Eerie Greatest Hits [1994]

The companion volume to CREEPY THE CLASSIC YEARS [1991], Harris comics reprinted this selection of stories from the first few years of Warren's EERIE magazine, mostly written by Archie Goodwin. It's not as good as the prior book. The choice of stories is fine, but overall the book is just cheaper looking, with thinner paper, weaker reproduction of the art and less relevant editorial material. There were two Godwin/Ditko stories.

"Room With A View" is a 6-page story from EERIE #3 [1966], the first Ditko story for Warren. It's a haunted hotel room story, where a traveler insists on taking the only empty room in a hotel, despite the desk clerks warnings that no one is ever happy there. Turns out to be a haunted mirror, which give progressively more terrifying visions. The story isn't one of Goodwin's better ones, but Ditko does a pretty good job with his imaginative renderings of the visions in the mirror. This one is drawn closer to the more common Ditko style, although more detailed than most of his colour comics.

The 6-page "Deep Ruby" is from EERIE #6 [1966], although the host framing sequences have Uncle Creepy instead of Cousin Eerie, so it seems to be taken from the prior reprint in CREEPY #25 [1969]. It's a quick little story about a jeweler approached by a decrepit homeless man, and being surprised by the red ruby the man shows him. His desire for the stone leads him into a horrific nightmare dimension, and of course Ditko's detailed renderings of that dimension are the heart of the story. He'd drawn some comics that evoked that kind of imagery before, but it's in some of these Warren stories that those concepts appear fully-formed. The combination of the lack of Comics Code restrictions and the freedom that comes with drawing for black and white, so the art that leaves the drawing board is the art that people see, really seems to have brought something out. This story uses the inkwash style that the majority of Ditko's Warren work was done in, and even in this lackluster reprint the attention to detail is impressive.

Heroes, Inc. #1 [1969]

HEROES, INC. #1 [1969] features the debut of Wallace Wood's Cannon as the lead story, with a 12-page adventure drawn by Steve Ditko and inked by Wood. There's a lot of history behind the title, for which I'll refer you to this Wikipedia article. The short version is that it was a comic intended to be sold to US armed services members, and with ads targeted at that audience (mostly jewelry, plus land in New Mexico). For some reason the first issue was printed but got little or no distribution. Large quantities of uncirculated copies have turned up over the years, including a lot of about 70,000 copies (not a typo) auctioned off in 2005. That probably makes it one of the most common silver age comics.

Wood continued publishing Cannon stories in other venues, although I don't know if those use the same set-up as this story. They definitely seem to be more risque, with the last major printing of them being published under the adult Eros imprint by Fantagraphics. Another issue of HEROES, INC. was eventually published in 1976, with a second Ditko/Wood Cannon story. The other Cannon stories have been reprinted a few times, but I don't think the two Ditko stories were ever reprinted. Just searching now I see Fantagraphics has another edition coming out in 2014. It's 288 pages instead of the 144 pages of their previous "Compleat" edition, but looks like it's in a landscape format, so I'm guessing it's the same contents reformatted, so odds are no Ditko.

(and reading the description of the upcoming book, I see it is the same set-up on the later stories, only with a lot of nudity added)

In this story, Chinese communists attack a secret lab and kidnap Jean Voss, who has the secret to an anti-missile defense system. The President immediately sends in Cannon on a mission to find and kill her before she can talk. We get a very quick bit of background on Cannon, just that he was a top spy who was captured, brain-washed and returned to assassinate top US scientists. Fortunately re-captured by the US before he could follow through on that mission, they found they couldn't reverse the brainwashing, so they decided to brainwash him even more, leaving him devoid of emotions. Thus his response to the orders to kill Voss rather than even try to rescue her: a deadpan "Right."

