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!

Happy Birthday to the Hulk that always is INCREDIBLE!

Hello comic and television fans alike,                                                                                                   Earlier tonight I went and put out my first entry for this month and I will get around eventually of getting out other ones leading up to this very Incredible lead into this particular actor's RAGING Special day.... Hey just what is it that I am talking about you maybe wondering about? Well maybe it is easy to tell of what I am discussing tonight with both the words of HULK and INCREDIBLE are related without any doubt to a certain comic book character that is owned by Marvel comics, which also owns and publishes my favorite character of theirs     

    the guy seen here, actually fighting the incredible hulk... the one known as Spider-man. Travel with me to years before even I was born in time to today's date November ninth, with the four digits of the year being nineteen, fifty one. This person while growing up in elementary and even high school was shunned because he was born with huge percentage of his hearing lost, so to overcome that he built his confidence back by not only reading from time to time along with learning sign language. He was going and lifting weights to build up his muscles each day after doing his homework from his classes at school. In the fall of nineteen seventy six he got a chance to compete against a certain Australian body builder by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger.                                    The Birthday boy and Schwarzenegger were both approached by a executive producer of an upcoming television series known as  THE INCREDIBLE HULK Kenneth Johnson. Who after a scene from said upcoming series in dalies with his young son David at the time had told his father that who was currently playing the title character just did not fit the role exactly. Schwarzenegger passed on the offer of the title role because he was getting some movie roles by this point and thought of his friend from the pumping Iron competition from a few months ago. The actor who lost the role was James Bond villain portrayer Richard Kiel who has one small frame in the project 

                 seen here from the morning of the first Hulk Out of Banner from when he was changing a tire the night before, and was walking through a forest!                                               This was the birthday boy's first acting job and when he was filming his first scene of the thing he was doing was set up to be was the creature was to be turning over his own car into a ravine (storywise) by the production crew to help him lift the automobile to finish the said scene. He was actually really tired of waiting for the scene to be properly set, so in his make up he truly lifted the actual vehicle himself!                                                                  

                                                                                Throughout the course of the whole series there is one episode during season three where television children host Fred Rogers visits the set of Universal studios and gets to see how the Birthday boy is made up as his character. I will have a post about that at some eventual point as well.  At some time during the writer strike of nineteen eighty the series was canceled before it had a proper ending. Yet the Birthday boy had made such an incredible impression to other studios and he got to play Hercules shortly after his first acting part was ended way to early.  

                He and his co-star Bill Bixby in the late nineteen eighties were absolutely able to advance the television series version of The Incredible Hulk with three television made films. So who is the Birthday boy in name besides all of his television and film work he owns gyms in California... Lou Ferrigno is the age of the year I was born minus the nineteen before it which is Seventy-two and ready to be our raging creature called the incredible Hulk if someone would ask him about it rather nicely.... just joking of course or am I? Either way about it all, I as a fan of his Hulk television series know that making him angry is the last thing I would want to do!                                                                                               Happy Birthday Lou Ferrigno if you happen to ever find this when you're looking for Birthday gifts from your many fans!

A classic Halloween movie a day later....

 Hello Everyone,                                                                                                                                           Yes it is officially just the first of the month that has the most meaningful holiday that we as humans seems to choose to find our own way of not being fairly faithful to, as we truly should be respectful of remembering.  I am of course talking about the very last Thursday of November in which we celebrate with our families and friends of being Thankful for what we have been generous to be having shared and helped others throughout the whole year till that moment of time. Rather if it was about being kind to someone that we have met through the year, or have seen hope from other people trying to find a way to encourage not only ourselves but their own existence against being dragged down to their lowest possible point... and finding out the inner strength of inspiration to helping everyone out. Yes of course I am talking about the holiday called Thanksgiving. I do hope that you will try to focus on finding generous rewarding contributions of sharing your yearly interest in conversations with your family and friends who you will be sharing that great Thursday of whatever your shared meal is or will be? The very reason why I am actually bringing this up is because this very November will of twenty,  twenty three will be ending on a Thursday.                                              Now onward and upward to the very title of this very entry of tonight's of a Halloween belated movie that is a classic no matter if it makes one think or even better yet makes one be full of great fear and or frighteness! In a way before I get into the heart of this film I have to say in every way possible the main character is supposedly the color of this very text. (Which will be brought up in of this movie review)....  I will also say before starting this review of what this classic film is that I have in one place or another talked or have had wallpaper images of this title character that are both very funny or very scary in the past especially when it was the month we just left called October... I saw tonight Frankenstein  the monument to both science gone completely wrong because of one of the two men seen here 

are outside of a cemetery watching a funeral ceremony concluding with a burial of a unfortunate soul being placed freshly into the ground. After the grave digger walks away they just dig up the body anyway! Then we get to know that the one in the background of the picture is a doctor and he has been trying find body parts from the recently past souls of dead people to do something with them? Yet we are at same time introduced to the doctor's only achilles heel is a young woman named Elizabeth who wants to marry him and his name is Henry Frankenstein. Henry did at one point in his life work with the greatest medical school that the small village the two of them are living in. BUT at some point, let his work consume his own train of thought to drive his own perspective of being good or dangerously deranged take over his own saintanty.                                                                     The man pressed against the oversized fence gate ( because of Henry Frankenstein seemingly telling him to be quiet is his assistance Fritz), of the entrance of the cemetery... who helps Henry in finding those corpses for his driven dream of bringing something from the dead back to life. One of the things that Fritz errors in is that when the two are looking for a fresh body with a normal brain he accidentally kills the hanging body by cutting it off of a gollow that has exactly what Henry is wanting a perfect sample of a regular human brain by breaking the neck... which makes the brain useless...                                                                       Henry later invites his mentor Doctor Waldman  and his soon to be finance Elizabeth to witness his own triumph of bringing a bulit body to life. Which is seen here! 

