Strange Tales #136 [1965]

"What Lurks Beneath the Mask?" is in the middle of Ditko's long final storyline for Doctor Strange, with Doc on the quest for the secret of Eternity to save the Ancient One while pursued by Baron Mordo, who is being backed by Dormammu. Doc spends the first half of the story going to various mystics around the world for a clue, while agents of Mordo search for him. A lot of great stuff in that sequence, giving a feeling of great breadth to the wider mystic world that Doc inhabits.

Doc finally finds a clue in the possession of a crazy old mystic whose memory the Ancient One had once erased, bringing him to one of those surreal realms, this one filled with odd masks and a demon who traps Doc by switching bodies through eye contact and then covering his face with a mask. Fortunately Doc retains control of his cloak of levitation, which leads to a funny scene of the cloak tossing around the demon wearing it and freeing Doc of the mask. Free to use his powers, Doc then frees all the previous captives of the demon and destroys the realm, then returns to the orient to try to get the secret of Eternity straight from the Ancient One's mind.

This year of Doctor Strange stories is among Ditko's finest work, with a lot of strong short stories full of great imagery building up the suspense for the main story.

Ditko plots and draws the 10-page story.

Charlton Spotlight #5 [2006]

As mentioned a few posts back, the recently released CHARLTON SPOTLIGHT #5 [Argo Press] contains a number of items of interest to the Ditko fan, among them a complete reprint of the 5-page "The Great Martian Drought" from SPACE ADVENTURES #25 [1958]. Ditko's style is a little more sparse at this time than some of his earlier work, though the establishing shots of the Martian city are well designed, and the body language is really effective, plus I love the detail on this one close-up of an eye. He definitely knew when to bring in the detail to enhance a story. In this story Mars is suffering from a long drought, and they consider writing a message to Earth until a scientist finds a way to take what's left of their population to Earth, scheduled to arrive in 1964. Guess they didn't make it...

Two 1957 Ditko covers are also reprinted full size, TALES OF THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER #4 in black and white and MYSTERIES OF UNEXPLORED WORLDS #4 in colour. The second is especially good, with some great moody furnishings in the "Forbidden Room". The issue has an interview with Joe Gill which has some background on Captain Atom, Steve Skeates talking about Doctor Graves and Ron Frantz talking about some of the Charlton alumni who worked at his ACE Comics in the 1980s, plus articles about the Blue Beetle, the Question and Captain Atom. Lots of great art to go with the articles, including a number that appeared in fanzines like a great 1965 illustration of Captain Atom that appeared in THE COMIC READER #36.

"The Great Martian Drought" 3948

New Ditko - Marvel Masterworks

Ditko's in a pair of recent MARVEL MASTERWORKS volumes. HUMAN TORCH v1 includes the Torch/Spider-Man story Ditko inked from STRANGE TALES ANNUAL #2 and ATLAS ERA TALES OF SUSPENSE v1 has at least one Ditko short from each of the first ten issues of the series, plus one solo cover and one cover inked over Kirby.

New Ditko - Charlton Spotlight #5

Just picked up CHARLTON SPOTLIGHT #5, which is full of some great Ditko stuff, with a long interview with Joe Gill and articles on the major Charlton super-heroes that Ditko worked on, plus a long article by Steve Skeates where he talks about his time at Charlton, with a special emphasis on the Doctor Graves story that ended up looking much more like Doctor Strange than he expected. Also included is a complete 5-page reprint of Ditko's "The Great Martian Drought" from 1958, two full page Ditko covers (one in colour) and several rare bits of art that appeared in 1960s fanzines.

Questar #1 [1978]

QUESTAR was a science-fiction and fantasy magazine launched in 1978 by William G. Wilson Jr., who had previously published the fanzine THE COLLECTOR which had a few Ditko stories. Ditko writes and draws stories in the first five issues of QUESTAR, starting with "Cosage the Cosmic Agent" in #1, a six-page science fiction story.

