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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Page
The following is a list of Frequently Asked Questions about Steve Ditko. Many people have questions about the facts involving Ditko's career (who did what, where, and when) as well as personal questions (including ones that are really none of their business). I have listed many of the oft-repeated questions below, as well as a few that I have added to share interesting facts that may not be well known. Hopefully this FAQ list will help counter some misconceptions about the man that have been floating around for years. I have attempted to be objective and fair in addressing each topic, providing quotes and links in my attempt to accurately reflect the truth.
This FAQ page was first created by me in early 2014, four years before Steve Ditko passed away. (In fact I mailed Ditko a print-out of the entire page in May 2014, to which he replied.) During that time, some websites referenced in the text have disappeared (most notably the informative "Ditko Fever" website), so I have attempted to remove or replace inactive links in this latest update (the first update to this page since January 2018). My thanks to Nick Caputo, Patrick Ford, Brian Franczak, Bob Heer and Gene Kehoe for their help in compiling information for this page. If you have a question that you would like to see added to this list, please feel free to ask the question at the “Ditkomania” Facebook group (which I moderate) or email me. Thanks!
1.) WHO IS STEVE DITKO?
2.) DID STEVE DITKO CREATE SPIDER-MAN?
3.) IS IT TRUE THAT JACK KIRBY HELPED TO CREATE SPIDER-MAN?
4.) IS IT TRUE THAT JOE SIMON HELPED TO CREATE SPIDER-MAN?
5.) DO THE REJECTED KIRBY "SPIDER-MAN" PAGES STILL EXIST?
6.) WHO CREATED DOCTOR STRANGE?
7.) WAS IT DITKO'S IDEA TO HAVE A CHARACTER BOX ON MARVEL'S
COVERS?
8.) WHAT IS THE "MARVEL METHOD"?
9.) DID LEE AND DITKO ARGUE ABOUT STORYLINES?
10.) DID DITKO STOP SPEAKING TO STAN LEE DURING THE 1960s?
11.) IS IT TRUE THAT DITKO WANTED SOMEONE OTHER THAN
NORMAN OSBORN TO BE REVEALED AS THE GREEN GOBLIN?
12.) WHEN DID DITKO STOP DRAWING SPIDER-MAN?
13.) WHY DID DITKO STOP DRAWING SPIDER-MAN?
14.) DID DITKO EVER DRAW SPIDER-MAN AGAIN?
15.) WHERE DID DITKO GO AFTER LEAVING AMAZING SPIDER-MAN?
16.) WHAT WAS THE LAST CHARLTON COMIC THAT DITKO DREW?
17.) WHAT IS OBJECTIVISM? WHO IS AYN RAND?
AND WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH STEVE DITKO?
18.) WAS AYN RAND AWARE OF DITKO? DID THEY EVER MEET?
19.) WHO IS MR. A.?
20.) WHAT IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN DITKO'S MR. A. AND
WATCHMEN'S RORSCHACH?
21.) WHAT WAS DITKO'S MOST RECENT COMIC FOR MARVEL?
22.) WHAT WAS DITKO'S MOST RECENT COMIC FOR DC?
23.) IS IT TRUE THAT DITKO DREW A "BIG BOY" COMIC?
A "TINY TOONS" COMIC? A "TRANSFORMERS" COLORING BOOK?
24.) IS THERE A CHECKLIST AVAILABLE THAT LISTS EVERY STEVE DITKO COMIC PUBLISHED?
25.) I'VE SEEN OLD RISQUÉ COMICS THAT WERE SIGNED "STANTON" BUT THEY
LOOKED LIKE THEY WERE DRAWN BY DITKO. DID DITKO DRAW THEM?
26.) DID ERIC STANTON CONTRIBUTE TO THE CREATION OF SPIDER-MAN?
27.) I HEARD THAT DITKO WAS SENT A LOT OF MONEY FOR THE FIRST
SPIDER-MAN MOVIE, BUT HE SENT THE CHECK BACK. IS THIS TRUE?
28.) DID DITKO RECEIVE PAYMENT/ROYALTIES FOR HIS PAST WORK?
29.) I'VE HEARD THAT DITKO CUT UP HIS ORIGINAL ARTWORK. IS THIS TRUE?
30.) HOW MUCH OF DITKO'S ORIGINAL ART DID HE RECEIVE BACK FROM MARVEL?
31.) WHO DONATED THE ORIGINAL ART OF AMAZING FANTASY #15
TO THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS?
32.) DID DITKO EVER ATTEND A COMICS CONVENTION?
33.) HAS STEVE DITKO EVER BEEN INTERVIEWED?
34.) WHY DIDN'T DITKO GIVE INTERVIEWS?
(OR, ATTEND CONVENTIONS; OR, HAVE HIS PHOTO TAKEN)?
35.) I SAW A VIDEO THAT HAD DITKO'S VOICE TALKING. WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?
36.) WHAT DID STEVE DITKO LOOK LIKE?
37.) DID DITKO HAVE CHILDREN? WAS HE MARRIED?
38.) WHERE DID STEVE DITKO LIVE?
39.) DID DITKO DO ART COMMISSIONS?
40.) DID DITKO REPLY TO LETTERS FROM FANS?
41.) DID DITKO AUTOGRAPH COMICS FOR FANS?
42.) WHAT IS DITKO DOING TODAY? IS HE STILL DRAWING COMICS?
1.) WHO IS STEVE DITKO?
Steve Ditko was a comics creator who had worked in the industry since 1953. He was born on November 2, 1927 and died in late June 2018. Best-known as the original artist on Amazing Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, Ditko created or co-created many other comics characters. In The Comic Reader #45 (Oct. 1965), Ditko himself provided a brief summary of his comics career up to that point, which you can read here. For a general overview of Ditko's career, see the Wikipedia entry for him.
2.) DID STEVE DITKO CREATE SPIDER-MAN?
Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Therefore, Ditko is the co-creator of Spider-Man. Both Lee and Ditko have written about the background of the character's creation. In the 1974 book Origins of Marvel Comics Lee wrote that he was inspired by the name of the pulp magazine The Spider to come up with the name Spider-Man. According to Lee, Marvel publisher Martin Goodman was not enthusiastic about the idea but agreed to allow the character to appear in a series scheduled for cancellation anyway: Amazing Fantasy. (The issue in which Spider-Man debuted, #15, gave no suggestion that the title would be cancelled, only that the format had changed. The issue's editorial text page promises that Spider-Man "will appear every month" in the series. See Will Murray's article "Amazing Fantasy No. 16" (from CBM #44, Feb. 1997) about what future issues might have contained.) Jack Kirby would be drawing the first story, while Steve Ditko would be inking it. "When I saw the first few pages that Jack had drawn," Stan wrote, "I realized we had a problem." Stan claimed that Kirby's interpretation of the character was too glamorous-looking and so "I asked Steve to draw Spider-Man. And he did. And the rest is history." As a result of Spider-Man's growing popularity, Lee has become the subject of media coverage, and in the popular press he almost always was called (or called himself) Spider-Man's creator (not "co-creator"). For example, a 1977 article by Lee titled "How I Invented Spider-Man" mentions Ditko in only one paragraph (of seven sentences) on page 3.