The invasion force gets Cannon onto the island base of the communists  and he plays one man army, planting bombs, fighting guards and eventually finding Voss. Apparently he decides that since she already talked under truth serum, he will save her. I'm not sure I get the logic of that. He sticks around on the island while she takes his escape rocket, determined to destroy everything the whole base to keep the secret safe. He manages to do that, even adding a stolen secret enemy plane to his tally. Plus there's a pretty funny ending which I won't spoil.  Hey, it's easy enough to find a copy of this, with 70,000+ uncirculated copies out there...

Fun story, if a little goofy, I kind of like how it plays with and subverts the James Bond model of men's adventure stories. It's obviously Wood's show, so a lot of the surface elements of Ditko's pencils get buried in the inks, but you can still see it in the storytelling and body language, and especially in the hands.

Creepy The Classic Years [1991]

After Warren stopped publishing around 1983 their titles were next seen after a gap of a few years from publisher Harris Comics. While Harris published about a million new and reprint Vampirella comics (approximate number, may be higher) they made far less use of the CREEPY and EERIE brands, with only a few new CREEPY comics and one reprint book of 1960s material for each title.

CREEPY THE CLASSIC YEARS [1991] came first.  Editor Richard Howell provides the introduction, which includes a few notes on each artist, including Ditko, and also the page header seen here which I'm still looking for information on. In the book are two Ditko reprints, both written by Archie Goodwin.

The 6-page "Second Chance" from CREEPY #13 [1967] has a spectacular splash page, and it's no surprise that Dark Horse is using a cropped and colourized version of that page for their upcoming reprint of Ditko's Warren stories. Trust me, the full page in the original black and white is even better. Featuring Edward Norton's descent into Hell, where he confronts Beelzebub and demands their bargain to give Nugent a second shot at life after his death. Ditko really lets his imagination run wild in the land of the damned, using similar concepts to his famous fantasy landscapes in Doctor Strange, but rendered in ways the Comics Code probably would have objected to. There's also an earthbound component to the story, set in a graveyard, which allows for a few more macabre backgrounds and looks of sheer terror that Ditko excelled in. The plot itself is pretty routine, but Goodwin keeps it moving along and lets the artwork do the heavy lifting on this one.

The book concludes with the 8-page "Collector's Edition" from CREEPY #10 [1966], which is, for those of you familiar with it, an appropriate story to finish a book. Howell's introduction mentions that some consider it "the single finest story Ditko ever turned out", and it's definitely a contender. The story features Colin Danforth, a collector of obscure and forbidden occult books, an obsession which forces him to do business with the unsavory Murch, who dangles the possibility of the rarest of artifacts, the Marquis LeMode's "Dark Visions". One of Goodwin's best, and Ditko was the perfect artistic partner for the story, rendering it in a detailed style, with some key parts using some very unusual technique that I can't quite figure out. I think it's some sort of mechanical tone, but used very delicate way, creating almost a wood-cut effect. And to top it all off, his detailed rendering never gets in the way of the storytelling.

Return Of The Skyman #1 [1987]

The Skyman is a long-running Golden Age comic book hero, published by Columbia and first appearing in BIG SHOT COMICS #1 [1940] by creators Gardner Fox and Ogden Whitney. He appeared in that title until 1949, as well as four issues of his own title.  See here for more on Columbia's comics.

As ACE Comics publisher Ron Frantz discusses in the latest DITKOMANIA, he acquired the rights to Columbia's The Face and The Skyman from publisher Vincent Sullivan, and first published three issues of WHAT IS... THE FACE with art by Ditko. Then in 1987 he published RETURN OF THE SKYMAN #1, with an 18-page story penciled by Steve Ditko, inked by Rick Altergott and written by Mort Todd. It begins in 1949, with Allen Turner, the Skyman, a decade into his career and considering retirement with his recent marriage and a baby on the way, gets a call that prompts him to check in on his mentor and uncle, scientist Peter Turner. He finds his uncle being interrogated by a Nazi war criminal looking for the secret to time travel, which ends up bringing the Skyman into 1987 and the immediate aftermath of a nuclear disaster.

