Steve Ditko is old enough and has done enough for his chosen art form that he owes us nothing. On the other hand, although as a comix geek back in the 1970s I’d read about the acrimonious Ditko / Stan Lee creative breakup, I don’t remember hearing that Ditko was a full-metal Objectivist. Writers, as Joan Didion reminds us, are always selling someone out… so make your own judgement as to Abraham Reisman’s conclusions in his NYMag story. But Mr. Ditko does come off as a tragic example of the warning attributed to that Nietzsche fella about staring into the abyss:
For a recluse, Steve Ditko is surprisingly easy to locate. You won’t see him in public: Despite being one of the most important figures in comics history, the most recent published photograph of the 89-year-old was taken about 50 years ago. And though his name appears prominently as “co-creator” in the credits of Marvel Studios’ Doctor Strange — which has already grossed more than $490 million worldwide — he has never been on a red carpet, or appeared on TV or radio. But if you ask within the comics community, you can readily find the location and phone number of his Manhattan studio. The man’s around. It’s putting that contact information to good use that’s difficult.
Ditko hasn’t done an interview with a journalist since 1968, two years after he shocked comics fandom by leaving Marvel in a move for which he offered no explanation — even to his boss, Stan Lee, with whom he created Doctor Strange and Spider-Man, among other classic characters. What followed has been an idiosyncratic crusade that has consumed Ditko’s capacious imagination: the creation of spite-filled, didactic, and often baffling comics and essays that evangelize the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Ditko has long been principled in a way few popular artists are, and he changed the comics medium twice: first with his elegant, kinetic, at times psychedelic artwork; then by being the first high-profile creator to inject serious philosophical arguments into superhero comics. His influence is staggering, but his personal story is almost totally hidden. He remains one of pop culture’s most enigmatic figures…
Lee was both EIC and writer for nearly all of his company’s titles, and over time he came up with an innovative technique for crafting comics, something that came to be known as the Marvel method: He would give an artist a synopsis of a story; the artist would flesh it out by devising a plot and drawing its pages; Lee would get the pages and, sometimes incorporating suggestions from the artist, write the dialogue and narration. If an artist was as gifted a storyteller as Ditko or Kirby, the method allowed them to tailor narratives to their strengths, unleashing comics of remarkable power. Even so, the credits pages only listed them as artists.
It was through that workflow that Lee and Ditko co-created Spider-Man in 1962, just a few months after Lee and Kirby had reignited interest in superheroes by co-creating the Fantastic Four. Historians generally agree that the idea for Spidey originated with Lee, who has variously claimed that he was inspired by seeing a spider on a wall or remembering a pulp hero called the Spider. He also thought it would be interesting to have this new character be a teenager, an age group previously reserved for sidekick roles. Kirby drew five pages of a Spider-Man story that historians believe depicted a kid who used a magic ring to become a spider-themed hero, though the whereabouts of those sketches are unknown. Lee decided Kirby’s hero looked too beefy and conventional, and opted to give the project over to Ditko…
“Steve’s Doctor Strange material demonstrated what was, at the time, an absolutely unique ability to visualize worlds that had no apparent laws of physics yet seemed to have internal consistency,” says comics historian Paul Levitz. College students and psychonauts loved Strange — in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe revealed that Ken Kesey and his cohort were obsessed with the character. Ironically, Ditko could not have been more unlike those sorts of readers. By all accounts, he had no interest in countercultural movements or altered states. Instead, fans of Ditko’s work on The Amazing Spider-Man and Strange Tales might have been shocked to learn that he had become a student of one of the 20th century’s most polarizing, conservative ideologies: Objectivism…
Ditko and Lee had always held differing views on what made Spider-Man great. For Lee, it was Peter’s vulnerability, his buoyant sense of humor, and his goodwill toward people; for Ditko, it was his journey toward becoming a Randian Übermensch. As the story went on, their differences became more pronounced and their relationship frayed. Ditko pushed to have the flashy, exaggeration-prone Lee give him more control over Spider-Man plots; after that was granted, Lee bashed one of the new stories in his own letters pages, writing, “A lot of readers are sure to hate it, so if you want to know what all the criticism is about, be sure to buy a copy!” Ditko demanded plotting credit in the title pages for Spider-Man and Strange Tales; Lee gave it to him, then derisively told a reporter, “Ditko thinks he’s the genius of the world.”…
If Ditko were a different sort of man, he could have easily turned his 1966 Marvel walkout into a cause célèbre. He might have framed his departure as a stand for the rights of fellow artists who were similarly disrespected by their employers; it could have been a pursuit of, indeed, justice. But Ditko wasn’t interested. “He only railed for himself — not for anyone else, because that would be un-Randian,” says comics publisher Gary Groth, who had his own rocky partnership with Ditko in the late ’90s. “A lot of artists thought the arrangement of the comics business as it existed then was fundamentally unfair. He didn’t. He stood up for himself when he thought he was being unfairly treated.”
