New Ditko - DITKOMANIA #76 available

DITKOMANIA #76 is now available from Rob Imes, with a focus on 1960s Marvel. Ordering details over here.

Rob also has back-issues of the fanzine since he restarted it last year, and second printings of 17 of the 63 issues of the original run published by Bill Hall, perfect for the holiday season.

Unusual Tales - Storm's Warning

"Unusual Tales", a series presenting Steve Ditko's comics from 1957 to 1959 that are in the public domain.

As I mentioned recently, one of the first recurring features that Ditko drew more than one story for was for the BLACK FURY series from Charlton.  Right around the same time he also did several stories for a very similar series, ROCKY LANE'S BLACK JACK.  Allan "Rocky" Lane was a prolific western actor of the era, including a long series of films where he actually played a character named Rocky Lane.  That must have been a stretch...  The films also launched a long-running comic book, first from Fawcett and then picked up by Charlton.  It must have done well for them, as Charlton launched a spin-off featuring Rocky Lane's horse, Black Jack, in his solo adventures, and Ditko drew several stories for that series, some featuring Black Jack and some generic horse-focused westerns.

ROCKY LANE'S BLACK JACK #25 [1958] includes the 5-page Black Jack story "Storm's Warning", which shows that the horse has some very useful weather forecasting abilities, and keeps quite busy with a young friend when not working with Rocky.  A cute little story, I especially like the lightning storm on the first page.


But before you get to the story, some links to check out:Buy Ditko's creator-owned work
Many great comics, catch up now
Find out about the fanzine DITKOMANIA
#76 now available
Check out new and upcoming Ditko publications
Creeper creeping closer
Download public domain comics, likely including the one this story is from
Scans in this series generally adapted to my personal tastes from those copies

Click images to cowboy size

 

 

Black Magic #47 [v8n2] [1961]

Here's an interesting anomaly. As most people know, following a few scattered stories when he began working in comics, most of Ditko's work in comics from early 1954 to early 1966 was for Charlton and Marvel.  One of the exceptions to this was "The Black Fog", a single 6-page story late in the run of BLACK MAGIC.

Ditko had drawn three stories for the series early in his career. The series continued until #50 in 1961, with several long publication gaps along the way.  I'm almost certain this particular story was drawn well before its publication, but also does not date from the 1953 era of Ditko's previous BLACK MAGIC stories.  From the style I think I'd place it around 1957, which might be a clue to its origin, but I'd be curious what other people think.

Anyway, "The Black Fog" is a story about a man who is plagued by dreams of darkness, death and falling. He gets a pill from his friend that's supposed to keep him awake for 24 hours to stop the dreams, and if that sounds like a bad prescription to you, well, there's a good reason for that.

Whatever the story behind the story, it's a well drawn effort from Ditko, who does a good job with the nightmare sequences, with the smokey blackness enveloping the character and the robed figure of  Death.  There are a few stray panels that seem off, maybe re-drawn by someone else during whatever path saw this story published when it was, but that's a minor thing compared to the strengths of the story.

Unusual Tales - Forever And Ever

"Unusual Tales", a series presenting Steve Ditko's comics from 1957 to 1959 that are in the public domain.

"Forever And Ever" from Charlton's STRANGE SUSPENSE STORIES #33 [1957] is a 6-page story by Ditko, and I think anyone even semi-knowledgeable about comic book history will look at the image to the right and think one thing:  Will Eisner.

There are a lot of hints of an Eisner influence in Ditko's early work, but I don't think I've ever seen it more clearly than in the art for this story.  It's perhaps not a coincidence that elements of the plot in this story would also fit in well with Eisner's Spirit stories.  A hobo straight out of Eisner central casting tells the story of a stranger he met on the road, who told an unbelievable story about being 400 years old, as a result of a formula he took as the apprentice of  an Italian alchemist centuries ago which granted immortality, but with a curse.  A very enjoyable story, definitely a notch above the standard for these tales, with very good art by Ditko, very distinctively his work of the era even with the influences showing through.

Some links to check out:
Buy Ditko's creator-owned work
News on upcoming releases expected soon
Find out about the fanzine DITKOMANIA
Lots of great reading in those back issues, stock up now
Check out new and upcoming Ditko publications
Brand new essay on-line now
Download public domain comics, likely including the one this story is from
scans in this series generally adapted to my personal tastes from those copies, plus, did you know, there are actually comics done by people other than Ditko?  I know, it surprised me, too!

