The Fly #8 [1984]

Ditko briefly worked for Archie during one of their super-hero revivals in 1983/1984, when frequent collaborator Robin Snyder was an editor there. Initially he was just pencilling the main feature in THE FLY, but soon enough he was plotting and inking as well, as in this issue. In this issue he also just drew the Jaguar back-up story.

In this version of the series, The Fly is the now adult lawyer Thomas Troy. Prior to this issue he's been suspected of mob ties.

"The Big Freeze" is the 15-page lead story in this issue, starting with a gangster, Damato, trying to hire him. They're interrupted by a mysterious frozen figure in a suit who demands money from the gangster, an old accomplice that Damato and another partner of his had dumped in a freezer years before. Troy eventually fights the frozen man as the Fly. Ditko's art is pretty strong, especially the design of the villain and the staging of the action scenes, but I think the plotting could have been a bit stronger, explaining the villain better, and some of the writing was a bit clumsy.

"Jaguar: The Conclusion" is a 5-page story that I guess completes the origin of the character. Ditko didn't draw the earlier stories, and it's kind of hard to understand, but it has something to do with a Mexican Jaguar cult that leads to the creation of the hero. Some nice artwork, and it all might make more sense if I had all the other chapters.

Ditko also draws the cover to this issue.

What Is... The Face #1 [1986]

Ron Frantz published several comics on the A.C.E. Comics imprint in the 1980s, including revivals of several characters published by Columbia Comics in the 1940s. Ditko pencilled four issues for the company, including all three issues of WHAT IS... THE FACE, an update of the 1940s character (whose first story, by Gardner Fox and Mart Bailey, is also reprinted in here). The original Face was Tony Trent, a radio station owner/commentator. The new Face is his grandson, also Tony Trent, a TV reporter who inherits the form fitting mask and colt .45 of his grandfather.

"The Ransomed City" is an 18-page story, plotted by Frantz, scripted by Joe Gill and inked by Frank McLaughlin. Tony Trent is shown to be the usual upright Ditko hero, confident of his ability to bring down the crime boss, despite skepticism from the police lieutenant, DA and station owner. After an attack and attempt on his life he decides to dig out his grandfather's old mask and gun and take the fight directly to mob boss Duke Arno. Unfortunately, while he's able to shake up Arno, it doesn't help get an arrest since the mobster just accuse that mysterious masked freak for the murder they committed.

The series is a bit of a throwback, but entertaining, and both looks and reads a lot better than most of the work Ditko was doing for Marvel around this time (his three issues of CHUCK NORRIS were around this time). McLaughlin, who inked some of Ditko's Captain Atom stories in the 1960s, was a pretty good match for Ditko's work of the time, despite a tendency towards excessive feathering at points.

Legends of the DC Universe 80-Page Giant #1 [1998]

Ditko's last published[*] original material for a mainstream publisher to date was a 10-page Spectre story written by Bill Mumy and Peter David and inked by Kevin Nowlan in this 1998 special. Nowlan's inking is quite often overpowering to any penciller, and that's definitely the case here. In particular the face of the Spectre seems to be almost all Nowlan, as do a few other things. To be fair, though, Ditko's pencils are known to be very loose, whether he inks the final work or not, so most things inked by others that look like "classic Ditko" probably take just as many liberties with the pencils, just leaning towards an imitation of a particular era of Ditko's own style. And the bits of Ditko that come through Nowlan's inks are pretty strong.

"The Depths Of Despair" features Jim Corrigan in the early days of his Spectre identity falling in love with a girl who is plagued by nightmares about the death of her twin as a child aboard the Titanic decades earlier, for which she blames herself. Seeing a chance for an ironic vengeance lesson, the Spectre takes her back in time to the sinking of the ship to confront her guilt.

[*] There was apparently a back-up story for the ORION series done after this that was finished but never published.
[well, it wasn't when I wrote this, but  it has been now]

Ghostly Tales #93 [1972]

As I mentioned before, Ditko doing covers to non-Ditko books was pretty rare, with only about two dozen examples, and about half the examples come from Charlton comics in the 1970s, when for a long while that was the only mainstream company to feature his work, so presumably giving him as much work as he could handle

This one illustrates the Pete Morisi interior story "The Kept Promise", featuring a much more detailed version of the big screaming green face that figures into the story, as well as a nice shot of the host of the book, Mr. Dedd. That really is a great screaming face, one of those many Ditko trademarks, and some nice detail work on the haunted house.