The story isn't too much, just a generic cosmic space hero, who pursues an evil conqueror who attacked a planet and kidnapped the daughter of the president. Typical bold hero and cruel villain. The art works a lot better than the story, with a lot of detail (and really sharp reproduction which a lot of Ditko's colour work of the era didn't get), several really good silent sequences and some imaginative settings. It's also a really dense story, with over a dozen panels a page and a lot going on in them, it kind of feels at time what a comic strip drawn by Ditko would be like.

The story was reprinted in colour in CHARLTON ACTION FEATURING STATIC #12 in 1985.

The Outsiders #13 [1986]

Ditko did the pencils for 7-page backup in this issue featuring team member Black Lightning, written by Mike Barr and inked by Jerry Ordway.

"...Ten Minutes" is the story about how Jefferson Pierce ends up confronting three fairly inept but well armed young robbers at an all-night convenience store, and you can guess from the title how long it took him to handle them.

Fairly straightforward story, I think building on a few character points that were being made in the main story, based on the scattering of other OUTSIDERS issues I read from that era. Ordway's inks are pretty good, not quite as overpowering as he often is on some pencilers. Parts of it seem a bit stiff, which might be Ditko's layout style conflicting with Ordway's slicker finishing look.

(Black Lightning created by Tony Isabella with Trevor Von Eeden. Outsiders created by Jim Aparo and Mike W. Barr)

Upcoming Ditko - Coyote v4

Steve Englehart continues the reprints of his 1980s Epic series through Image later this year, with the fourth book containing the last two chapters of the Djinn backup series that Ditko pencilled. Shame the four chapters are split among two books, but worth getting if you don't have the original issues.

---

COYOTE, VOL. 4 TP
story STEVE ENGLEHART
art CHAZ TRUOG, STEVE DITKO, TODD McFARLANE, FRANK SPRINGER, ART NICHOLS & RICHARD HOWELL
cover TODD McFARLANE
128 PAGES FULL COLOR NOVEMBER 22
$14.99

Women have always been a delight for Coyote (even if they tried to kill him) but he's never met anyone like Slash, who can kill with a look. Still, look who's drawing her origin: TODD McFARLANE, in his first-ever published work. Todd's also on board for the start of a new SCORPIO ROSE series, right beside STEVE DITKO with the whirlwind finale of THE DJINN and CHAZ TROUG with the ongoing adventures of everybody's favorite varmint. Well, everybody except Tally, who's become a Coyote herself - and Cassie, with a Shadow Cabinet target on her back - and the hooker who traded Jesus for a totem - and the Venusian who eats brains. Women! Collects COYOTE #9-12

Phantom 2040 #1 [1995]

Ditko pencilled all four issues of this 1995 mini-series, based on an animated cartoon of the era that took Lee Falk's comic strip character into a near-future science fiction world. Which, yeah, is kind of an odd direction to take a traditionally jungle based character, but that's animation for you.

"Generation Unto Generation" is a 20-page story presenting the first part of the origin of the new Phantom (not sure if it's directly based on an episode of the cartoon). Young Kit Walker of Metropia is approached by Guran, a friend of his father, who vanished 16 years earlier and, as he finds out, was the previous Phantom, with a brief rundown of the classic Phantom history. Kit takes on the identity of the Phantom just as an old enemy of his father plans an attack on the city involving robots, hypnosis and other things. Good enough story, and Ditko does a good job with the action bits. The brief bit of him drawing the Phantom history makes me wish he was doing a historical Phantom series.

The inking is by Bill Reinhold, who does a really good job. As I recall, he mentioned back in an issue of DITKOMANIA that he made an effort to add elements of the style of some of Ditko's classic work to the looser style Ditko used when pencilling work for others. It's one of my favourite of the later examples of someone else inking Ditko, and overall this series is probably my favourite of Ditko's mainstream work in the 1990s.

The issue also features a two-page centerspread poster of the character, pencilled by Ditko and inked by John Romita, I think the only time that combination has ever been seen. As with most things inked by Romita it ends up looking more like Romita with a light flavour of the penciller, but still nice to see.