Click images to enjoy the full-sized sequential art

 

Unusual Tales - The Perfect Forecaster

"Unusual Tales", a series presenting Steve Ditko's comics from 1957 to 1959 that are in the public domain.

"The Perfect Forecaster" is a 5-page story from Charlton's OUT OF THIS WORLD #10 [1958].  It's one of the less interesting stories from that era, about a man who calls in to a meteorologist with accurate predictions of the weather, claiming the information comes from a "weatherscope".  Apparently he can also predict irrational greedy behaviour from people at the weather bureau.


There's no real strong visual hook to give Ditko's design skills a chance to come through, but the characters look pretty good, especially the young girl Dorothy.

Some links to check out:
Buy Ditko's creator-owned work
MR. A. now available
Find out about the fanzine DITKOMANIA
New issue out soon
Check out new and upcoming Ditko publications
Pet Avengers, eh?
Download public domain comics, likely including the one this story is from
(scans in this series generally adapted to my personal tastes from those copies)

Click images to big-up.

New Ditko --Link-- The Ever Unreachable

Batton Lash has previously posted some reprints of a Ditko essay and a Ditko comic over on his blog on Big Hollywood. Now, he's posted an original Ditko work, "The Ever Unreachable", an essay in 90 bite sized and numbered chunks.

76.  The hero acts on principle, not on short-term, pragmatic expediency. He is dedicated to the realization that the fraud and fakes have no human value and that only the actually earned and deserved are truly human.

[note links removed, no longer active]

Charlton Premiere #4 [1968]

"The Time Machine" is a neat little 7-page time travel story with art by Ditko. The title page is a really great image of a ship going through time, shown as a tunnel with slices of various times going from the far future back into history.  It starts in the very advanced looking 2037 A.D., and now that we're more than half-way there from when the story was published, I'm pretty confident we won't have those flying cars by then.  A young scientist is trying to get an elder one to help him develop his time travel theories, but the older man doesn't believe it's possible, and even if it is considers the consequences of changing the past too dangerous.  Evidently he grew up reading old Charlton comics...

The kid doesn't buy it, and throws himself into his research with renewed vigor, perfecting his invention with a minimum of design work.  Seriously, the thing looks like a giant bullet.  It works, though, and he decides to go check out the cavemen.  Oddly, we're taken back to the past by a previously unseen narrator, a guy in a green hooded robe.  Not sure what his name is.  Anyway, he introduces us to a particular caveman who's destined to be the ancestor of half of humanity.  Well, until his hunger leads him to the wrong place and he gets killed by a time machine.  Fortunately for humanity, the rules of time travel in this particular reality aren't the same as that old comic.

A nice little story, although some of the narration is a bit too cute, trying a bit too hard.  In addition to that great time tunnel image, Ditko's version of savagery (something he uses in a lot of his independent work as well) is always a treat.

According to an intereview in ALTER EGO, Steve Skeates wrote this story.

Unusual Tales - Stranger In The Herd

"Unusual Tales", a series presenting Steve Ditko's comics from 1957 to 1959 that are in the public domain.

Prior to 1960, when the first Captain Atom and Konga stories appeared, the vast majority of Ditko's work was for one-shot stories, with no recurring characters (other than the interchangeable hosts/narrators for some stories).  Even when he did do recurring characters, he usually only did one story in a pre-existing feature (like Radio Patrol or Robin Hood [coming later]).

The main exceptions to that in Ditko's first decade are a pair of very similar horses...

BLACK FURY was a long-running western for Charlton, featuring a wild horse that roamed around the old west, protecting his herd.  Ditko did a few stories in three consecutive issues, BLACK FURY #17 [1959] is the middle of those issues and opens up with the 5-page "Stranger In The Herd", which you can see below.  Not too much to say about it, Ditko does a good job with the horses and overall setting, and page three has an interesting look where it drops out the panel borders.

More on Ditko's other regular horse soon.

Some links to check out:
Buy Ditko's creator-owned work

New stuff coming out at a steady clip
Check out the fanzine DITKOMANIA
I'm sure the horses will get mentioned if that Ditko's animals theme issue gets done
Check out new and upcoming Ditko publications
Some Marvel stories from this era in the Tales to Astonish/Tales of Suspense hardcovers
Download public domain comics, likely including the one this story is from
scans in this series generally adapted to my personal tastes from those copies

Click images to big-up.