Instead, Ditko retreated into his own work and philosophical soapboxing. A year after his departure from Marvel, he debuted two vigilante crime-fighters who were, more or less, Randian wet dreams. One was Charlton Comics’ the Question, a suit-and-tie-wearing bruiser whose head was adorned with a fedora and an eerie mask that made it look as though he had no face. (The Question later served as the inspiration for the character of Rorschach in Alan Moore’s Watchmen.) He patrolled the streets for ne’er-do-wells, spouting Objectivist rhetoric at them or, if they got violent, just beating the shit out of them.
The other character, who first appeared in an indie magazine called witzend, was even closer to Ditko’s heart: Mr. A. His name came from a passage in Atlas Shrugged about “the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A.” It’s an idea about the binary nature of everything in existence. Something is always something, and it is never another thing. Red is red, red is never blue. Heroism is heroism, heroism is never villainy. If you lose sight of the fact that A is A, you become poisoned by unreason — there is no gray area. Mr. A preaches that philosophy with his words and his fists, wearing a metal mask while remorselessly murdering those who violate Objectivist ethics. “To have any sympathy for a killer is an insult to their victims,” Mr. A says after overseeing the death of a teenage hoodlum in his 1967 debut. “I don’t abuse my emotions!” That kind of brutal morality was revolutionary for comics, a purer expression of philosophy than anything published before…
As time went on, Ditko became increasingly volatile, even on work where he had creative control. Groth formed a decades-long friendship with Ditko and launched a series featuring his stories in 1997, but when the cover of one of the issues wasn’t colored to Ditko’s specifications, the artist became furious. Groth apologized and asked what he could do to make it up to him. “He said, ‘You can’t do anything. You’ve already made the mistake,’” Groth recalls. “Nothing could make him happy, because it was a transgression and there was no making up for it. I had crossed a Ditkovian line.” A few years later, when Groth agreed to publish Bell’s biography, Ditko told Groth over the phone that he was a “parasite” and ceased all communications…
Steeplejack (phone)
Aficionado.
(Feel free to delete.)
TaMara (HFG)
Before I head off, here’s a cute photo of Bixby and Bailey snoozing together… in case you need something sweet to close out your night.
Steeplejack (phone)
Ditko did great work on Doctor Strange and Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD. One of the great things in my youth was buying those comics when they were completely new and completely fresh. Good times.
NotMax
Ditko as Randian acolyte and proselytizer has been well-known and documented for many decades.
There are some minor errors of record in the article (primarily relating to Kirby) but on the whole not off the beam.
NotMax
Oh, just remembered an unexpected appearance of Ditko art. He penciled a single issue of Rom in the 80s during its Marvel run.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Ditko and Bobby Fischer were two of my heroes when I was a kid in the late 60s-early 70s, and both of them were eaten up by culto-political insanity.
Fortunately there were other heroes to help steer me away from that bullshit. Lee, Vonnegut, Ellison, Dylan, and so forth.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: And I’m sure he’s just thrilled when DC made Renee Montoya the Question. Female, Hispanic, and lesbian:
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lky6hfmorX1qbujox.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/13/91/c3/1391c37323e2d754d59e14466d90764e.jpg
And I’m a big fan of Montoya as the The Question. My other favorite was the animated version in Justice League Unlimited voiced by Jeffrey Combs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRU4iZUsTY0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gh3fdkF0yo
Adam L Silverman
@TaMara (HFG): “I’m sorry Ma’am, you’ll have to get your own puppy. This one is mine!”
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Sorry. Not even putting him up against Steve Ditko can make me have the slightest sympathy for Gary Groth.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@TaMara (HFG): So, Bailey wasn’t so much eating the couch as just making it more comfortable?
SFBayAreaGal
@Adam L Silverman: Jeffrey Combs played my favorite character in Enterprise, Commander Shran. He also played Weyoun in my favorite Star Trek series Deep Space Nine.
Jacel
@NotMax: Actually Ditko pencilled quite a few issues of ROM: Spaceknight during the last several years of that title. I recall there being a succession of prominent inkers, each eager to have a chance to work with Ditko’s art. P. Craig Russell’s inks on Ditko were the most memorable, as I recall. In his later Marvel career, Ditko co-created Squirrel Girl. Yes, Squirrel Girl.
Villago Delenda Est
Randites…all of the, even a creative genius such as Ditko…are essentially dead to me, because they revere a woman who put forth a remorseless child killer as her “ideal man”.
This is the very reason I can’t stand these people; they do not have the ability to cope with reality, and this sums up why.
Villago Delenda Est
@SFBayAreaGal: AND he played Brunt. He made Trek history by appearing first in one scene as Brunt, and then in the next as Weyoun. Same actor, two totally different characters. The man is versatile and talented, and isn’t employed enough by Hollywood, IMHO.
GregB
I knew you all were geeks. ?
Aleta
@TaMara (HFG): oh jeez. Those two.