By 1990, Ditko had begun writing more about the topic of creator credits and presenting his knowledge of events. After a Time magazine piece (Nov. 16, 1998) had referred to Lee as Spider-Man's creator, Ditko wrote a letter [subscription required] to the magazine which appeared in the Dec. 7th issue. Ditko noted that because of his visual contribution to the character's creation, Spider-Man "was a collaboration of writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko as co-creators." On August 18, 1999, Stan Lee issued a statement, addressed "To Whom It May Concern", stating "I have always considered Steve Ditko to be Spider-Man's co-creator." Lee went on to praise Ditko's creation of Spider-Man's costume as "an actual masterpiece of imagination." In The 32-Page TSK! TSK! Package (2000) and The Avenging Mind (2008), Ditko responded to Lee's statement, noticing that Lee's giving of credit is often undercut by subsequent statements or the wiggle-room allowed by the words that he uses to make his admission, such as the word "consider." In the latter book, Ditko asks "What is needed to be considered, pondered, and for how long? The issue is: Either Steve Ditko is the co-creator of Spider-Man or Steve Ditko is not the co-creator of Spider-Man. A is A or A is not A. .... Is it so difficult for Lee to admit, write, 'Steve Ditko co-created Spider-Man with me'?"
Ditko's observation that Lee appeared reluctant to share creator status was substantiated by a revealing interview with Jonathan Ross in 2007 where Lee hedged on the co-creator credit. "I'm willing to say so," Lee said at first, until backtracking with the admission that he still believes that the person who came up with the initial idea is the creator, "and then you give it to anybody to draw it." Lee has admitted that he usually left the design of the costumes to the artists to create, and Ditko confirmed his creation of the Spider-Man costume in The Avenging World (2008), where he recalled his thought process in its creation. "Lee had nothing to do with the S-M [Spider-Man] costume," Ditko wrote. (In 2014, Ditko dismissed one fan's suggestion that the costume was inspired by a 1954 Halloween costume.)
Between 2001 and 2003, Ditko wrote a 14-part series titled "A Mini-History" (plus a preface titled "Some Background" and an epilogue titled "Wind-up") discussing for the first time some of the background behind the making of those early Spider-Man stories. It's clear that even from the earliest issues (in fact, even from the first story) that without Ditko's participation and contributions, Spider-Man would have been a very different character, if it could be said to have appeared at all.
3.) IS IT TRUE THAT JACK KIRBY HELPED TO CREATE SPIDER-MAN?
In the 1980s, Jack Kirby stated in a few interviews that he had created Spider-Man. (See, for example, The Comics Journal #134, Feb. 1990, pg. 82, where Kirby said "I created Spider-Man. We decided to give it to Steve Ditko. I drew the first Spider-Man cover. I created the character. I created the costume.") Ditko wrote an essay titled "Jack Kirby's Spider-Man" for Robin Snyder's History of the Comics, Vol. 1, #5 (May 1990) which addressed these claims. (Excerpts of Ditko's essay can be found here.) Ditko wrote that initially he was simply to be the inker of a "Spider-Man" story written by Lee and penciled by Kirby. (Ditko does not know for certain who suggested the name Spider-Man for the strip, whether it was Lee or Kirby.) When Lee told him the concept, of a teenager who gains powers through a magic ring, Ditko replied that it sounded like Joe Simon's The Fly for Archie Comics. Sometime later Ditko learned that Kirby would not be drawing the strip after all, and so Ditko would be both penciling and inking it.
Kirby had only penciled five pages, which Stan rejected, and the hero only appeared on the first page, in a costume similar in appearance to Ant-Man or Captain America. This was the "Spider-Man" costume that Kirby created, which was rejected and never published. "The other four pages showed a teenager living with his aunt and uncle," Ditko writes. "The aunt was a kindly old woman, the uncle was a retired police captain, hard, gruff, the General Thunderbolt Ross type (from The Hulk), and he was down on the teenager. Next door or somewhere in the neighborhood there was a whiskered scientist-type involved in some kind of experiment or project. The end of the five pages depicted the kid going toward the scientist's darkened house." Ditko states that this was the totality of Kirby's "Spider-Man" creation and that "almost all of the bits of this 'creation' (the scientist/magic ring, etc.) were discarded/never used." Ditko started completely from scratch, creating a new costume for the character (one that Kirby appeared to have difficulty in drawing correctly since it was so different from his own style).
The very first Spider-Man cover to be drawn (for Amazing Fantasy #15) was one that Ditko penciled and inked, but which was rejected by Lee. (Ditko's original cover can be viewed here). The published cover (penciled by Kirby and inked by Ditko) was drawn after Ditko's first version was rejected.
4.) IS IT TRUE THAT JOE SIMON HELPED TO CREATE SPIDER-MAN?
In early 1954, a new superhero called The Silver Spider was conceived by Joe Simon, who initially thought of naming the hero Spiderman (no hyphen) and had drawn up a logo with that rejected name. (Simon had realized that there were too many "___-Man" superheroes around and decided to call him the Silver Spider instead.) The Silver Spider was in reality a young boy named Tommy Troy who encountered a genie after polishing a ring, becoming an adult hero who (as drawn by C. C. Beck) resembled Captain Tootsie. The Steve Ditko Reader Volume One (Pure Imagination, 2002) contains two memos from February 1954 by Sid Jacobson to Leon Harvey concerning his rejection of the Silver Spider proposal. Interestingly, Jacobson's Feb. 23, 1954 memo contains many suggestions which, had they been pursued, would have led to more of a Spider-Man-like character than either the Silver Spider or The Fly ever were (e.g., "the silken threads that a spider would use might come from a special liquid, from some part of his costume, that could become silken threads in much the same way as the spider insect," etc.).
Simon shelved the Silver Spider until early 1959 when Archie Comics editor John Goldwater asked Simon to produce superhero comics for the company. Simon gave the Beck Silver Spider pages and unused Spiderman logo to Jack Kirby and asked him to redo the Tommy Troy story as a new hero, who became The Fly. When Ditko learned that Lee and Kirby were planning a superhero called Spider-Man, Ditko mentioned to Lee the similarity of the concept to Archie's comic The Fly, evidently prompting a change in plans for Marvel's "Spider-Man." (In 1983-84, Ditko would draw The Fly series for Red Circle/Archie Adventure, edited by Robin Snyder.)
5.) DO THE REJECTED JACK KIRBY "SPIDER-MAN" PAGES STILL EXIST?
If so, they have yet to be published anywhere. In a short essay at the back of The Hero Comics #29 (Autumn 2019), Ditko wrote: "Like Sinatra, I have a few regrets. ...I always regret I threw away Kirby's pages on his 'creation' of Spider-Man. I could have, should have, had the pages photostatted." A Kirby drawing purporting to be his original Spiderman figure occasionally pops up online, but it is actually a fake. Jim Shooter has claimed to have seen a presentation page (not the 5-page story that Ditko mentions) of Kirby's version at Marvel back in 1969. In a comment on his site (on another thread), Shooter elaborated: "I never saw any Spider-Man story pages by Jack and as far as I know there were never any story pages done by Jack. What I saw was one art board that had a sketch of Jack's take on Spider-Man and some notes. The version he drew looked nothing like Ditko's version. I remember he had a 'web gun.' I believe he also had boots like Captain America. The notes described a character far different from the Lee/Ditko character. I saw this page once for under a minute 42 years ago. I don't remember it with crystal clarity." Pages of the unpublished 1954 Silver Spider comic, written by Jack Oleck and drawn by C. C. Beck, do survive but they bear no resemblance to Marvel's Spider-Man.