This is only the first chapter of a longer story that never did continue, but it's an intriguing start, and The Skyman is a pretty interesting and well-designed character. Ditko does a solid job, with a lot of nice visual bits like the time machine (especially the fate of the Nazi criminal) and the post-disaster future world. Altergott's inks are very much in the slick Wallace Wood inspired vein, which works well.

This issue also features an Ogden Whitney cover from SKYMAN #1, the 3-page Fox/Whitney recap of the origin from that issue, a 1965 fanzine article about the feature and a long article by Frantz about both Whitney's life and Frantz's search for information about Whitney.  That includes some panels from a 1965  Herbie the Fat Fury story (Whitney's most famous creation) which features a Skyman cameo.

Upcoming Ditko - FOUR-PAGE SERIES #2

From Robin Snyder:

The first FOUR-PAGE SERIES was a collection of the following five Ditko essays published as part of THE COMICS V23 #9:

“The Knowers & the Barkers” [reprinted from #17]
“The Silent Self-Deceivers” [reprinted from THE COMICS V23 #7]
“A Newspaper Article, A Reporter's Report”
“A Deadly Fantasy”
“Why Out Of Their Way?”

Will THE FOUR-PAGE SERIES #2 be more of the same? Something different? With Ditko, you never really know until you have it in your hands.

To order it direct from Snyder you can get his contact info on this page. I should have more on this soon.

And a reminder, two weeks to get in on the PUBLIC SERVICE PACKAGE 2nd Edition Kickstarter. Spread the word if you know any Ditko readers who might be interested but might not have heard of it yet.

Creepy #16 [1967]

"The Sands That Change" from CREEPY #16 [1967] is the final Ditko story published by Warren, and the only one of the sixteen Warren stories not written by Archie Goodwin, with Clark Dimond and Terry Bisson scripting.

This time around we have comic book artist Tom Newman and his new wife honeymooning in the Mojave Desert, ignoring some warnings from the local Indians about thee dangers of the territory and "drawing the desert only as it really is". Turns out that whatever he draws comes to life, unfortunately they only figure that out after he designs a new monster for an upcoming comic.

Nice story with a clever visual hook for Ditko to play with, and a pretty decent twist at the end.

One of the interesting things about Ditko's work at Warren is the variety of art styles he used. The inkwash ones are the most famous, and the tight rendering on "Collector's Edition" make that a favourite of many, but this one has a pretty interesting technique that I don't think I've seen Ditko use elsewhere. I'm not sure, it looks like he might be using some sort of charcoal or crayon for the shading, or maybe drawing on a different kind of paper with some texture, definitely not the pen or brush of his typical work.

New Ditko - DITKOMANIA #90 available

DITKOMANIA #90 is now available, an extra-length issue featuring a detailed essay on the brief life of ACE Comics from publisher Ron Frantz. He didn't publish much, but there was a lot of Ditko among his books, and some more planned unrealized Ditko projects discussed in his essay, including a project with Jerry Siegel with some concept art.

I'll post more on the published ACE Ditko comics soon, here are some previous posts about them:

What Is... The Face #1 [1986]
Ace Comics Presents #1 [1987]
Return Of The Skyman #1 [1987]

Single issue and subscription information are over here, and the Ditkomania mailing list is down this way.

Eerie #10 [1967]

Archie Goodwin and Steve Ditko bring us the 8-page "Warrior Of Death" from Warren's EERIE #10 [1967], where the barbarian warrior Zahran finds himself mortally wounded after a lifetime of bloody combat and convinces Death to let him live and continue battling in the service of Death.  You know that's not going to end well for anyone but Death.

This is the last published of the fifteen Ditko/Goodwin stories for Warren in 1966/67 (with one more Ditko story written by others). It's obvious why these stories are remembered so fondly, with a lot of vivid imagery by Ditko (the face of Death is great) and some nice detail in the grey inkwash shading that you hardly ever see in the colour comics of that era. Goodwin does a nice pulp story without overwriting and letting the art speak for itself.