Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves #24 [1971]

"The $5.99 Special" is the 8-page Ditko illustrated story in this issue. The basic story doesn't actually make too much sense. A cop arrests a woman for trying to sell him a fake love amulet, only to have the case thrown out by the booking officer since he didn't actually wait until money had changed hands. The two then go on a date, and I guess we wind up finding out that she really is a witch, but didn't know it up until now, and gets comfortable with her powers quickly. And then they live happily ever after. It's all very strange.

The art is much more interesting, if equally strange. This is one of those Charlton stories where the host (Doctor Graves in this case) does more than just narrate the story, but less than actively participate in it, with odd little panels floating between the panels of the main story, showing Graves observing what's going on. I'm not exactly sure what visual effect Ditko was going for, sometimes it seems to be a floating smoke effect, other times a jigsaw puzzle, or a lavalamp. The odd panel shapes get even odder later in the story, with heart-shaped panels when the characters kiss. Whatever the intended effect is, it's an interesting way to liven up a fairly bland story.

Ditko also draws the cover to this issue, also for this story, which has a pretty cool visual of a skull in a crystal ball.

Marvel Tales #141 [1982]

This issue reprints the cover and 21-page story "Nothing Can Stop the Sandman" from THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #4 [1963], the introduction of Flint Marko as one of Spider-Man's most persistent foes. This issue has always been my favourite of the first ten issues of the series. The earlier stuff was all good, but this is where it all really comes together for me. Every page in this issue is a gem, it was hard to pick one for this post.

After the customary symbolic splash page, we start with Spider-Man seeing some suspicious characters casing a jewelry store as it closes for the night. Unfortunately, he jumps the gun on nabbing the potential thieves before they actually break the law, and they know it, calling on the police themselves, taking advantage of the mistrust of Spider-Man that J. Jonah Jameson has been sowing. After dropping by Jonah's office to leave a small token of his affection, Spider-Man runs into the Sandman for the first time, finding him hard to handle, and is forced to flee when his mask rips. Back home he get an early version of a Spider-Man classic, Peter trying to sew his costume while hiding it from Aunt May, while he also gets the background of the Sandman from the TV. The next day Peter drops by the Daily Bugle office, just as Jonah needs a new pair of pants due to Spider-Man's little gag, and then goes to school. As luck would have it, Sandman runs from the police right into the school, and that's where he and Spider-Man have their showdown. Ditko really shines in the choreography of the fight through the school, full of great visuals playing the Sandman's powers and Spider-Man acrobatics to full effect. I especially love the whole sequence on the page scanned here, with Sandman using his powers to solidify himself right around Spider-Man's arm, then head-butting him, only to have Spider-Man flip him right over and smash his head into the stairway. Spider-Man finally beats the Sandman with the clever ruse of distracting him with a drill, so he takes his full sandy form and can be easily sucked into a vacuum cleaner.

And then, in one of my favourite bits, Spider-Man uses some sand from the fire-bucket to fake a few photos to sell to JJJ. While that works out for him, he's still got to face the scorn of his classmates, and we get a nice panel on the last page of people with scepticism to his exploits, but he decides to has these powers for a reason and has to continue being Spider-Man.

Just about everything that makes the Ditko Spider-Man masterful is in this story in its purest form, with an iconic villain with a clever visual hook, Peter's relationships with Aunt May, JJJ, his classmates, the police and the general public, an exciting action scene that resolves itself with a mix of brains and muscle and an overall way of thinking about super-heroics that was revolutionary at the time, and is still effective today.

Revolver #4 [1986]

Ditko writes and draws the 8-page "The Hand of Ages" for this issue of Robin Snyder's anthology series REVOLVER. A man buys a stolen mummy in a middle east town, only to have the stolen mummy grab his hand, transforming it to a monstrous form with an urge to kill. He leaves a trail of bodies through the world while pursued by another figure, finally leading to the hand forcing him to kill his wife. He hears a rumour about a doctor who theorizes that the killer is carrying a fungus which can be cured, but the doctor turns out to be the original mummy, whose attempt to come back from the dead was interrupted by the loss of his hand. The two eventually kill each other, leaving a twitching hand on the floor.

Boy, Ditko does like creepy hand-based storytelling, doesn't he? Cute little story, a few bits about the guy pursuing the cursed thief might have been a little clearer, but I liked it. Some of Ditko's work that appeared in REVOLVER was clearly meant for Charlton, and this one looks like it might have fit there.

[see comments, Nick mentions that it was probably for a Whitman/Gold Key line of the time that was discontinued before any of the Ditko work they had lined up was published]

Ditko also does the cover for this issue, based on the story, a great piece with a mummy, a giant green hand, huge floating eyes, and more.

Shadows & Light #1 [1998]

SHADOWS & LIGHT was a short-lived anthology title from Marvel featuring black and white stories. Ditko contributes story and art for a 12-page Iron Man story, "A Man's Reach...!", to this issue, with scripting by Len Wein. This may be the last new work he had published by Marvel (though I half-suspect it might be a holdover from many short stories of this kind he did back around 1990 instead of newly commissioned for this book. But Ditko didn't usually get to ink those, and some of the shading here looks like what Ditko would do for a story meant for black and white publication, so perhaps not).

Whatever the origins of the story, it's a pretty typical old-school Iron Man short, with Happy and Pepper being attacked and Pepper taken hostage by villains who steal an experimental device that Stark Industries is working on. Iron Man goes to the rescue, endangering a business deal as Tony Stark, and falls victim to the experimental device (as well as a hired thug named Longarm with arms stolen from Doctor Octopus. I wonder if Ditko put that in or Wein just added it because of the similarity in designs?). Fortunately Pepper is able to help out with a well timed kick taking out the device and then later her ear identifying the criminal mastermind.