6.) WHO CREATED DOCTOR STRANGE?
In The Comic Reader #16 (Feb. 23, 1963), a letter by Stan Lee was published, where he wrote: "Well, we have a new character in the works for Strange Tales, just a 5-page filler named Dr. Strange. Steve Ditko is gonna draw him. It has sort of a black magic theme. The first story is nothing great, but perhaps we can make something of him. 'Twas Steve's idea. I figured we'd give it a chance, although again, we had to rush the first one too much. Little sidelight: Originally, we decided to call him Mr. Strange, but thought the 'Mr.' was a bit too similar to Mr. Fantastic -- Now, however, I remember we had a villain called Dr. Strange just recently in one of our mags. I hope it won't be too confusing!" Lee's comment that it was "Steve's idea" is confirmed by Ditko in The Avenging Mind (2008) where he writes: "On my own, I brought in to Lee a five-page, penciled story with a page/panel script of my idea of a new, different kind of character for variety in Marvel Comics. My character wound up being named Dr. Strange because he would appear in Strange Tales." The phrase "wound up" suggests that when Ditko brought in his five penciled pages to Lee, unsolicited, the hero's name was not "Dr. Strange" -- though what he was called at that early stage is not known (unless it was "Mr. Strange"). While The Comic Reader's version of this letter has Lee writing "we decided to call him Mr. Strange," the actual letter that Lee sent (which can be read here), dated January 9, 1963, lacks the "we" in that sentence, which unfortunately obscures who came up with the name "Mr. Strange" for the character (Lee or Ditko?). At any rate, that name was cast aside in favor of Dr. Strange, a name that had already appeared as the name of an Iron Man foe in Tales of Suspense #41 (May 1963), a story plotted by Lee, scripted by Robert Bernstein, and drawn by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. (In other words, a story that had no Ditko involvement, which suggests the name Doctor Strange originated with Lee.)
The first Doctor Strange story appeared in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963) and was only five pages long -- the usual five-page slot that Ditko's fantasy tales occupied at the end of an issue. As with many of Ditko's self-written characters (Mr. A., Killjoy, The Void, etc.) the first story is not an origin story. The character simply is, and has been for a long time (he even refers to the villain Nightmare as his "ancient foe"). A few issues later, in response to reader reaction, an origin story was created for the character. The apparently Asian appearance of Dr. Strange's face begins to change to reflect this new backstory of an American going to the East to learn the mystic arts. As with Peter Parker, Stephen Strange's former self was filled with pride, and eventually becomes a redeemed figure -- or more accurately, a hero -- after being humbled by fate. This origin story has the Lee touch of a tragic past (lame Don Blake, bad heart for Tony Stark, etc.), and was followed by a series of Strange adventures where Ditko is no longer plotting the strip nor even inking it. Ditko writes in The Avenging Mind (2008) that Lee had difficulty with properly developing the character (bringing in a guest-star like Loki, etc.) and was "ready to drop" the series until Ditko "told him that I should be inking [instead of George Roussos] and could do Dr. Strange because I was the only one who understood Dr. Strange's potentials."
Thus followed Ditko's celebrated run as plotter/penciler/inker that began with the two-parter in Strange Tales #126-127 (Nov.-Dec. 1964) that introduced Strange's greatest foe Dormammu and his eventual love-interest Clea (whose name wasn't revealed until Ditko's last issue, Strange Tales #146, scripted by Denny O'Neil). Few artists have made such a strong visual stamp on a superhero strip as did Ditko with Dr. Strange. But Lee also added to the strip's unique appeal with arcane-sounding references such as "The Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth" and "The Eye of Agamotto." (In the 1974 book Origins of Marvel Comics, Lee writes that "my first task was to make up some authentic-sounding names for Doc to call upon.") Marvel earlier had published a Kirby-penciled/Ditko-inked hero called Dr. Droom, in Amazing Adventures #1 (June 1961), about a Westerner who gains mystic powers like Chandu the Magician (whom Lee cited as an influence in Origins) and like Stephen Strange in his origin story. Like most of the "pre-Marvel" monster/fantasy tales, the Dr. Droom story was printed without a writer credit; while it's possible that editor Lee was involved in Droom's creation, the author is not known. To envision a kind of "Doctor Strange" without Ditko's involvement (aside from inking), one can simply look toward the Dr. Droom strip, which was soon dropped. A Ditko-only/non-Lee "Doctor Strange" would have that first Nightmare story, and many of the others as well (Dormammu, Eternity, etc.) but perhaps no former physican named Stephen Strange, or even the name "Doctor Strange" at all. The character would have worn the Eye of Agamotto (shown in that very first story) but it may have been called something else, if given a name at all. Even if one of them had the initial idea first, both men contributed important components to the work's creation and development, which means that Doctor Strange is a co-creation of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
7.) WAS IT DITKO'S IDEA TO HAVE A CHARACTER BOX ON MARVEL'S COVERS?
In the letters page of Fantastic Four #18 (Sept. 1963), when a reader wondered who came up with the idea of having a character box in the upper left corner of the covers, Stan Lee replied: "Steve Ditko dreamed up the idea, and we're sure glad he did!" In The Avenging Mind (2008), Ditko writes: "I suggested the corner box with a Marvel hero face and drew a face to show Lee and Sol Brodsky how it would look, and more important how and why the Marvel title with a hero face would be quickly seen, recognized, no matter how comic books sold in stores were placed in racks."
8.) WHAT IS THE "MARVEL METHOD"?
In the 1960s, editor Stan Lee would add dialogue and captions to the artwork after the mostly-wordless pages had already been penciled by the artist. Originally Lee and the artist would discuss beforehand what the story would be (before being drawn) or Lee would supply the artist with a one or two page synopsis of the plot. "Lee never wrote a full script for any work I did at Marvel," Ditko stated in The Avenging Mind (2008). As the Marvel superhero line gained popularity, many of the artists themselves (such as Ditko) were coming up with the story plots on their own, and jotting down brief notes in the panel margins, or on a separate piece of paper, to describe any additional information not provided by the visuals. (These notes were not always followed by Lee.) The March 1966 Bullpen Bulletins explained the process to the readers this way: "It isn't generally known, but many of our merry Marvel artists are also talented story men in their own right! For example, all Stan has to do with the pro's like JACK "KING" KIRBY, dazzling DON HECK, and darlin' DICK AYERS is give them the germ of an idea, and they make up all the details as they go along, drawing and plotting out the story. Then, our leader simply takes the finished drawings and adds all the dialogue and captions!" For more about the origins of the Marvel Method, see Nick Caputo's article "Development of the Marvel Method". For more on Lee and Ditko's working method during the final year of Ditko's run on Spider-Man, see Russ Maheras' article titled "Wordless Destiny".
9.) DID LEE AND DITKO ARGUE ABOUT STORYLINES?
