It Stalks the Public Domain - Inheritance

Part of a series, as you'll see here: http://tinyurl.com/ditko-stories

The 5-page "Inheritance" was the cover featured story in Charlton's THE THING #14 [1954], and tells the story of two archeologists who discover the secret of a family curse in the tomb of Tutankamen. It's a pretty good story, although there seem to be some odd gaps in the script, as it if it was edited down from something longer.

It's a great example of early Ditko art, with a lot of visuals he would later use in other Egyptian based stories. Check out that great grinning statue on the bottom of page 1, and those panels in the "waterfront dive" on page 4.

The usual links:
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Check out new and upcoming Ditko publications
Download public domain comics, likely including the one this story is from

  

 

Adventure Comics #476 [1980]

The 9-page "Crown or Coffin" is the tenth of the twelve Starman stories by Paul Levitz, Steve Ditko and Romeo Tanghal, and can be considered the end of the first major storyline, if there had been a second major storyline. Having established the background, the major players are together, with Oswin capturing Starman, the Empress and Merria with the help of Mn'torr's staff. Fortunately Jediah is able to escape, and manages a last minute rescue to set up a final confrontation, a resolution to the main conflict, and sending Starman off to find Mn'torr.

As always, good solid old-school space opera, with Tanghal a solid compliment to Ditko's pencils.

It Stalks the Public Domain - You Are the Jury

http://tinyurl.com/ditko-stories

"You Are The Jury" is a quick and clever little 4-page science fiction story from Charlton's SPACE ADVENTURES #11 [1954].

The opening is a nice little visual of looking through the eyes of an alien defendant in a trial, as we then get a flashback to his crime, which takes place on a visit to Earth where he gets into a card game with some circus folk. Man, I always knew that circus folk would be the end of civilization as we know it.

Anyway, not a masterpiece by any stretch, but a solid story with some nice artwork.

The usual links:
Buy Ditko's creator-owned work
Subscribe to DITKOMANIA
Check out new and upcoming Ditko publications
Download public domain comics, likely including the one this story is from

  

 

It Stalks the Public Domain - Doom in the Air

Hey, kids! Comics! http://tinyurl.com/ditko-stories

Below is the 8-page "Doom in the Air" from Charlton's THE THING #14 [1954].

As you'll see, this story starts off looking like a western, as a man is arrested for a murder, but the proper authorities who want to give him a fair trial are intercepted by the three sons of the murdered man, who want to mete out their own frontier justice. Then it gets weird, as the story jumps to the atomic age, and starts to play on the fears of that era in an odd revenge story with a radioactive twist. This is great stuff, with a lot of curveballs in the narrative, a much snappier script than is common for these stories and loads of great visuals from Ditko (pay close attention to the backgrounds of several scenes, and that scene at the bottom of page 5 is just gorgeous).

In both the writing and the art this is one of my favourite early Ditko stories.

Interesting side note, this story has several parallels with the Swamp Thing story "The Nukeface Papers" (SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #35-#36 [1985]) by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben. From some info provided by Steve Bissette this appears to be a coincidence, as the creation of Nukeface dates from Totleben's sketches in the late 1970s (certainly a time when radiation and nuclear safety fears were high), and Totleben was unaware of the Ditko story (which was never reprinted by Charlton) and Bissette didn't see it until he got a copy of the original 1954 comic a few years after the 1985 story was done and noticed the similarities. It's not clear if Moore would have seen the story, even though Charlton comics were often reprinted in the Alan Class comics in Britain pre-Code stuff like this wasn't common (and unfortunately there's no index of those reprints), and in any case the core idea pre-dates Moore's involvement, or any of the team even working on Swamp Thing. Still, a fascinating comparison, especially the closing images of each story.

The usual links:
Buy Ditko's creator-owned work
Subscribe to DITKOMANIA
Check out new and upcoming Ditko publications
Download public domain comics, likely including the one this story is from

Weird War Tales #99 [1981]

Ditko draws the 5-page George Kashdan scripted story "Man's Best Enemy" for this issue of DC's surprisingly long-running series of war stories with horror, fantasy or science fiction twists. In this one, Corky the dog gets attacked by vicious escaped guinea pigs from a bombed out German lab. He immediately gets more aggressive, and soon escapes from his kennel and terrorizes the countryside as a result of whatever twisted experiments were going on in that lab.

