New Ditko - MOCKER and 1961 Charlton reprints

The library of print-on-demand books from SD Comics expands two recent books

Ditko's 1980s independent work is featured in a 100-page densely plotted super-hero / crime drama in STEVE DITKO'S THE MOCKER THE DEFINITIVE EDITION, along with lots of extras. One of Ditko's best fully realized works.
ISBN 9781945307423

And another full-colour collection of his Charlton work (mostly in collaboration with Joe Gill) goes back to 1961, with the balance of the original Captain Atom stories, the early Konga and Gorgo stories and lots of short science fiction and fantasy tales in THE RETURN OF GORGO, over 250-pages of Ditko work in all.
ISBN 9781945307454

Marvel Comics Presents #56 [1990]

One of several stories featuring the Masked Marvel after his series SPEEDBALL was cancelled, Marvel Comics Presents #56 [1990] has the 8-page "Any Number Can Play", written and drawn by Ditko, scripted by frequent Masked Marvel scripter Jo Duffy and inked by Sam Grainger, a long-time journeyman inker going back to the 1960s, but only working on Ditko's art this one time.  Looks very solid and faithful to Ditko's work of the era.

Bit of an odd story building on some of the previous events of the series which led to masks being illegal in Robbie Baldwin's hometown of Springdale. He encounters six men who are wearing masks that are based on the pips of a standard six-sided die, with nicknames to match (Solo, Duo, Trio etc). Actually feels a lot like something Ditko would have done in one of his 1990s independent works.

Mort Todd, R.I.P.

Sad to hear the news that Mort Todd (aka Michael Delle-Femine, aka Eel O'Brain) has passed away at the far too young age of 63.  Todd's career intersected with Ditko a number of times. In the 1980s he was the editor of CRACKED and commissioned a number of stories by Ditko (some of which Todd also wrote).  Later on Todd created the magazine MONSTERS ATTACK, each issue including a memorable story by Ditko (one of them inked by Todd). Also in that era, Todd wrote the story for RETURN OF THE SKYMAN #1 for A.C.E. Comics, which Ditko drew.

In the early 1990s, Todd worked with Ditko on some original Mr. A. material that only ended up being published years later by SD Publishing. He apparently did produce a Mr. A. t-shirt and some other stuff.

In the 1990s Todd was an editor at Marvel, where he worked on a number of reprints that included vintage Ditko work. He also got Ditko to contribute some new covers and pin-ups for those books, including the amusing little bit on the side here.

Later on Todd worked on some publications reprinting some of the 1980s stuff, and was recently announced as editing some material for the Ditko Estate's Ditkoverse initiative.

Some other relevant images below:

--Link-- DitkoVerse update and indiegogo campaign

There have been some updates to the DitkoVerse site run by the Steve Ditko Estate and Steve Ditko's nephew Mark S. Ditko, including news of some upcoming publications edited by frequent Ditko collaborator Mort Todd, which can be seen on their Indiegogo campaign.   Including Mr. A., Static, The Avenging World and Fantastic Giants (featuring Konga), setting the stage for marking Ditko's 100th birthday only 939 days from today.

Ditko 100

Upcoming Ditko - The DC Universe by Steve Ditko Omnibus

Update to this post, the upcoming THE DC UNIVERSE BY STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS scheduled for June has some revised contents from what was previously posted.

Collects Detective Comics (1937) #483-485; Legends of the DC Universe 80-Page Giant #1; Tales of the New Gods #1; House of Secrets (1956) #139 and #148; World’s Finest Comics #249-255; Adventure Comics (1938) #467-478; Showcase (1956) #73 and #75; House of Mystery (1952) #236, #247, #254, #258, and #276; 1st Issue Special #7; Beware the Creeper #1-6; Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2; Strange Adventures (1950) #188-189; The Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #267-268, #272, #274, #276, and #281; Shade, the Changing Man (1977) #1-8; Plop! #16; Weird War Tales #46, #49, #95, #99, #104-106; Secrets of Haunted House #9, #12, #41, and #45; The Unexpected #189 and #221; Ghosts (1971) #77, #111; Mystery in Space (1951) #111 and #114-116; Time Warp #1-4; Stalker #1-4; Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #257; Amazing World of DC Comics #13; The Outsiders (1985) #13; The Hawk and the Dove #1-2; Man-Bat (1976) #1; DC Special Series #9; and Action Comics (1938) #642.

The four highlighted entries address most of the omissions from the previous books listed here.  Still unclear if the ACTION and DC SPECIAL will reprint the full stories or only excerpt the Ditko pages from the larger stories (which would mean about 100 pages of non-Ditko art in a "by Ditko" titled book, when you add the second half of the last 1960s CREEPER story). The LEGION #257 was always an odd omission, and it'll be good to see the PLOP remainder from AMAZING WORLD, a great rare Ditko/Wood/Skeates job.

Most of the remaining omissions are single page things (WHO'S WHO entries, an intro page and a profile page), but the solicitation listing doesn't include other single pages that were included in the previous books (a cover and a pin-up), so good chance they'll be included.

If they don't include the version of the ODD MAN story from DETECTIVE #487 (coloured and with a revised script) that's regrettable, but hardly tragic, as long as the rarer black&white version is included.

That leaves some known ("Woro and the Liquid Man", "The Robot and... The Ghost") and unknown unpublished work, some house ads (some maybe with original art), work done for things like a licensed Green Lantern colouring book and other odds and ends. Have to wait for the book to see if any of that shows up as "behind-the-scenes extras!".

My article specifically about the stand-alone genre stories in the book.

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1799501736
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 9781799501732

Adding... Informal page count is 1138 pages of Ditko material, if you only include one version of Odd Man.  There are around 17 pages of non-Ditko material in the three book set (Creeper #6 cover and second half of story, Legion covers for issues Ditko does the lead story.  Oddly not the Man-Bat #1 cover).  The ACTION and DC SPECIAL would need 31 and 54 pages of non-Ditko art, respectively, including covers, bringing us to 1240 pages, more than 20 pages fewer than the 1264 the book is listed at to use for contents pages, indicia, intros and extras.  So if I was a betting man I'd say good odds the full stories will be included, which will mean first-ever reprints for some work by Russ Heath, Gil Kane, Curt Swan and others. But probably not enough pages for "Woro" and the like (if DC even has access to them)...