As with any two people, there are inevitably disagreements at some point. In his series of "A Mini-History" essays, Ditko provides some examples of matters where he and Lee held different views. In the first installment of "A Mini-History" (The Comics!, July 2001), Ditko writes that Lee originally wanted The Green Goblin to be "an ancient, mythological demon" who "comes to life." Ditko states: "I rejected Stan's idea. Why? For the same reason I rejected other ideas of Stan's on Spider-Man. .... The mythological creature was too far out for Spider-Man." Later in "A Mini-History," Ditko writes about Lee's desire to change the strip to appease fans and other outsiders. In The Avenging Mind (2008), Ditko writes that "Lee did not want me to show....the spider-like poses and action" of the hero. And that Spider-Man "was almost ruined when Lee very early [on] wanted to introduce his idea of a Spider-Woman." In the January 9, 1966 New York Herald Tribune article by Nat Freedland, Stan said, "We were arguing so much over plot lines I told him to start making up his own stories." However, by the time of Amazing Spider-Man #25, Lee and Ditko were no longer speaking to each other, and therefore "it is just common sense that we could not have had any face-to-face discussions on anything, let alone disagreements, arguments, over any or about any future S-M story," Ditko wrote in The Comics! (March 2009).
10.) DID DITKO STOP SPEAKING TO STAN LEE DURING THE 1960s?
There is some confusion among fans about whether Ditko stopped talking to Lee, or whether it was Lee who stopped talking with Ditko. When Ditko would arrive at Marvel to drop off his art pages, he would hand them to Marvel's production manager Sol Brodsky, who would then take them into Lee's office. In a 1966 fanzine, John Romita claimed that it was Ditko who "began to slack off his direct contact with Lee, until he never came to the Bullpen anymore." Romita suggested that it was Ditko's belief in his superior writing ability that prevented him from wanting to do things Lee's way, which echoes what Lee told reporter Nat Freedland in the 1966 Herald Tribune article about Marvel (i.e., "Since Spidey got so popular, Ditko thinks he's the genius of the world"). However that characterization might be expected if Romita was receiving all of his information from Lee. In the Freedland article, Lee says that Ditko "just drops off the finished pages with notes at the margins," which contradicts the claim that Ditko "never came to the Bullpen anymore."
In recent years, Ditko has written about working at Marvel in the 1960s and has said that it was Lee who stopped talking to him. In The Four-Page Series #9 (Sept. 2015), Ditko wrote that "I had usually gone into Stan's closed-off office if he wasn't with anyone" when he brought in his art pages, but at some point Lee's assistant Sol Brodsky began taking the pages in to Lee's office while Ditko waited outside. In The Avenging Mind (2008), Ditko writes that "Stan Lee chose not to communicate with me on anything since before issue #25 of The Amazing Spider-Man (June 1965)." Although Ditko began receiving a plotting credit in the credit boxes beginning with that issue, other Marvel artists were not, despite the admission in the March 1966 Bullpen Bulletins (see above) that many of them were also "plotting out the story" of the comics they drew. The difference may be that Lee had stopped communicating with Ditko, and therefore was denying Ditko access to even "the germ of an idea" from Lee. Other artists were still being exposed to Lee's ideas in conversation (regardless of whether they used his ideas or not), which perhaps justified in Lee's mind the denial of the same kind of plotter credit to them that Ditko was receiving.
11.) IS IT TRUE THAT DITKO WANTED SOMEONE OTHER THAN NORMAN OSBORN TO BE REVEALED AS THE GREEN GOBLIN?
The most prominent "reason" given by fans for Ditko's eventual departure from Marvel was that he and Lee disagreed about who the Green Goblin should be revealed as. (The Green Goblin was revealed to be Norman Osborn, father of Peter Parker's classmate Harry Osborn, in Amazing Spider-Man #39, the first post-Ditko issue.) Variations of this rumor are that Ditko wanted the Goblin to be Ned Leeds, or (the most popular version of the rumor) that Ditko wanted the Goblin to be a nobody, some person that hadn't yet been introduced to the reader. It's unclear when this rumor first got started. The fanzine Web Spinner #5 (1966) contained an article about John Romita where the author (whose information was coming from Romita) states: "By the way, the choice of Norman Osborn as the Green Goblin was Ditko's. Lee was going to have GG revealed to be Ned Leeds, but Ditko was too fond of Ned, so he drew the mags so that Osborn HAD to be the Goblin." By the time of the 1982 Spider-Man issue of Fantaco's Chronicles series, this version of things had become reversed: "Ditko reportedly wanted the Goblin to be Ned Leeds...." Les Daniels' 1991 book Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics presented the "some nobody" version of the rumor, quoting Stan Lee as saying that Ditko thought "it should be somebody they've never seen before, just some person." (It's possible that Lee is misremembering the resolution of the earlier Crime Master storyline in ASM #27 and mixing it up with the Goblin's identity question. An alternate theory is that Lee, who repeated the claim recently in a March 2014 Playboy interview, is using the "some nobody" claim as a way of diminishing Ditko's contribution to the character.)
In recent years, Ditko addressed this subject in the pages of Robin Snyder's newsletter The Comics!. In the July 2001 issue, he wrote "I even used an earlier, planted character associated with J. Jonah Jameson, he became the Green Goblin." In the March 2009 issue, in an essay titled "The Ever Unwilling," Ditko elaborated: "I knew from Day One, from the first GG story, who the GG would be. I absolutely knew because I planted him in J. Jonah Jameson's businessman's club. .... I planted the GG's son (same distinct hair style) in the college issues for more dramatic involvement and storyline consequences. So how could there be any doubt, dispute, about who the GG had to turn out to be when unmasked?" Click here for an overview of the topic, which includes panel reproductions from the comics showing Ditko's gradual development of Norman Osborn, the man with the "distinct hair style" (like his son). Also see Nick Caputo's article "The Urban Myth of Lee, Ditko and the Green Goblin" in Ditkomania #82 (Oct. 2010).
12.) WHEN DID DITKO STOP DRAWING SPIDER-MAN?
According to The Comic Reader #44 (Dec. 1965), “Late the last week of November, Steve Ditko turned into Marvel the last Spiderman [sic] and Doctor Strange art that he would be doing for them.” (Read more here.) His final issues were Amazing Spider-Man #38 and Strange Tales #146 (although both cover-dated July 1966, they appeared on the stands in April of that year). The news was announced to Marvel's readers in that month's Bullpen Bulletins page. In Alter Ego #9 (July 2001, pg. 28), Roy Thomas (who began working for Marvel in July 1965) said, "I remember the day Ditko quit. He came into the office I shared with Sol [Brodsky] and Flo Steinberg, dropped off some pages, and left. Sol scuttled in to see Stan right away, and then I learned about it. At the time, Sol had a memo on his desk for a $5 a page raise for Steve, which was fairly substantial for 1965. I don't think he ever even got around to mentioning it to Steve, not that it would've made any difference."
13.) WHY DID DITKO STOP DRAWING SPIDER-MAN?
The aforementioned Bullpen Bulletins page said that Ditko left "for personal reasons." Comics historian Robert Beerbohm has stated that Ditko told him in 1969 that he left Marvel due to publisher Martin Goodman's failure to deliver on the promise of royalties (perhaps conveyed to him through editor Stan Lee). In The Avenging Mind (2008), however, Ditko wrote "I never met Martin Goodman. I may have seen him on the Marvel floor but that is the extent of my knowing him." More recently, in The Four-Page Series #2 (April 2013), Ditko wrote "I never met or had any dealing with Martin Goodman, publisher of Marvel Comics."
