--Link-- Ditkomania editor interviewed

Michael Aushenker's interviews DITKOMANIA editor Rob Imes over at the Cartoon Flophouse.

Upcoming Ditko - More INDIANA JONES reprints

Dark Horse has another volume of reprints of Marvel's Indiana Jones comics of the 1980s on the schedule. Ditko did eight of them total, based on the page counts it looks like the first one (#21) will be in Volume 2 (which should be out soon) and the other seven (#25-#28, #32-#34) will be in Volume 3.

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INDIANA JONES OMNIBUS: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES VOLUME 3
Linda Grant (W), David Michelinie (W), Steve Ditko (A), Ricardo Villamonte (A), Bret Blevins (A), and others
On sale Mar 17
FC, 344
$24.99
TPB, 6" x 9"
The globetrotting hero born of George Lucas’s love for high-adventure 1930s fiction returns! Irreverent archaeologist Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones scours the furthest corners of the planet for priceless artifacts, hungry for knowledge about ancient civilizations and in a constant race to beat grave-robbing thieves to the goods. Though his quick wit, resourcefulness, and dashing good looks have gotten him this far, what happens when his Nazi foes attempt to wake the dead through sorcery? Join Steve Ditko and Linda Grant in this value-priced collection to find out!
• This volume also includes the official comics adaptation of The Last Crusade!

--Link-- Recent Ditko reviewed

Rodrigo Baeza picked up some of the recent Ditko comics and reviews two of them over on his site, with some well chosen sample pages. I guess at this point it would be redundant to tell you where to go for info on picking them up yourself if you don't have access to a store that carries them...

Oh, and I needed to get a Twitter thing a while ago to read something on the site, and decided I might as well use it for something, so I've been posting various links on there for the last week or so tagged "Daily Ditko". Usually links to older posts on this site, or today a link to the review above,or whatever else seems fitting. If you're so inclined.

Saban's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #4 [1996]

Back in the darkest days of the 1990s, there was an inexplicably popular kids TV show called MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS. Marvel did some comics based on the series, and Ditko drew [at least] four 10-page stories for them, among his last half-dozen or so stories he did for Marvel.

The 10-page story in this issue is "Revenge Of The Nerd", with inks by Tom Palmer and story by Tom Daning. The nerdy and pimply teenager with the unfortunately named Myron Zitzner is teased and bullied in school, only to be rescued by the some of the Power Rangers in their civilian identities.  Unfortunately his bitterness makes him unable to appreciate the help.  The Rangers then have to take care of an attack from a giant monster, as they often do, while the mastermind behind all those attacks kidnaps Myron and transforms him into a giant pimple which shoots out acid and attacks the Rangers.  They have to transform into other forms (no doubt more toys to sell to kids) to defeat him, with the rather unfortunate image of squeezing his mutant pimple form until he pops out, having learned his lesson, and later using his brains to win the admiration of some cute girls.

So, no surprise, not that good a story, although obviously I wasn't really the target audience (other than to the extent that "Ditko fan" was the target, and at that Ditko fans probably outnumber Power Rangers fans now, at least until the nostalgia wave hits them) either when it came out or now.  Ditko's art is solid, though Tom Palmer's inking is a bit heavy.

New Ditko - DITKOMANIA #75 available

DITKOMANIA #75 is now available, with appropriately an issue devoted to Ditko's work in the year 1975, a year which saw two issues of his independent work, continuing a prolific run of stories for Charlton, the rise and fall of Atlas-Seaboard (with seven issues drawn by Ditko) and Ditko's return to DC. A nice selection of Ditko heroes on the cover at right. This is an extra-sized issue, so slightly more expensive than a regular issues, but if you subscribe you can get it for the same price as a regular issue. Ordering details over here.

Here are links to a few posts from this weblog on Ditko's 1975 work.  Expect a few more in the next little while as I'm sure this issue will lead to me pulling a few of them out for re-reading. 

The Destructor #1 [1975]
Tiger-Man #2 [1975]
Stalker #2 [1975]
Ghostly Tales #117 [1975]
Plop #16 [1975]

Ghost Manor #63 [1982]

From deep in the heart of Charlton's long mostly-reprint era, a couple of minor Ditko pieces from just a few years earlier in this issue, starting with the cover, which is from GHOST MANOR #28 [1976]. A decent generic horror cover of a man being confronted by something seen only by its shadow in an attic.

Later in the issue is the single page story "Lost Mine" from GHOST MANOR #30 [1976]. A nice little vignette about two prospectors who find a rich vein of gold in the Grand Canyon back in the wild west, and what their greed caused. Nothing special, but interesting to note that there's a lot of the story not directly told in the captions that the art does a good job of filling in.

It Stalks the Public Domain - Addendum

To close off our extended look at Ditko's 1953-1955 work, a few words on some other work that he may, or may not, have had an undefined hand in.

In addition to his BLACK MAGIC stories for Simon&Kirby Ditko worked on the CAPTAIN 3-D comic that S&K did for Harvey, and possibly other 3-D comics of the era (possibly unpublished), working with other artists on the backgrounds (as the process of creating 3-D comics was apparently quite labour-intensive)

I don't know how much Ditko there might be in that, but look for a newly coloured 2-D reprint in one of Joe Simon's reprints of the S&K material next year.

STRANGE FANTASY #9 [1953] had the story "Hair Yee-eeee", a story that Bruce Hamilton has identified as another (like "Stretching Things") that he sold to Stanmor and they re-sold to Farrell. Some people see a degree of Ditko in the art, though almost certainly not Ditko solo (there's a mark which might be an initial "SS" on the first page). This scene, for example:

 

Possibly related to the above, an artist named Sy Moskowitz briefly worked in comics around the same time as Ditko broke in, doing some work for Charlton, Gilberton (Classics Illustrated) and Marvel (including a few stories with Joe Kubert). I haven't looked at too much of it, but some people see a few signs of Ditko in a few of his stories, and Greg Theakston even included "The Mark of the Ripper" from Charlton's STRANGE SUSPENSE STORIES #21 [1954] in his book STEVE DITKO: EDGE OF GENIUS [2008]. I'm not 100% convinced it belonged, but judge for yourself.

 

No reasonable way of knowing at this point what role Ditko might have had in some of these stories, but speculation clearly labeled as such can be fun. Any other stories from that era you see something Ditkoesque in? Feel free to comment, and include a scan or two of a likely panel or two if you can.

Upcoming Ditko - Mr. A., new essay, What If and more

Couple of recently announced upcoming Ditko publications. The biggest news is that there's some sort of Mr. A. book coming from Ditko and Robin Snyder. No details yet on exactly what it'll contain, but no doubt news will follow soon. Snyder also informs us that his newsletter THE COMICS will feature a new essay by Ditko soon, titled "The Ever Unreachable". Ordering info on the many Ditko/Snyder co-publications (including the previously announced upcoming A DITKO ACT TWO) and the newsletter are over here, as usual.

What If? Classic v6 from Marvel will feature the short 7-page back-up Ditko drew for #35 of the series, "And Thus Are Born The Cat People".

Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Tales To Astonish Vol. 3 continues reprinting that series, with a Ditko 5-pager in each of the 10 issues (notable in this run are "It Happened on the Silent Screen" and "Dream World").

The softcover volumes meanwhile have some classic material in Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man v3.

Dark Horse's Creepy Archives will presumably have some more reprints of reprints in volume 6.