A bit old-fashioned for the time, but not a bad little story. Ditko's art kind of varies in it. Most of it is pretty decent, a few places are really nicely done, with interesting inking techniques, but in other places it looks a bit sloppy.

This issue also features short biographies for the creators before each story, although managing to do so for Ditko without using the "created" word when mentioning Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.

Time Warp #3 [1980]

The recent posts on Ditko's LSH stories brought quite a bit of traffic and comments, including some from the creator of Doctor Mayavale. It also brought a question about other DeMatteis/Ditko stories, and I think a piece in DC's short lived sci-fi anthology is the only one.

"The Dimensions Of Greed" is a 7-page story about two criminals on the recently colonized Mars who rob a casino, killing two guards, and go to hide in the Martian ruins. They find a hidden chamber that leads them to a device which transports them to a surreal dimension about halfway between a Doctor Strange drawing and Shade's Area of Madness, where they meet the original Martians, lumpy green four-eyed (all in a row) creatures who had left the planet years ago. The crooks try to deceive the Martians in order to steal their gems, but when they escape find they went back in time and replaced the guards they had killed during their original heist, setting an endless time-loop in progress.

Nice little story, very much in the style of old Charlton or Atlas stories Ditko worked on, and a much better look at Ditko's skills around 1980 than his LSH work, especially since he handles the inks as well. Those weird Ditko renderings of alien dimensions are always nice to see.

Ditko has another story in this issue, the 3-page "On The Day Of His Return" by the writing team of Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn, who would later go on to create AMETHYST and BLUE DEVIL. This one has a spaceship captain hit an uncharted spacewarp, where he finds an out-of-place cabin on a snow-covered world. The bearded fat man in red's identity is immediately obvious to the reader, but the captain takes another page to figure it out as he hitches a ride home on a reindeer drawn sleigh. Very goofy, and the little text at the end about rediscovering faith and magic is kind of amusing in how it probably runs completely opposite to Ditko's objectivism. We do get one of those great Ditko double-takes when the captain realizes he's talking to an elf.

The Legion of Super-Heroes #268 [1980]

Since I'm a glutton for punishment sometimes, and since it only cost me 39 cents, I picked up another of the Ditko drawn LSH stories, the one with the worst reputation.

"Life after Life after Life" is a 25-page story written by J.M. DeMatteis and inked by Bob Wiacek, and it features a team of Legionnaires going up against Doctor Mayavale.

I will say this for Mayavale, he sure does have a lot of hands, which gives ample opportunity for Ditko to do some of that crazy hand-jive. That ends the entertaining part of the character. Other than that, he's a cosmic inventor who has decided, since his past lives were all good and noble, that he has to be evil in order to balance the cosmic scales. Sure, that makes sense, but how about the fact that three of the LSH members were acquaintances who had betrayed him in past lives, so he sets up robotic recreations of those betrayals (all in Earth's past) to reverse them. Search the interweb if you need a more detailed explanation.

All I can say is that I'm glad at age 10 I picked up the issue after this, or I might never have read an LSH story again. It's hard to believe from this that DeMatteis would turn out to be (a) a good writer (I highly recommend BROOKLYN DREAMS and MOONSHADOW and (b) able to explore themes of reincarnation and karmic balance in a thoughtful way. At this point his prose is just way too florid (which it often is in his later books, but he makes it work, unlike "a voice that resounds with stentorian sanity, and yet quivers in maundering madness") and the plot is just all over the place. Wiacek is also a much better inker than you'd guess from this.

Except for the hands, this is all sorts of bad. I'd say the hands are worth about the 39 cents I paid, if you paid the full 50 cent cover price you might want your money back.

Superman #400 [1984]

A comment to one of the recent Legion posts mentioned that Ditko drawing Superboy in a few of those stories (a flashback in one, a more major role in another) was among the few times that he really got to draw one of the major players in the DC Universe. For the most part his work at DC was confined to characters he created (Creeper, Hawk&Dove, Stalker, Shade, Starman), non-series short sci-fi/fantasy stories and more obscure DC characters (Etrigan, Man-Bat (with a Batman cameo), the Legion, Black Lightning, the Spectre (heavily inked)). He did draw one short Green Lantern chapter of a larger story, but apparently Wonder Woman doesn't even appear on the pages of a Wonder Woman story he drew.

(there is some unpublished stuff, too. A New Gods back-up story, a Green Lantern image I saw once I think intended for a colouring book, a great Plastic Man image that might have been intended for WHO'S WHO)

But the best was this pin-up from SUPERMAN #400. An odd but brilliant issue celebrating the milestone by having a lot of artists not usually associated with Superman drawing stories of his legend through the future, interspersed with various pin-ups. Ditko's page may be the highlight of the issue for me (and there's some great stuff in here, including Will Eisner, Jack Davis, Jerry Robinson, Al Williamson, Jack Kirby and more). Ditko seamlessly integrates the type of images that he used in his own work like Mr. A and Avenging World, iconographic conflicts between savagery and civilization, oppression and freedom, and combines them with a great image of Superman standing as a barrier defending free people from the forces of evil. It works perfectly, both as as Superman image and a Ditko image. Makes you wonder what he would have done with the character if allowed to cut loose for a full story (his take on Batman would be interesting too. I'm sorry that when DC was doing their "Batman Black and White" mini-series then back-ups that they didn't get Ditko to do one).

--Link-- LSH blog on Ditko's Legion

My recent posts on some of Ditko's circa 1980 fill-in work on LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES has inspired some comments on that era from The Legion Omnicom, a blog devoted to all things LSH. Suffice to say that the view that Ditko hit an unfortunate nadir in LSH history is far from a minority opinion.