In the aforementioned 1966 Web Spinner #5 article, John Romita suggested to the fanzine's article-writer that "an offer to be top man at Charlton with Captain Atom sort of severed the final bond." Dick Giordano recalled visiting Ditko at his studio and he was "boiling mad," according to an interview with Giordano in Comic Book Artist #9 (August 2000, pg. 42). "The dispute was, he thought he was writing Spider-Man, but Stan was getting the credit. As proof, he showed me a chart he had up on the wall that said when certain things were going to happen for the next six issues... plots, sub-plots, and how they were going to interact over that six-issue span," Giordano said. Stan would "dialogue it when the pencils came in, so shouldn't Stan be considered the writer? You can argue the point, Steve argued that it wasn't. And because of his new philosophy or social order, he felt it was criminal for someone to take credit for something he didn't do. That's what led to the break-up with Marvel and Steve Ditko." In the introductory "Some Background" essay of "A Mini-History" in The Comics! (May 2001), Ditko himself addressed the question: "I know why I left Marvel but no one else in this universe knew or knows why. It may be of a mild interest to realize that Stan Lee chose not to know, hear why, I left."
In The Four-Page Series #9 (Sept. 2015), Ditko wrote an essay titled "Why I Quit S-M, Marvel" where he explained why he left Marvel. Since "Stan still chose not to see me or discuss anything," Sol Brodksy phoned Ditko to let him know that "the next S-M annual is coming up." As Ditko was "thinking about what I could do for the annual, I asked myself, 'Why should I do it?' Why should I continue to do all these monthly issues, original story ideas, material, for a man who is too scared, too angry over something, to even see, talk to me?" When Ditko later told Sol that he had decided to quit Marvel, it was Sol who told Stan. "The only person who had the right to know why I was quitting refused to come out of his office or to call me in. Stan refused to know why."
14.) DID DITKO EVER DRAW SPIDER-MAN AGAIN?
When Ditko returned to Marvel in 1978, he declined to revisit the two characters (and their supporting cast) for which he was best known, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. His only other drawings of Spider-Man to appear in print since 1966 were to illustrate points that Ditko was making about the character's costume. And so far there have been only two: a drawing that accompanied his May 1990 article "Jack Kirby's Spider-Man" (in History of the Comics) and a drawing that appeared in The 32-Page TSK! TSK! Package in May 2000.
It should be noted that Spider-Man (wearing his black costume) was shown in the background of a panel in a 1985 ROM issue. This image had been added by the comic's inker (not Ditko), as was acknowledged by the editor in the letters column of a subsequent ROM issue. Ditko did pencil the character Spider-Woman in the 1986 Avengers Annual (#15), however.
15.) WHERE DID DITKO GO AFTER LEAVING AMAZING SPIDER-MAN?
It should be remembered that since 1954 Ditko was a frequent presence in the pages of Charlton comics, primarily in their fantasy-themed anthology series like Tales of the Mysterious Traveler. "1950s Ditko" has long been popular with comics collectors and much of that material was published by Charlton. Even during the early 1960s when Ditko was drawing Spider-Man and Doctor Strange for Marvel, new work by Ditko continued to appear in Charlton publications. Before leaving Marvel in late 1965, Ditko drew a revived Captain Atom series (a Charlton superhero that had first appeared in 1960, pre-dating the "Marvel age"). After leaving Marvel, Ditko added The Blue Beetle (newly redesigned by Ditko) to his Charlton output as well as The Question. For Warren Publishing's B&W magazines Creepy and Eerie, Ditko drew 16 stories between 1966 and 1967 (which have been reprinted by Dark Horse Comics in the 2013 hardcover book Creepy Presents Steve Ditko). Many of these B&W stories that Ditko drew are well-regarded for their gray-wash technique. For DC, Ditko introduced two new series, Beware the Creeper and The Hawk and the Dove in the late 1960s, although both series were cut short due to illness on Ditko's part. In the 1970s, Ditko produced hundreds of pages for Charlton's ghost comics line (Ghostly Tales, Ghost Manor, The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves and many others). Ditko played with page layouts in many of these stories, arranging the panels in interesting and unexpected ways. Nick Caputo writes "Ditko drew some finely detailed and experimental stories for Charlton in the 1970s, some of his finest work ever." Twenty of these tales are available from Robin Snyder in a 160-Page Package released in 1999.
By 1978, Charlton switched to reprints for the most part, so Ditko returned to Marvel for the first time since 1965, providing the art for Machine Man and several issues of Marvel Spotlight. (Ditko explained the circumstances of his return to Marvel in The Four-Page Series #9 in 2015.) Ditko had also occasionally been working at DC, returning to The Creeper as well as plotting and drawing an inventive new series called Shade The Changing Man. The number of comics that Ditko worked on in the 1980s and 1990s is too numerous to list here; among them are Starman for DC (in Adventure Comics #467-478), ROM and Speedball for Marvel, The Safest Place for Dark Horse, Strange Avenging Tales for Fantagraphics, and many more.
From 1967 to 1999, Ditko worked a parallel track of drawing comics for the major companies as well as creating self-copyrighted, independent work published by much smaller presses (including occasionally contributing work for free to fanzines). Since 1999, Ditko focused on his independent work, published with his longtime editor Robin Snyder (who in the 1980s had worked with Ditko at DC, Western/Whitman, Red Circle/Archie, Charlton, and Renegade Press). The majority of Ditko's 1960s-70s independent, creator-owned work (including all of the Mr. A. stories of that period) was collected in The Ditko Collection Vols. 1 & 2 (Fantagraphics, 1985-86), edited by Snyder, which are essential volumes for the bookshelf of a Ditko collector. Most of Ditko's independent, creator-owned work since 1988 has been published with Snyder: Static (1988-89), The Ditko Package (1989), The Mocker (1990), The Ditko Public Service Package (1991), Lazlo's Hammer (1992), 160-Page Package (1999), 80-Page Package (The Missing Man collection, 1999), 176-Page Package (2000, which featured the first new Mr. A. story to be published since 1978) and nearly thirty 32-page comic books since 2008 (many with the word Act in the title) including two issues that featured a new Mr. A. story. These comics contain brand-new creations and concepts by Ditko, including characters such as Miss Eerie, The Cape, The Grey Negotiator, The Hero, The Outline, and many others. (You can find ordering information for these comics here.)
16.) WHAT WAS THE LAST CHARLTON COMIC THAT DITKO DREW?
Ditko's final stories for Charlton (prior to the 1985 revival) appeared in 1978: "Crazy Jack" in Ghost Manor #37 (May 1978), "An Unfriendly Town" in Haunted #36 (May 1978), and "Dead Fire" in Scary Tales #15 (July 1978). Note that the front covers of all of these issues lacks an "All new" blurb on them, which means that some of the material within the issue was reprints (though not these three new Ditko stories). "Crazy Jack" has Ditko's final new cover for a Charlton ghost comic.
In 1985, Charlton briefly returned with some new titles, including Charlton Action Featuring Static (which contained new self-copyrighted Ditko stories) and Tales of the Mysterious Traveler, both of which were edited by Robin Snyder. The latter series' 15th issue (Dec. 1985) contained a new 8-page tale written and drawn by Ditko titled "Deadly Shadow." It was the first Mysterious Traveler-hosted tale that Ditko had drawn since 1959. Charlton closed down their comics line before Ditko's subsequent stories intended for this series could see print, including "The Big Man" and "A Deal is a Deal" (which were published in 1986 by Renegade Press in Murder #1 and #2 respectively), although an intended front cover was left unused.
