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.

Marvel Super-Heroes #1 [1990]

MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #1 [1990]

A year after the SPEEDBALL series ended its ten issue run they published a few more stories of Robbie Baldwin, the Masked Marvel, by his creator Steve Ditko in a few of their anthology titles, five in all over the next year.  This was the first of them, in the debut issue of this quarterly title which often featured unused inventory issues from various Marvel books.

"Pulitzer Patty" is an 11-page story opening with a Patty, a student reporter in Robbie's school, interviewing some of the students about hard-hitting stories like the cafeteria food and what they think of the Masked Marvel.  She also gets the janitor on camera, which upsets him.  As you might expect the janitor is a criminal in hiding, afraid of being exposed, and tries to get the video, not even considering it would be backed up to the cloud... oh, sorry, 1990, I forgot. Robbie has to activate his speedball effect and go into action as the Masked Marvel to save the day.

Nice little story, I liked the little scenes of what other students think of Robbie's alter ego, and the emphasis on the civilian life of Robbie with just a quick well staged action scene.

The script is by Fabian Nicieza and the inks are by Chris Ivy, who mostly do okay (except a painful opening bit written in verse).

Marvel Comics Presents #14 [1989]

Out of 26 stories featuring The Masked Marvel with the speedball effect by Ditko that Marvel published from 1988 to 1991, this 8-page story "The Feathered Felon" from MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #14 [1989], midway through the 10-issue series run of SPEEDBALL, was the only one that Ditko inked himself, in addition to his usual plotting and penciling work (Jo Duffy provides the script). Comparing it to the other stories, that's a shame, since it's probably my favourite of the Masked Marvel stories. Most of the other inking on the character was acceptable, some of it was really not suited to Ditko's style, none of it was quite Ditko.

This is also a pretty fun story. The felon of the title is a mysterious bird creature which swoops down at random and steals various objects, including the briefcase of Robbie Baldwin's father, which has some documents essential for a case he's prosecuting. Robbie tries to use his powers to follow the felon, but a combination of his general lack of control and the sheer randomness of the felon make it difficult. There's a nice combination of super-heroics and Robbie's civilian life in this story, and a good look at a few of the major themes that pop up in many of the stories.

The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #22 [1988]

Ditko plots and pencils a 10-page backup story "He Who Laughs..." in this annual, featuring the first published appearance of his co-creation (with Tom DeFalco) Speedball, the Masked Marvel (he's actually rarely called "Speedball" in his solo stories, usually just called "The Masked Marvel"). The character, Robbie Baldwin, also appears in the main story in this issue, meeting some other heroes on a trip to New York with his mother.

On that same trip, they also ran into a failed actor who wrongly placed the blame for his failure on Robbie's mother. Donning a green mask, the actor tries to get Robbie out of the way and kill his mother at a theatre and then a theatre supply store, only to be thwarted by Robbie using the Masked Marvel powers that allow him to absorb kinetic energy and bounce a lot. Not great powers, but sufficient to defeat a Shakespeare-quoting nutjob.

While none of the Masked Marvel stories is really great, they are often really good and the visuals are always nice and inventive, with Ditko's rendition of his out-of-control bouncing.

Roger Stern scripts the story, and Jackson Guice inks.

Marvel Super-Heroes #5 [1991]

Speedball short stories plotted and pencilled by Ditko rattled around in various Marvel anthology books after his series was cancelled. One of the odder looking ones was this 11-page story inked by Mark Badger, who put his own style pretty heavily on the pencils, and scripted by Jo Duffy.

"Jolly Roger" begins with Robbie Baldwin's high school class going to a preview of a pirate exhibit at a local museum. They're surprised to see a man dressed as a very flamboyant version of a pirate robbing the museum. Some of Robbie's classmates decide to go down to the old pirate coves, where Robbie plans to join them later (after a break for some unresolved sub-plotting involving catching the cat which might hold the secret to the control of his powers). Arriving at the cove, he saves his friends and fights the pirate aboard a sinking pirate ship.

The story isn't the best, it feels like a bit of a victim of the "Marvel method" where the scripter wasn't quite clear on how everything was supposed to tie together. The artwork is odd, kind of nice in the "would never want to see another Ditko story inked like this, but not sorry we got this one" way that overpowering inker combinations can be.

Marvel Age Annual #4 [1988]

This issue previewed Marvel's upcoming comics for 1988, including a few short original stories of new books, among them 5-page Speedball story "The Mystery of Crooked Face", plotted and pencilled by Ditko, scripted by Roger Stern and inked by Jackson Guice.

This story presents some of the background of Speedball, teenager Robby Baldwin who got super-powers in an accident that enable him to absorb and release kinetic energy. His father is a district attorney and his mother is a former actress. In this story, Robby's father loses a trial in which the defendant, who was accused of crimes committed wearing a goofy mask, was identified by a witness who removed his mask but also had an airtight alibi. "Crooked Face" tries to get even with the Baldwin family, leading to some confrontations with Speedball, until it's eventually revealed that the original defendant was the twin brother of "Crooked Face", and they planned the crimes together.

I'm pretty fond of Speedball, who's a well designed character with some nice visual gimmicks that Ditko uses to good effect. I think Guice's inks are a bit too slick at points, but they work nicely in some places, bringing a bit of a then-modern look to Ditko's style. The actual story in this one is a bit too quick, but then it is only 5-pages, even with the dense layouts Ditko used for this series (with a lot of pages with 10 or more panels). I do think that the Crooked Man villain is a nicely silly bit of Ditko design.