With Spider-Man 3 around the corner (saw another trailer whilst seeing Ghost Rider this morning), thought I’d direct your attention, once again, to one of the very few creators left from Marvel’s original House of Ideas, one of my all time favs, Steve Ditko.
Last week, David Thompson posted an updated version of his interesting essay on Steve Ditko: The Paranormal Man, he first wrote for Bookmunch three years ago, mainly about the creator’s short-lived 1977 DC series Shade, The Changing Man.
The bonus for me, somebody who’s not nearly as steeped as Ditko lore (as are folks like Blake Bell), was that Thompson’s essay hit on most of the other Ditko “food groups,” namely Spider-Man, Dr. Strange and The Question/Mr. A, too. You’ll also get a kick reading about why Ditko, allegedly, left Spider-Man in the first place…
February 18th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
“Many of his later characters were little more than rhetorical conceits - vehicles for expounding the artist’s stark ruminations on crime and morality. With its inflexible absolutism, Ditko’s quasi-religious worldview jarred with the liberal relativism of the time.”
So, does this mean Speedball is now more Ditkoian(?) than he’s ever been?
February 19th, 2007 at 12:07 am
http://www.imwan.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1021
An archive of a pretty good article on Ditko written in 2002 (from, of all places, Wizard magazine)
February 19th, 2007 at 7:57 am
“So, does this mean Speedball is now more Ditkoian(?) than he’s ever been?”
No. No, it doesn’t.
February 19th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
There’s also a nice overview called ‘The Road to Spider-Man,’ in The Steve Ditko Reader vol 1.