17.) WHAT IS OBJECTIVISM? WHO IS AYN RAND? AND WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH STEVE DITKO?
Objectivism is a philosophy based on rational self-interest, proposed and articulated by Ayn Rand (1905-1982) in such novels as The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), as well as numerous essays, whose ideas have greatly influenced Ditko's own outlook. Rand was not the only influence on Ditko's philosophy, for the statement "A is A" (the Law of Identity that the name of Ditko's Mr. A. refers) derived from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. When Ditko's essay "Violence, the Phoney Issue" first appeared in the fanzine Guts #5 in 1969, the first page had a caption by Ditko stating "While accepting Objectivism as my philosophical base, I am not a spokesman for Objectivism and I alone am responsible for the views expressed here." (This text was removed when the article was reprinted in The Ditko Collection Vol. One in 1985.)
A pioneer in independent comics, Ditko used the freedom that independence offers by exploring the medium's potential for conveying philosophical messages with comics like The Avenging World that have more of an editorial-cartoon approach to their scenarios than a traditional comicbook narrative. Although some readers have objected to this approach, others have found them an engaging and innovative use of the medium due to Ditko's total commitment to the material. In the May 2004 issue of The Comics!, Ditko wrote: "Some (many) people implicitly or explicitly believe a true comic book (story/art) must not contain any specific, explicit philosophy. So any comic story/art that does contain certain philosophical principles, truths, values, virtues, etc. is not telling/showing a story but 'preaching' or 'moralizing.'" But Ditko points out that "everyone is sending 'messages' and receiving 'messages' from others," even if one is unaware of the message they are sending. "No one can write a sentence about man, life, the world, perform an action, without revealing some philosophical premise," Ditko observed.
18.) WAS AYN RAND AWARE OF DITKO? DID THEY EVER MEET?
In Ditkomania #90 (March 2013), ACE Comics publisher Ron Frantz wrote about his visit to Ditko's studio in 1987. "Ditko spoke with near reverence about meeting Ms. Rand on several occasions," Frantz wrote. "He [had] often listened to her lecture at the Nathaniel Branden Institute." I have not seen any mention of Ditko in any book or publication by Rand, however.
19.) WHO IS MR. A.?
Ditko's interest in philosophy first became apparent to readers in 1967 with the introduction of Mr. A. in witzend #3, an independent hero that embodied the values that Rand championed. The all-white suit and facemask of Mr. A. (who is in reality crusading reporter Rex Graine) symbolizes good against the darkness of evil. But what is "good"? The Mr. A. stories explore the definition of a hero absent the instinctive altruism that is associated with a traditional understanding of heroism. For example, at the end of the very first story, Mr. A. chooses to rescue an innocent victim rather than save her attempted murderer (who then falls to his death in the final panel).
That same year, Ditko introduced a similar character The Question for Charlton Press who allowed two foes to be washed out to sea, perhaps to drown, rather than sacrifice his own life trying to save them. Although these deliberately passive actions were considered shockingly brutal by many readers at the time, during an era where superheroes had codes against killing, the sentiments of Mr. A. and The Question toward their opponents was not unlike The Batman in his first story in 1939, where he allows the villain to fall into an acid tank, to his death. ("A fitting end for his kind," the hero noted.) The difference is that Ditko's heroes were aware (and made the reader aware) of the reason for their actions, the underlying philosophical premise.
A later Mr. A. story, "Right to Kill" (Mr. A. #1, 1973) demonstrates Mr. A.'s compassion for the innocent (a kidnapped child), a character trait that had been overlooked by many readers in his debut. Mr. A. tells the child, "I treat people the way they act toward human life! I grant them what their actions deserve and have earned! I don't reward the bad or cheat the good!" Mr. A.'s actions conform to an objective standard of justice, treating others the way they deserve to be treated based on their actions, whether that is protecting the innocent victim or penalizing the guilty aggressor. In the Sept. 2004 issue of The Comics!, Ditko wrote: "Mr. A stands for a rational, objective philosophy of positive, pro-life premises and values. That is symbolized by his white and black card. A is A, no graying, no contradictions: Reality is an absolute, man is a rational being, reason (logic) is man's only means to knowledge, man's life is the standard of value, the good is that which supports a rational life, man must act on objective, rational virtues of integrity, independence, honesty, etc. The moral man is the man who leads a productive life, at his best in thought and action. .... Mr. A's values are the highest values, the best values, for a man to live by if he wants the best life has to offer."
20.) WHAT IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN DITKO'S MR. A. AND WATCHMEN'S RORSCHACH?
Rorschach, a character in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen (1986-87), was based on Mr. A. and The Question but cast in an ugly and distorted form. In The Comics Journal #116 (July 1987, pg. 95), Alan Moore explained: "What I had in mind was more Steve Ditko's character, Mr. A. Originally, Watchmen grew out of me sending in a proposal for the Charlton characters. Dick Giordano liked it but couldn't use it because it would have made the Charlton characters unusable thereafter. So he said, 'Why not come up with some other characters?' -- which I did. These were loosely based upon the Charlton characters, although I don't think there's a recognizable similarity now. The Charlton character The Question was another Steve Ditko creation. The Rorschach character was created to fill the gap he made in the plot. What I was trying to do was come up with this quintessential Steve Ditko character -- someone who's got a funny name, whose surname begins with a 'K,' who's got an oddly designed mask. That struck me as a Ditkoesque touch -- having that blot crawling around on the face. And also somebody who takes the philosophic aspects of Mr. A a lot further and into a world perhaps a lot more grimy and realistic than the very clean world that Steve Ditko's characters inhabit. I think that was the jumping off point for it. In actually writing the character, when I was writing that first page, which is where I first started to come up with the way that Rorschach thinks and talks, I was thinking of the notes that Son of Sam sent to the police, which have got some very strange pseudo-poetry: the blood in the gutters, the ants in the gutters. [....] So there's a bit of that in it as well. A mixture of Mr. A and the Son of Sam [laughs] is a fairly apt description."
21.) WHAT WAS DITKO'S MOST RECENT COMIC FOR MARVEL?
For many years, the last new Marvel story that Ditko drew was a 12-page Iron Man tale that appeared in Shadows and Light #1 (Feb. 1998). A couple reviews of the comic appeared in Ditkomania #57 (Feb. 1998). However, in 2011, a one-shot comic appeared titled Incredible Hulk and The Human Torch: From the Marvel Vault #1 (Aug. 2011) which contained a never-before-seen 21-page story penciled by Ditko. Back in Machine Man #19 (Feb. 1981), writer Tom DeFalco said in the letters column that "Steve and I are slated to do a Hulk/Human Torch story for a future issue of Marvel Team-Up." The team-up in From the Marvel Vault had originally been written by Jack C. Harris in the early 1980s, but was rewritten (and inked) by Karl Kesel for the modern reader. Three pages of Ditko's original pencils (pre-inks) for the story appeared in Ditkomania #84 (May 2011). Both the Hulk/Torch team-up and a Moon Knight back-up tale, both written by Jack C. Harris and drawn by Ditko, were mentioned in a 1981 fanzine. To date, the Moon Knight tale has not been published, although it's unknown whether the art for it was completed or not.
22.) WHAT WAS DITKO'S MOST RECENT COMIC FOR DC?