Calming Influence
@TaMara (HFG):Thanks, that’s just what I needed.
M. Bouffant
A take from a pro in the field.
M. Bouffant
@Steeplejack (phone): You may be thinking of Steranko’s ground-breaking yada “S.H.I.E.L.D.” work. Dr. Strange & Nick Fury just shared Strange Tales for a while.
Minstrel Michael
Once upon a time I got to see an exhibit of the ukiyo-e (woodblock print) art of Hiroshige, including a complete set of the Journey from Edo series. As I went through I realized that there was something about the art– the weird perspective, the peculiar backgrounds– that I’d seen before in a completely different context. And what it was was old Doctor Strange! Whenever he’d left the “real” world and traveled through the parallel dimensions of magic (and I can’t even remember what Ditko called that alternate reality), there would be these luminous clouds and bulbous geological features from Hiroshige– plus of course some magical accoutrements that were Ditko’s own, like the intertwined ribbon-highways. (How does that stuff look in the movie?)
Jeffro
it’s funny – I’m pretty sure my first exposure to Ditko’s work was an issue of DAREDEVIL that had a crazy not-all-that-bad bad guy named Madcap.
Steeplejack (phone)
@M. Bouffant:
You’re right! Jim Steranko did the beautiful, trippy Nick Fury stuff I’m thinking of.
Johannes
Dr. Strange was my favorite as a kid, and really still is. Ditko’s aesthetic was a key part of that. But the character himself was better developed after Ditko’s departure–by Englehart and Brunner, by Roy Thomas, by Marie Severin, just to name a few, all developing the good Doctor along Lee’s lines.
bmoak
In the late 70s/early 80s, there was a movement to pressure Marvel to return its huge stockpile of original art pages to the artists that created them (“Give Jack his artwork back!”). The growth of fandoms and conventions had proven that those pages could actually sell for a good chunk of change and low-level Marvel staffers would smuggle those pages out of storage and sell them under the table.
When the artists got their pages back, Ditko destroyed most of his, saying that he was already paid for that work and it would be immoral to further profit from it.
geg6
Comic book people and fans are very weird. I will never understand either. It is like encountering aliens.
winnief
Peter Parker as Randian ubermensch in the making…
Oooooooookkkkaaayyy.
His art was fantastic but he did not get characters
Chris
It’s kind of sad that this was an original take on Spiderman, since the entire appeal of the character even beyond Marvel nerds is that he’s “just a regular guy who fell backwards into some powers” (in contrast to Batman the billionaire royalty and Superman the godlike messiah-figure) and has a guilt complex that causes him to help everyone he can, at his own expense.
Ayn Rand would’ve been disgusted by the character. She’d have found him weak and common and unfit for the great gifts he had.
Sasha
Ditko’s Mr. A (and Objectivist superhero who inspired the Question) is a fascinating creature.
Chris
@geg6:
I have been known to say before that listening to people inside the Fox News bubble go on excitedly about politics as portrayed in their own bizarro universe… gives me some idea what conversations between myself and other Star Wars expanded universe nerds looks like to an outsider.
some guy
Gary Groth has done more for the comics medium than Ditko ever has, can, or will.
clay
@Chris: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Even the tagline of Spidey’s very first appearance violates Randian principles. Ditko may not have been a full Randroid at the time, though.
The Moar You Know
The best service this so-called artist has ever done to society was by withdrawing from it.
Zeppo Manx
In case it hasn’t been posted yet, there is an interesting documentary about Ditko on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfxVO0fLHvA
A BBC show with Jonathan Ross and Neil Gaiman.
kindness
Well….Ditko sure seems nice…..
Citizen_X
Ayn Rand would have thought gentle Uncle Ben was a sap who didn’t take responsibility for his own self-defense.
Citizen_X
Well, that certainly describes Objectivism!
Hungry Joe
My take on comics is like my take on opera, hockey, and stamp collecting: There must be a lot of smart, interesting stuff going on because so many smart, interesting people are into it, but somehow it passes me by.
John M. Burt
Peter Parker originally created the identity of Spider-Man not to help people but simply to make a buck, and failed to capture the robber who later killed his Uncle Ben solely because he saw no profit for himself in doing so. IOW, he was well on his way to becoming someone Rand would admire when he took a side trip into altruism.
There was even a “what if” story in the 1980s in which Spidey decided to stop that robber in order to get his name in the papers one more time, and he went on to become a Hollywood celebrity, with the sort of disastrous results for himself and the world that you might expect.
As a writer for our local alternative weekly, I recently interviewed my former high school classmate Kevin Loomis, who played George M. Cohan in our school’s Bicentennial production of George M! and more recently played Uncle Ben on Broadway.
If you were unwise enough to watch any of the Atlas Shrugged movies, you might have recognized the shadowy figure of John Galt as a Ditko character. I watched part of one, mainly because I was interested in what the train would look like, but it was John Galt on the doorstep that I liked best.