Not a great story, but a few of Ditko's images of the crazed rodents and the mad dog are really good, and there's a decent fog effect on the last page that makes the twist ending a little better than it would be otherwise.

It Stalks the Public Domain - The Evil Eye

As usual, check out http://tinyurl.com/ditko-stories

This time around we have "The Evil Eye", a 7-page story from Charlton's THE THING #14 [1954].

As you'll see, this is one of the most gruesome of Ditko's early stories. Warren Cairo plans to kill off his wife in a car crash, while planning an alibi for himself so he can inherit her fortune. Unfortunately, the wheelchair bound Gerda has a few things up her sleeve. Not to give too much away, but the bottom of page 5 isn't for the faint of heart.

And check out that really effective use of tonework on the shot of the body going into the water on page 6. That's some really fine technique that the scan really doesn't do justice.

The usual links:
Buy Ditko's creator-owned work
Subscribe to DITKOMANIA
Check out new and upcoming Ditko publications
Download public domain comics, likely including the one this story is from

  

 

Marvel Comics Presents #10 [1989]

Almost a decade after he drew ten issues of the series featuring the Kirby created hero, Ditko returned to plot and pencil an 8-page adventure of Machine Man for this anthology title. "Machine Man Meets the F. F... ...Failure Five" is inked by Dave Cockrum and scripted by Mike Rockwitz.

"Failure Five" is a robot made from scraps by a low-level government scientist which has gained intelligence and wants to steal Machine Man's body. This leads to first the kidnapping of MM's friend Peter Spalding and then a confrontation between the two robots (with MM series regular Colonel Krag also showing up).

It feels like Ditko might have had something else planned for this story that didn't make it into the script. The art, however, is really nice. Cockrum was a really good fit for Ditko (I think this is the only time Cockrum inked Ditko), the robot villain design is nicely wacky and the mixture of that and MM's stretching arms makes for some good stuff in the fight scenes.

It Stalks the Public Domain - Car Show

Continuing a look at early Ditko stories. See http://tinyurl.com/ditko-stories for the list.

A rare early Ditko foray into humour, with the 3-page "Car Show" from Charlton's FROM HERE TO INSANITY #10 [1955], one of many humour comics to pop up in the wake of the success of Kurtzman's MAD. Nothing really hilarious in the script, maybe if I was more familiar with cars of that or any other era I'd get it. Ditko does have a lot of nice touches in the art, like his signature being attached to the first panel with a paperclip, that charred panel, the slashed panel.

By the way, if you think that the pages might be out of order, you're not alone. They actually appeared with that charred panel last in the recent reprint in STEVE DITKO: EDGE OF GENIUS, and that actually made more sense to me than this order. Thanks to Nick Caputo for confirming that the order below is indeed the order it appeared in the original comic.

Ditko also does the unrelated cover to this issue.

In addition to being a genre oddity for Ditko, this comic is also a bit of a scheduling oddity. It's dated June, 1955, and is the only comic book with Ditko art to have a 1955 cover date, following a very prolific 1954. The last work Ditko had published before this was a cover 6 months earlier, and the last story was 10 months earlier. His work wouldn't show up again for another 10 months, and that would be for his first brief stint at Marvel, he wouldn't have another story in a Charlton comic until early 1957. So it's not really clear if this was a story (and cover) that just sat in inventory for a while (the comic book industry was in considerable turmoil at the time, this is also the first "post-Code" Ditko story) or if Ditko did indeed draw it in the middle of a period where, for whatever reason, he didn't do any other comics.

Click images, you know the drill.

 

Most scans in this series adapted to my personal tastes from those found, and available for free download with registration, at the Golden Age Comics Download site. To buy some Ditko comics go over here for ordering info on his available creator owned material co-published with Robin Snyder (new book coming soon) and head over here for info on all recent and upcoming books with Ditko from all publishers (some better than others). And be sure to check out DITKOMANIA, the Ditko fanzine, currently running bi-monthly and with some great art and articles.