For several years, the last new DC story that Ditko drew was a 10-page Spectre tale that appeared in Legends of the DC Universe 80-Page Giant #1 (Sept. 1998). The story was inked by Kevin Nowlan, who has posted some of Ditko's pencils for the story on his blog. The "Watch This Space!" page (akin to Marvel's Bullpen Bulletins) for DC Comics with an April 1998 cover-date mentioned the upcoming comic as well as a possible Ditko-drawn "Batman project" for editor Denny O'Neil. The original Diamond solicitation for Batman: Gotham Knights #7 (Sept. 2000) listed Ditko in the credits as contributing the art for a Batman back-up story in the issue, but when published the story's art was by John Buscema instead. In 2007, former DC editorial assistant Valerie D'Orazio explained on her blog that she delivered the Batman script to Ditko's office but later "found out that he rejected the script on the grounds that it had a supernatural basis, and that he didn't do stories with supernatural elements in it..." In 2000, Walt Simonson's Orion series ran a series of 5-page "Tales of the New Gods" back-up stories drawn by guest artists such as Frank Miller and Erik Larsen. Ditko drew a story (written by Mark Millar and inked by Mick Gray), but it remained unpublished until all the back-ups were collected by DC in a Tales of the New Gods trade paperback in 2008.
23.) IS IT TRUE THAT DITKO DREW A "BIG BOY" COMIC? A "TINY TOONS" COMIC? A "TRANSFORMERS" COLORING BOOK?
Being a professional comics artist involves taking assignments from companies who need material drawn for the books they publish. Not every artist is suited to every type of story (since some artists excel in one genre over another -- for example, funny animal comics rather than war stories) but most artists have taken on all kinds of jobs over the course of their careers to make ends meet: advertisements, storyboards, book illustrations, and so on. Some of this work is well outside the traditional interests of superhero fandom (who make up the majority of vocal fans), and may appear jarring to those who associate an artist with a particular type of material that they prefer. Over the years, in addition to the superhero, horror and science fiction comics for which he is known (genres favored by fandom), Steve Ditko also drew westerns, love & romance stories, humor strips, wrestling comics, children's books, and many more.
In 1997, Ditko penciled Big Boy #470 (inked by former Iron Man artist Luke McDonnell), which can be read in full here. (Craig Boldman, who wrote the story, provided some background info in Ditkomania #48, May 1997.)
Information about the Ditko-drawn story in Tiny Toon Adventures #4 (April 1992) can be found here.
Ditko drew illustrations for two Transformers coloring books in 1984-85 (which can be read here and here) as well as providing the art for two Gobots children's books (written by Robin Snyder) during the same period. Former Cracked editor Mort Todd has said, "Steve did a lot of weird licensed books (Chuck Norris & His Karate Kommandos?) but always put his best effort into anything that came out of his pencil."
24.) IS THERE A CHECKLIST AVAILABLE THAT LISTS EVERY STEVE DITKO COMIC PUBLISHED?
The Ditko Cultist site has a PDF checklist of issues that contain Ditko artwork. Brian Franczak's Ditko Fever site provided a visual checklist of Ditko's career, with cover images for each publication. Unfortunately the site is no longer online, but some of the checklist pages have been saved on the Wayback Machine. Blake Bell's old Ditko Looked Up site provided checklists in three formats: alphabetical (by title), chronological, and by company. That site is also long since gone, and the checklists hadn't been updated since 2001, but they are archived at The Wayback Machine. In addition, one can search the Grand Comics Database for information about any comics that have been published, including foreign editions.
25.) I'VE SEEN OLD RISQUÉ COMICS THAT WERE SIGNED "STANTON" BUT THEY LOOKED LIKE THEY WERE DRAWN BY DITKO. DID DITKO DRAW THEM?
Eric Stanton (1926-1999) was an artist who specialized in adults-only comic books depicting female bondage. Stanton was a classmate of Ditko's in the early 1950s at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (renamed the School of Visual Arts in 1956) where both were students of former Batman artist Jerry Robinson. Stanton and Ditko shared a studio at 43rd Street and 8th Avenue "from about 1958 to 1968" (according to a 1988 interview with Stanton), or "from 1958 to 1966" according to historian Jim Linderman (as quoted in The Creativity of Ditko, 2012). It seems reasonable therefore that Ditko and Stanton may have helped each other out on pages if needed, especially when a deadline was near.
Although at a glance many of Stanton's pages from that era certainly resemble Ditko's work, details about who might have contributed what (if anything) can be debated endlessly. For example, in a 2013 thread on the Ditkomania Facebook group, one member posted a Stanton panel and said "Stanton and Ditko....no denying it...the hands and pose of the mustachioed man are totally Ditko!" Comics historian Craig Yoe replied, "can we agree to disagree my friend? -- the guy seems so Stanton-y to me. Now that girl turning around...Ditko inks!" Yoe then summarized, "In general I think when they collaborated on 'Stantoons' that Stanton did the penciling and Ditko did the inking." In another thread, another Stanton panel was posted, with the forum member commenting "I can see Ditko in the woman on the right...and this is definitely his lettering!" Yoe replied: "I have seen a lot of Stanton over the last few years for different projects I've been working on with his daughter [Amber]. I think that helps me to 'subtract' what I think is not Stanton and be left with what is Ditko. I see Ditko's hand in the girl on the left and on, ironically, the Stanton figure and his drawing board and the other figures, too. Stanton loved Ditko's inking and, if I was a betting man, I'd bet he had Ditko ink (and letter) this."
Ditko has reportedly denied his involvement in Stanton's comics, which is not unexpected given their controversial nature and that the work reflects Stanton's vision, not Ditko's. If "Steve Ditko is the brand name" for Ditko's output, then Stanton is likewise the brand name for his Stantoons, regardless of who may have helped out with some inking or lettering here and there. It can be compared to a company that may sometimes use materials produced by another manufacturer for their own product, such as Firestone tires on a Ford vehicle -- the final product, what is being sold to the consumer, is a Ford car not a Firestone car.
26.) DID ERIC STANTON CONTRIBUTE TO THE CREATION OF SPIDER-MAN?
In The Steve Ditko Reader Vol. One (Pure Imagination, 2002) comics historian Greg Theakston writes, "Stanton remembers contributing to the character by suggesting the Spider signal, which could be flashed on buildings and on crooks, much like the famous Bat-signal. He also claims to have suggested the webbing be shot from the devices worn on the wrists." Also, "Stanton remembers contributing to the flow of action of the stories. Together he and Ditko would have a 'skull session' and choreograph many of the great action sequences throughout the books." In a 1988 interview (in the same book), Stanton said "My contribution [to] Spider-Man was almost nil. When we worked on storyboards together, I added a few ideas. But the whole thing was created by Steve on his own." He continued, "The whole thing was Steve Ditko. I think I added the business about the webs coming out of his hands, and we talked about the characters, and in turn, he helped me with my stuff." In The Creativity of Ditko by Craig Yoe (IDW, 2012), Stanton's daughter Amber (who was born in the late 1970s) wrote an essay claiming that her father had co-created Spider-Man with Ditko. She writes that around the year 2000 she phoned Ditko and asked him about her father and him "creating Spider-Man together." Ditko replied that Stanton "had nothing to do with it." Regarding the aforementioned Theakston interview where Stanton had described his input as "almost nil," Amber recalls her mother being "very upset" that he had "belittled his contribution" and "that we might miss out on an opportunity."
