Ditko on... Dictators

--Link-- Buy Ditko's books

Long overdue, I've put together a list of the available volumes of Ditko's creator owned material published by Robin Snyder and Steve Ditko over the last few years. The page is permanently linked over on the sidebar whenever you need it.

Currently nine publications are available, you probably missed at least one, so order early and often.  The page will be updated if the out-of-print volumes are reprinted and when new books are announced. Subscription info to Snyder's newsletter, THE COMICS, which sees frequent content by and about Ditko, is also on the page. A post with longer descriptions of the contents of each book, as well as the out-of-print books, should be up in a little while.

By the way, I usually don't care that much about links to here one way or another, but I'd appreciate it if you consider putting a link to that page if discussing Ditko anywhere, especially his creator-owned work or his published opinions on various topics, to give people an option to go to the source.

Dark Dominion query

  

I picked up a handful of early Defiant comics cheaply, and I noticed that the ad for the Dark Dominion #0 card set (first image above) has two cards that definitely appear, given the small size, to be drawn by the announced art team of Ditko/Leialoha, and which don't appear in the actual card set (the 150 card standard set, at least, I don't know about the insert cards), as well as the demon image which also seems to be Ditko/Leialoha and appeared in a promo for the series (second image above) that still said it would be Ditko/Leialoha mere weeks before it came out. I'm not sure about the third image, another early ad for the series, which has hints of both Ditko and Leialoha, but doesn't quite seem right, but that may be it being blown up larger than intended.

So, my question to those who paid more attention to the line than I did, is there any other Ditko artwork for the series that only saw print in promotional and advertising material?

Also, regarding the published card set, the 117-card / 26-page story definitely seems to be Ditko inked by someone other than Leialoha (apparently credited to Keith Wilson and Grey in a later issue). I'm not so sure about all of the 33 "character cards" that round out the set. Most of the fronts are definitely Ditko, others seem not to be, or heavily inked. The backs don't seem to have as much Ditko, but there are some images that definitely seem to be Ditko or someone trying really hard to make it look like it is, but the images are pretty small.The ad mentions other insert cards. 9 foil stamped cards with a hidden image viewable with a special lens, 4 cards with DD characters with other Defiant characters, drawn by both Ditko and the artists of the other books and, most surprisingly, 10 cards with original Ditko art. Given that contents of the set changed at the last minute, can anyone confirm if those extras exist as described? And given the success of the set, have any of those Ditko originals, if they exist, ever been seen, or are they probably buried in an unopened case in a warehouse or landfill somewhere?

Have I mentioned how stupid I think releasing a comic in this format is?

A cover gallery

Books published by Robin Snyder and Steve Ditko (except THE LONELY ONE and OUT OF THIS WORLD, published by Robin Snyder), September 1988 to April 2008.  Most of them still available.

Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #2 [1986]

Ditko pencils and Joe Rubinstein inks on another entry for Marvel's Handbook, this time a character he was quite familiar with, Captain Universe, the cosmic force which possesses and transforms various people in times of need to give them great power. Though the character/concept originated in an issue of MICRONAUTS not drawn by Ditko, the design is well suited to Ditko (he did design Eternity, after all), so he did well with the Captain's three solo stories in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT (he would also draw the feature again a few years later for some short backups).

Ditko on... Fake worlds

New Ditko - Strange and Stranger

The new Fantagraphics book STRANGE AND STRANGER: THE WORLD OF STEVE DITKO should be arriving in most comic book stores this week, and presumably shipping through other sources soon enough. That caps off a pretty busy half-year for Ditko related publications, with several hardcovers from Marvel with partial Ditko content, reprinting various aspects of his 1960s work, a "new" story in a DC book, a surprising re-emergence of Valiant with some of his 1990s work, the even more surprising return of the fanzine DITKOMANIA, and most surprising and important of all, THE AVENGING MIND.

The rest of the year looks quieter, other than Pure Imagination's book of pre-code Ditko (and those books can sometimes come out a few months later than scheduled), probably a few more DITKOMANIA issues and whatever might pop up from Snyder and Ditko with minimal advance notice.

Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #1 [1985]

Ditko did seven entries in seven different issues for the second ("Deluxe") edition of Marvel's character index series, drawing the main character pose for a variety of characters that he usually had some recent history with. Joe Rubinstein inked all the entries for the series.

For the first issue, Ditko is called upon to draw one of Jack Kirby's most wonderfully bizarre characters of the 1970s, Captain America foe Arnim Zola, the Bio-Fanatic, a character who had graced a then-recent Avengers story that Ditko illustrated.