Unreprinted DC Ditko (2025 redux)

Many years ago, following the publication of three books containing Steve Ditko's work for DC published from 1966 to 2008, I posted about a few lapses that kept those books from being complete. Now, DC has published THE DC UNIVERSE BY STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS [2025], which addresses most, but maddeningly enough not all, of those issues.

AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS #13 [1976]
"The Gnark Is Coming, The Gnark Is Coming"
This 4-page story written by Steve Skeates and inked by Wallace Wood was intended for PLOP, but remained unpublished until this issue of DC's promotional magazine. A cute little fantasy, Wood has a heavy hand in the inks but the Ditko still comes through, and this is an unfortunate omission since it's probably the hardest Ditko story at DC to find.

Now included, in the original black and white it was published in.  Arguably should have been coloured since it was drawn for PLOP, but looks better this way. First ever reprint of the story.

DC SPECIAL SERIES #9 [1978]

aka WONDER WOMAN SPECTACULAR

"The Cosmic Quest For The Disk Of Mars"

Ditko draws a 6-page chapter and 5 later pages for the 64-page story written by Jack C. Harris for this issue, with other artists including Jose Delbo, Russ Heath and Dick Ayers drawing the rest. I guess it's understandable not either including the full 64-page story or just excerpting the 11 Ditko pages, but it's some decent work. Wonder Woman doesn't actually appear on the Ditko pages, by the way, except as a chess piece on the God of War's board (with the other piece being Hitler).

Full 64-page story and cover included, with the 11 Ditko pages. First ever reprint of the story.

SUPERBOY & THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #257 [1979]
"Once A Legionnaire"
An odd omission, since the other six Ditko Legion stories were reprinted, this first one, a 7-page back-up written by Gerry Conway and inked by Dan Adkins, was not.

Now included, so all seven of Ditko's LSH stories represented. They did decide to omit five non-Ditko covers to the full issues Ditko drew, which were included in the 2012 book.  Minor loss, a bit odd considering the amount of non-Ditko work now included in other stories.

DETECTIVE COMICS #487 [1979]

"The Odd Man"

This 8-page story, originally intended to be a back-up in SHADE #9, actually was reprinted in OMNIBUS v1, in the version that appeared in CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE #2 [1978], in black and white and under the title "The Pharoah And The Mummies". The script was heavily revised in this printing, so if they were only going to include one version it's nice that they included the rarer one, but it does look much better in colour.

Oddly enough, they chose to colour the story this time, but using the colours of the DETECTIVE #487 printing (which is credited to Gene D'Angelo, but since they use the art from CCC #2 it has the credit to Jerry Serpe, who would have coloured it in SHADE #9.  So this is an odd hybrid that's never seen print before.  They do correctly identify Jack C. Harris as scripter this time, as noted in his book WORKING WITH DITKO.

ACTION COMICS #642 [1989]

"Where There Is A Will - Chapter II: The Decline"

Ditko pencils and Art Thibert inks an 8-page chapter to Elliot S. Maggin's 38-page story featuring Superman, Green Lantern, Deadman and Nightwing, all regular features in the 42 issue weekly run of ACTION COMICS that ended with this issue. Ditko's chapter only features Green Lantern, and doesn't really work as a stand-alone story, so understandable omission, I guess.  Other artists were legends Gil Kane, Jim Aparo, Curt Swan, Jim Mooney and Carmine Infantino (with inking by younger artists John Nyberg, Ty Templeton, Ian Akin, Brian Garvey and Kevin Nowlan), so it's a full story worth having a copy of.

Full 38-page story and cover included, with the 8 Ditko/Thibert pages. First ever reprint of the story.

WHO'S WHO - THE DEFINITIVE DIRECTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE #19 - #22 [1986]

Ditko did illustrations for four entries featuring his characters in this series, a shame they weren't included since they were all enjoyable. The Shade entry is just a great encapsulation of the graphic strength of the concept Ditko created. Romeo Tanghal's inks on the Starman piece are very strong, and Joe Orlando does an interesting job on the Stalker page.  The most missed piece is the Question entry, a brief return by Ditko to one of his greatest creations, and again one that Barr even mentions in his introduction, so really no good excuse not to include it.

Only #20, Shade, included.  Stalker, Starman and The Question inexplicably omitted. Despite there being a 2021 book which included all four.

THE UNEXPECTED #190 [1979]

A single page black and white illustration in the inside cover with Abel and Madame Xanadu on the occasion of their cancelled titles (HOUSE OF SECRETS and DOORWAY TO NIGHTMARE) being folded into THE UNEXPECTED.  Written by Mike Barr, this is a doubly frustrating omission since Barr's introduction to OMNIBUS v2 mentions the page and the fact that Ditko gave him the original art, so not only could it easily have been reprinted, but a superior copy from a fresh scan of the original art could have been used.

Still omitted.  And the reprint of the Barr introduction in the back (outroduction?) still mentions both it and the still-omitted Question WHO'S WHO page. Note it can be seen in Harris' WORKING WITH DITKO book (ISBN 978-1605491226).

BATMAN #322 [1980]
And possibly some other DC comics out that month. DC ran short biographies of their creators for a while, and #58 in the series was Steve Ditko.  Instead of the biographical information typical of those profiles, Ditko did an illustration of seven of his characters (The Creeper, The Hawk, The Dove, Stalker, Odd Man, Rac Shade and Starman) to "let his work speak for him".

Still missing.  Can be seen in Harris' WORKING WITH DITKO, along with the story of its creation and two other books it was included in, SECRETS OF HAUNTED HOUSE #322 and LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #262. 

So very close, over 100 pages of material added in order to get an additional 31 pages of Ditko not included in the older books.  A few non-Ditko covers are omitted from the previous books. Only having one version of the Odd Man story is a minor omission (especially since they have the preferable one).  But five single pages...

(also no sign of various known unpublished works like "Woro and the Liquid Man", "The Robot and... The Ghost", Green Lantern colouring book pages and other such stuff)

In addition, they have now chosen to colour the CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE stories that were previously presented in black and white (SHADE #9, including Odd Man as noted, and the SHOWCASE #106 Creeper story). The new colours are roughly consistent with the style and methods used to colour the other stories.

And I'll just note that the story sequencing is kind of strange. The previous books had a story order much more to my liking.  This one makes an arbitrary distinction between fantasy/terror and science fiction (seemingly based on anthology title rather than story content), and then doesn't run those stories in chronological order, making it harder to find certain things,

So still a really good book full of some great comics.  But kind of a shame it stopped at approximately 99.56% complete...