Review: Strange and Stranger, The World of Steve Ditko

Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko
Written by Blake Bell
Published by Fantagraphics Books. $39.99 USD

Steve Ditko was one of my earliest artistic heroes, and one of the first artistic styles I recognized. While I started reading comics in the mid-'70s, after Ditko had left Marvel Comics, his was still one of the first versions of Spider-Man I encountered, as I had the Pocket Books collections of his and Stan Lee's first 18 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. Although I had yet to experience adolescence and all its awkwardness and self-doubt and horrible transformations, I was still plenty awkward and picked-on with my glasses and overbite, so I immediately identified with Peter Parker as depicted by Ditko. Not long after, I found a collection of John Romita, Sr.'s take on the character, which, while "an abomination" to author Bell for its abrupt changing of the status quo so that Peter Parker was now an accepted part of the gang, it was actually a source of comfort for me. It meant that no matter how out-of-place I felt at the time, things might just get better, at least in short bursts, as they did for Peter.

There was no such escape for Steve Ditko. A shy man of strict principles only made more rigid by his increasing identification with the Objectivist philosophy of Atlas Shrugged author Ayn Rand, Ditko was an iconoclast auteur in the comics industry, an industry built on compromise and downright exploitation, where there were few auteurs and the publishers and packagers held the power, the creators largely nameless and interchangeable.

Despite the conditions Ditko was working under in the '50s and '60s, he produced a mountain of dynamic, idiosyncratic work. For Charlton Comics he enjoyed above average creative freedom for below average pay, the volume he had to produce to make a living resulting in quickly refined work of high quality. For Timely/Marvel Comics, he got into a groove with science fiction stories scripted by Stan Lee, and then the two created the characters for which Ditko is most known: Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. For the latter, the straitlaced Ditko became a counterculture hero for the bizarre dimensions he depicted. When Steve Ditko left Marvel, his relationship with Stan Lee no longer tolerable, he left behind a body of work that would have justified a biography if he never drew another page.

But Ditko has become more legendary for being the man who walked away from the fame and fortune his creations would have brought him if he had been more willing to compromise, to play the game. Bell presents as much of Ditko's story as he or probably anyone is able. Ditko is notoriously reclusive, though unlike other legendary creative hermits like J.D. Salinger, Ditko has been quick to address any wrongs or slanders he feels have been perpetrated against him, through essays and letters to editors. This makes a biography a daunting task, and one feels for Bell, who had to know that no matter how respectful he was in his book towards Ditko, it was almost certain that Ditko wouldn't be happy with the result. In fact, it seems Ditko took umbrage at the title and cover of the book before even seeing a draft.

But make no mistake, Bell's work here is of impeccable scholarship and intellectual integrity. There is no dirt on Ditko here; the short section on Ditko sharing a studio and collaborating in the late '50s to late '60s with noted fetish artist Eric Stanton is only presented because it, like everything else covered here, was part of Ditko's career, and it's one of the few examples of the upright Ditko ever lying about anything, in this case his complete denial of being involved in inking Stanton's work on some mildly racy bondage comics that bear his unmistakable inking style.

The book surges along on the strength of the carefully selected Ditko artwork, much of it I'd never seen before from his pre-Marvel days and his beautiful wash and charcoal efforts for Warren's Creepy and Eerie magazines and the Charlton and DC heroes Ditko created like The Question, Captain Atom and Blue Beetle, but one knows there's not really a happy ending here. Well, to be more fair, no one really knows whether Ditko is happy or not living as he does. Aside from his vituperative missives he may be having a good time. What we know is that it's a life he chose. There is a parallel with the use of the Mr. A stories--a Randian vigilante who doesn't believe in forgiveness or rehabilitation--where Ditko's storytelling prowess deteriorates as he becomes more interested in preaching than in drawing a compelling yarn. The stiff figures and overcrowded word balloons are depressing; I had a similar experience reading some text-clogged Ivan Brunetti comics where it was clear emotional problems had caused him not to see how the comics were suffering. My first thought was to say that Bell pulls no punches in criticizing the late-period Ditko material, but in fact I think he does, a little, or at least mitigates the critical tone with digressions to highlight some minor late triumphs.

The Lee/Ditko Spider-Man work had a significant effect on the man I became, at least some of the good parts, and for that I'm grateful. I remembered in '89 or whenever it came out, I bought Ditko's Marvel series, Speedball, as a small way of showing that gratitude. It wasn't a good book, and that Ditko would draw '80s men walking around in suits and fedoras showed him to be hopelessly out of touch with everyday life, and yet it wasn't a great expense for me to buy it and there were some flashes of his old style there. But while I'm kind of pleased I did that, I also realize that as an adult one has to be true to oneself, and to uphold truth, despite the cost. It's unfortunate that Ditko is unable to recognize the service Bell has done him and his work with this thoughtful biography and analysis, but for Bell to present an incomplete or rosier picture would have been a crime worse than those committed by some of Mr. A's antagonists, and ironically, an example of the altruism Ditko so despises. A no-win situation for Bell as far his relationship with Ditko, but the book is definitely a winner.