                    

He and Fritz send the lab table to the top of his watch tower's open roof... and exposes the corpse to the power of flowing through the rain clouds and then is pulled back to the lab. And Henry views with his own eyes                                 

                                                      that he had succeeded in being absolutely insanely intelligence. It is after bringing his monster to life he tries to teach it to be more than just a mindless being yet Henry doesn't know that the brain he used was an abnormal one....                                                                              The monster eventually finds his way out of the lab and meets a little girl named Maria at a river where she is making boat flowers and she teaches the monster how to do                                                                                 

   it as well. Eventually the  monster with still very little understanding of what they are doing at all tries to see if Maria is like a floating boat. Then all of the villagers go after the monster and put an end to what it had done. Yet the film doesn't end there and I will offer you as chance to explore how this scary classic on a streaming service or maybe even YouTube if you're interested! 

          As  to my overall thoughts on what I think of the film are right here, for myself each time when as I was growing up I would always be finding myself completely waking up at some point in the film and not knowing what it was that I had missed. It sure wasn't because I was afraid of the character... in fact the only scary character that had me out of my seat or scared no matter what was Witches and when I was younger for the longest time I could never watch the Wizard of Oz film because of yes of course the Wicked witch of the west, 

          even though I did see the one Mister Rogers neighborhood show with the actress who played the Wicked witch named Margaret Hamilton. It took me years still even after seeing that very episode before I ever was brave enough to watch it all the way through! Sorry for the quick sidebar of what did frightened me in the way of Halloween characters, but I really had to put it in this one since I am talking about movies in a way that celebrate the candy giving away day of the year. The actual story of Frankenstein at the point of when this film was made was already one hundred and thirteen years old. The film was directed by James Whale, and had a play made about the monster a few years before the movie was released in nineteen twenty seven, when the movie was released in nineteen thirty one. Many of the people who were in this are in other classical monster movies that are under the Universeral Studios production. Some examples of these crossovers are the young man who played Fritz ( Dwight Frye), played Renfield, in Dracula which was released the same year as Frankenstein. He was in The Invisible Man as a newspaper reporter (1933), he was various other characters in four other Frankenstein films. Which were made from (1935-1943). The young girl who was Little Maria (Marilyn Harris),  was also in Frankenstein again in it's sequel Bride of Frankenstein in (1935) but was uncredited in it. Marilyn was seven years old when she played Maria in 1933, she died on December first, of nineteen, ninety nine... Now onto the man who portrayed the MONSTER of this film, 

Boris Karloff was born for real on November twenty third, eightee hundred and eighty seven. He was the MONSTER twice throughout the Frankenstein films (nineteen thirty one, through nineteen forty eight). Besides playing good ol Frankie, he also was the Imhotep a high priest of ancient Egypt in nineteen thirty two's THE MUMMY. He was the host of the television series "THRILLER " which was originally run from September thirteenth,  nineteen, sixty through till April thirteenth,  nineteen sixty two, it was an anthology series based on horror theme stories. At some eventual point I may do a overall review of that series, but the last big thing Karloff did the most people know about was that he was both the narrator and voice of the Grinch in Dr Seuss' "How the Grinch stole Christmas" animated special, which was made in nineteen sixty six.                             Is there anything that I maybe have forgotten for a good review of Frankenstein from nineteen, thrity one I am sure that yes there is? But I will admit that I am really okay with that because I know that I can find more interesting notes on each viewing. Now before I truly will leave you to your evening of late night fun for the first of November of twenty,  twenty three I want to share with everyone my current image from when I open my cell phone was this  `

 which is from my vacation that I had earlier this past summer with my folks when we took a cruise from California to Vancouver Canada. This piece of art was on the aft section of the eleventh deck of the ship. As well when we were finding in Vancouver itself I have had this  

on my phone when I have been opening my phone to accessing my main stuff of doing my outings on the internet.  Here I am by the Gastown steam clock in downtown Vancouver, Canada. Then also since late May I have had this as my ENERGIZING wallpaper 

of the classic brother and sister Adam and Adora the twins of King Randor and his wife Marlena... raising their swords of destiny and are here their super powered selves HE-MAN and SHE-RA with glittering prismatic background was on my tablet when I was opening it,since the end of May. Then as well when I was looking at my tablet's main screen I was devouring a whole other take of sword holders seen here 
           

of  the Hero HE-MAN and his adversity Skeletor are holding aloft their power swords at each stronghold in classic FILMATION the animation company that made the cartoon series based on the Masters of the universe toyline, which was start in nineteen eighty one officially. Yes if you are wondering I will be adding a full review of each episode of both HE-MAN and SHE-RA animated series to my list of upcoming events that will be available here fairly soon....  

       Before I give you my full grade of the Frankenstein movie that is over ninety years old and I will let you find out on your own of how old it actually is, I have to remember to at the same time that I am changing out my plates on both my tablet and on my phone I will be changing the background of this 

very site, since the month of May of twenty,twenty three has a particular big back story which I am still working on in my set of ideas... but I can honestly say DO WE UNDERSTAND OUR relationship WITH OUR DEAR EARTH! My overall grade for the original Frankenstein film is A +!