A really eye-catching cover that looks good from a distance as well as close up, and the printing, if not the colour registration, is much better than the interior printing.

Cover - 00658

Mystery In Space #111 [1980]

In addition to the various super-hero features (both of his own creation and pre-existing characters) that Ditko drew for DC over the years, he also did a few dozen non-continuity short stories for their anthology books. An odd mix of material, similar to some of the Charlton stuff of the same era, but usually at least better printed, and with a lot of different writers and a few different inkers.

MYSTERY IN SPACE #111 starts a short-lived revival of the old DC sci-fi anthology. The Ditko contribution to the issue is "Once Upon A Time Machine", a 7-page story drawn by Ditko and written by Mike Barr, featuring a scholar from the future who steals a time machine in order to investigate his theory that fairy tales have a basis in fact, a line of research dismissed by his superiors as frivolous. And I gotta say, they have a point. But young Merrill won't take defeat lightly, and finds himself as the source for the very stories he was researching (although for a supposed scholar in the field it often takes him quite a while to catch on to what he did).

Pretty good story, and Ditko gets to draw a nice combination of his fantasy and sci-fi styles throughout. I especially like those inky tendrils of the time-stream as the machine travels in a few panels.

"Once Upon A Time Machine" J-6551

Upcoming Ditko - Ditko Reader CD-ROM

For those who like your comics digital or missed these two books when they came out, Pure Imagination is offering the first two DITKO READER books on CD, listed in the solicitations for April 2006. Over 300 pages, around 50 stories originally published by Charlton, lots of different genres, from horror to sci-fi to western to big monkey (it's a genre!) and beyond, plus presumably Greg Theakston's long biographical notes that were in the first volume. I believe that these come in PDF format.

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PURE IMAGINATION PUBLISHING
STEVE DITKO READER CD-ROM VOLUME 1This CD-ROM collects the contents of the sold-out Steve Ditko Readers Volume 1 and Volume 2 on one PC/MAC-compatible CD!
CD-Rom SRP: $20.00

Tiger-Man #2 [1975]

Ditko did a lot of work for the short-lived Atlas-Seaboard line, penciling for three different books, seven issues total in their only year of existence (and was announced as doing work for their even shorter-lived black&white mags, the "Wrecage" story that he later re-worked as "Recage" a few years later).

Tiger-Man was drawn by Ernie Colon in his initial stories, and Ditko takes on the artwork with #2. The lead character is a New York based doctor, Lancaster Hill, who got his powers while working in Africa, experimenting on an imported Indian tiger (I suspect when they originally created the character they didn't realize that there aren't any tigers in Africa and had to do some backtracking on that).

"Stalker In A Concrete Jungle" has Tiger-Man confronted by the Blue Leopard, a costumed character from Africa just as agile as him who has pursued Hill from Africa to avenge the death by starvation of hundreds of his tribe that he blames on Hill for some unspecified reason. The Leopard actually has a nicer design, or at least more compatible with Ditko's art, and the scenes with the two of them fighting on the rooftops are the highlight of the issue, reminding me of similar stuff from the Spider-Man/Blue Beetle/Creeper days.

There's no inker credited on the 19-page story. Various sources give Ditko himself, Frank Giacoia and Larry Lieber. I'm leaning towards Giacoia of those choices, although I don't know of any other Ditko/Giacoia stories to compare.

New Ditko - TALES TO ASTONISH MASTERWORKS

Out now, Marvel Masterworks: Tales to Astonish Vol. 1, a reprint of the first 10 issues of the series from 1959/1960. Ditko does some work in every issue reprinted in here, for a total of nine stories solo, two inking Jack Kirby's pencils, one solo cover and three inking over Kirby. Several have never been reprinted before.

Go here for more on the book, including previews of many pages.