems. Only later in the story do we find out that he is returned to the persent and placed in Jail. BUT WHY YOUR ASKING? Before I reveal why he is there,  back in nineteen fifty nine the premiere season of the Twilight Zone in it's twenty sixth episode it had a very different type of take on a man known as Joe Caswell is pucked at the moment of a hanging in 1880 and brought to 1960 and kills his savior and how that ends different from Journey's End the comic story is another modern day crook takes a trip to that very hanging party in 1880! It seems in the comic tale all we know is that the crook in that tale beats a man who is the time machine inventor so badly that... well you try to piece the answer together? An give me your own answer ok! Stan Lee who wrote the story possibly in a interview said that when he was writing those anthology tales he put a O Henry type of ending on them... as to how truthful that was who really knows... Yet Steve's art style really makes me even now see that he loved the pencil work he laid out for the story of JOURNEY'S END!                                                                                         Before I get into the heart of why Ditko left his mark on the Marvel comics universe as a hero in a influential instrument of inspiration for upcoming artists I want to also say that he drew the core of the company's main characters at that time in the first Amazing Spider-Man annual dated with only the year of release   

       which is nineteen sixty four. That also coincided with the release of the regular issue of the amazing spider-man seventeen that had the conclusion of his second confrontation with the fan favorite mysterious villain known as the Green Goblin which kept appearing everywhere and fighting the hero to a standstill each time they encountered one another. Of all of the characters on this annual shown here Spider-Man had fought them at least once or twice from the first fifteen issues thus far.  Now as to some background of the man on the annual in the odd color of a purple outfit ( I say this because in his first appearance which is amazing Spider-Man number three his outfit was completely white in color, then his second appearance was in issue eleven and it was purple,but then the very next issue he was colored in color that has mostly been his color scheme ever since which is the same as Bruce Banner's monstrous alter ego), he is known as Doctor Octopus. When Stan Lee had a appearance of a hero that Spider-Man had yet to interact with he put a footnote of where you could find them in their own comic title throughout the story.                                                                                                                                          Whenever Ditko laid out his panels on his page and was creating the illustration within it he really put his heart into using his imagination a great example of this was his creation that I mentioned earlier known as Stephen Strange and here is a pair of panels 

           from one of the last Dr. Strange tales in this trade. The story was named THE END--AT LAST! in a comic known as STRANGE TALES 146 dated July,1966. In the story Dr. Strange's arch nemesis Dread Dormammu takes them both to the nether world of the entity known as Eternity. Dormammu tries to destroy both Strange and Eternity.... when Steve created the universe of Doctor Strange back in nineteen sixty three, he saw the scope as everything on an inter dementional plane of existence including at least one of the many characters in the weaving of it's very creation!                                                                  Of all of Steve's many times of working at Marvel his best that is included here is the three part arc of Spider-Man's saga is issues Amazing Spider-Man #31-33!                               

In this Amazing Spider-Man arc, it is definitely considered the best of the duo of Steve's best pencils and his own plotting that gives gravity to both the teenager named Peter Parker and his driven hero of Spider-Man on all levels of growth for the teenager that got bit by a dying radioactive arachnid way back in a title that wasn't even Spider-Man at all in name. Oh and the dialogue was written by a fellow named Stan Lee.... the other stories in this visionaries trade are after Ditko who had felt that he was no longer getting fair duty of creativity on his most interesting character of creation went and decided to leave because he also felt that he and Lee couldn't get along much anymore! It wasn't until fourteen years later in nineteen eighty, did Steve returned to work at least in a small way he at the time didn't have any connections of dealing with Stan and as far as I know he would only work for his former employment if that were certain.... the characters that Marvel had him work on at the time Daredevil the man without fear. He did pencils for issue 162, in the story Daredevil had a case of memory loss and becomes a fighter in the ring in one of Hells Kitchen boxing gyms. Then finds out who he is, after bringing down a corrupt fight promoter known as Mr. Hyle and his oversized cat named Ramona... that was in January of that year, then some months after that he was able to return to one other character that he drew back in the early days of nineteen sixty three known as the incredible Hulk, when he was working on this very title again, there was a little television series of the same name airing on the CBS network on Friday nights. He illustrated issue 249 titled "Jack Frost nipping at your soul!" I won't tell you of it's story, other than I really enjoyed it very much.                                                                                                                               Then eight years later (after working on not only his own character known as Mr A which he started in nineteen sixty seven at a independent comic publisher), in nineteen eighty eight, he co created with writer Tom Defalco Robert "Robbie" Baldwin known also as Speedball the masked Marvel. The first issue of a ten issue series, is seen in this special Steve Ditko trade, I am wondering if Steve would have tried to make Robbie Baldwin endowed with more than just drawing him, if Marvel would have allowed him to and explored stuff that he really wanted to with Peter Parker way back in the sixties? The final character that Steve made for Marvel was in Marvel Super-Heroes issue 8 released in January nineteen ninety two with the title "The coming of Squirrel Girl!"                                Here is what both Squirrel Girl and Speedball look like from their initial beginnings by the artist                                                       

      who drafted them to fully compete line art. I would  be guessing around nineteen eighty eight for Robbie Baldwin to late October/November back in nineteen ninety one before the book was released in December of ninety one for Squirrel Girl! Besides seeing a youthful illustrator growing in his own skills with his ongoing projects he because of those aforementioned reasoning of why he left the BIG TWO creative comic companies he was essentially one of the first of mainstream creative to making his own triumphs with his own character way before the biggest movements in the early nineteen nineties when IMAGE COMICS imprint was founded. As to getting to the very title of this entry of my overall take on the Steve Ditko Marvel Visionaries I will say is definitely considered in my opinion a lot of great information about comic illustrating for a person who wants to study art that it is wanting to become a comic artist is a stepping stone of learning is worth a long look. My grade is an B plus, an for thrity six dollars I can honestly say that I am really looking forward to re reading it for getting even more fascinating history about Marvel comics and their characters very strong starts!