27.) I HEARD THAT DITKO WAS SENT A LOT OF MONEY FOR THE FIRST SPIDER-MAN MOVIE, BUT HE SENT THE CHECK BACK. IS THIS TRUE?
In July 2012, on the DitkoKirby Yahoo Group, comics writer Kurt Busiek posted the following: "What I have been told -- and I have no reason to believe it's true -- is that Sony offered Ditko money for the Spider-Man movies, to avoid just this sort of issue, and Ditko refused it, on the grounds that it wasn't enough. He wanted everything he feels he was promised by Marvel, going back to the inflatable pillows and T-shirts, and to agree to anything less would be compromising, which is unacceptable. On the one hand, it sounds like something Ditko would do. On the other hand, fiction is full of things that sound credible, but that doesn't make them true." Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort replied: "Ditko was sent the check, and he did refuse it -- though on what grounds was never articulated.” (This is the closest I have yet seen for confirmation of the rumor that a check was sent.) In a 2012 New York Post profile, Ditko stated "No" when asked if he had been paid for the Spider-Man films. (Note: Links to the Yahoo Group postings in this and the next section are no longer available to view on the web since Yahoo eliminated their Groups web messages in 2019.)
28.) DID DITKO RECEIVE PAYMENT/ROYALTIES FOR HIS PAST WORK?
Dan Adkins wrote a letter in The Comic Reader #168 (May 1979) stating, “Marvel is now paying $3.00 per page for inks on reprinted work in comics, and $1.00 per page for reprinting comics in paperbacks for inks. I got a big $1.00 check the other day for inks on a HULK cover recently reprinted on a paperback.” Presumably Ditko was also receiving reprint money from Marvel during this period. In June 2010, when someone on the Ditkomania Yahoo Group wondered if Ditko would receive “any kind of reprint fees” for the reprinting of Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2 in a new Spider-Man trade paperback, Marvel editor Tom Brevoort replied “of course he will.” Back in January 2009, on the Ditkomania Yahoo Group, Brevoort posted the following: “Ditko does receive reprint money when his Marvel work is reprinted, and as far as I know he does cash the checks.” For work that has fallen into the public domain, however, payment is generally not made by the publishers to those who originally produced the material.
29.) I'VE HEARD THAT DITKO CUT UP HIS ORIGINAL ARTWORK. IS THIS TRUE?
An article in a 2002 issue of Wizard magazine included an anecdote by artist Greg Theakston about a visit to Ditko's studio where he observed that the back of a page of Ditko-drawn original art had been used as a cutting board. In 2008, Theakston stated that “this thing has been blown way out of proportion. On occasion, I’ve used the backs of old paintings as cutting boards. I’m sure lots of artists do the same, so it really doesn’t allow us a deeper view of the Mysterious Stranger, simply an artist at work.” (Scroll down to the comments section of this page for the Theakston quote.) Bob Heer has noted how the “cutting board” story has grown in the minds of fans to the point that many assume Ditko is cutting (or destroying) his beloved Spider-Man artwork, when there is no evidence for that belief.
30.) HOW MUCH OF DITKO'S ORIGINAL ART DID HE RECEIVE BACK FROM MARVEL?
Prior to the 1970s, the original art pages that illustrators supplied to their publishers (from which the printed comic book pages were reproduced) were usually kept by the publishers as their property, having paid the artist to draw the pages for them. With the rise of comics fandom in the 1960s, original artwork became more desirable to collectors in the secondary market and gradually increased in value, just as old comic books did. During the 1970s, publishers like Marvel and DC began a policy of returning art pages to the artists, which could then be sold to collectors. Pages which were penciled and inked by two different artists were split between them. (Early on at Marvel, some pages were also given to the story's writer, but this policy had ceased by 1980.) In 1985, Jeanette Kahn, Paul Levitz and Dick Giordano issued a statement clarifying DC's stance on the ownership of original art: "We, the publishing houses, are paying only for the right to reproduce the work. The ownership of the page, the actual object, belongs unequivocally to the artist, and the artist alone. The return of artwork is an artist's inalienable right.” (Note: The link to the image is no longer available.)
In the mid-1970s, Irene Varantoff "was in charge of the Marvel art warehouse" and "did an exhaustive inventory of all Marvel Comics original art." An inventory list from 1979 was published in The Comics Journal #105 (February 1986, page 18) showing that at that time the warehouse still had the original art for nearly all of Ditko's Spider-Man run (including the two annuals) with the exception of Amazing Spider-Man #18, 20, 22, 23, 29, 32 and Amazing Fantasy #15. In 1979, the warehouse still had every page of the remaining 34 issues with the exception of Amazing Spider-Man #35 (three pages missing) and #38 (one page missing).
This older artwork in Marvel's possession would not be returned to the artists until the mid-1980s after a release form was signed where the artist agreed to accept the pages as a "gift." However, sometime around 1982, before they were to be returned, many of the original art pages that Marvel had in their warehouse went missing. As a result, artists like Kirby and Ditko received comparatively few pages back from Marvel of their 1960s output for the publisher. Many of these missing art pages were immediately being bought and sold by collectors in the fan market without explanation as to how they were acquired.
In a lengthy 28-page essay titled "The Sore Spot Cause and Crusade," published in the January 1993 issue of Robin Snyder's History of the Comics newsletter, Ditko discussed the original art market and provided a summary of what original artwork pages he received back from Marvel in the 1980s after signing Marvel's release form. Of the Spider-Man pages that he drew, Ditko "received story/art pages from 3 Spider-Man issues: 2 complete issues (inside pages) and a 3rd which had three pages missing [probably #35, see above]. So, I was given, as a 'gift,' a portion of 3 issues of the 41 Spider-Man books I did. There is nothing from the Spider-Man annuals (one of which included Dr. Strange as a guest star). And no covers of any kind. What happened to those 38 missing Spider-Man books and all the other missing pages and covers?"
As for his other Marvel work, Ditko wrote that he received back "many" of the 5-page fantasy back-up tales he had done, though not all. Also, "I believe I received most of the Dr. Strange story/art pages. I haven't made an exact check." Of his 1960s work on the Hulk, Ditko wrote, "None of those pages were returned." As for Ditko's DC work, he notes that "Two persons returned a page each from the Creeper series. I was given a Hawk and the Dove cover."
Near the end of the essay, Ditko quotes an item in a 1992 issue of Marvel Age that approvingly reported that at Sotheby auction house "Steve Ditko's original art for Amazing Spider-Man #31 scarfed up a nice $24,200!" Ditko notes, "Issue #31 is one of the 38 issues available as 'gifts' to non-producers" (presumably meaning that ASM #31 was not one of the 3 Spider-Man issues that Ditko received back from Marvel). This essay is must-reading for anyone interested in knowing Ditko's views on the topic of ownership of original art (following up on his 1974 essay "Who Owns Original Art?" from Inside Comics #2).
Over the years, the value of Ditko's original art pages has only increased. For example, in 2002, Heritage Auctions sold the original artwork of Amazing Spider-Man #10 (all 22 pages) for $161,000. More recently, in 2012, the splash page alone of Amazing Spider-Man #12 sold for $137,425.
31.) WHO DONATED THE ORIGINAL ART OF AMAZING FANTASY #15 TO THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS?
The donor's identity has not been revealed. You can read about the 2008 donation here. Lee and Ditko briefly commented to the Chicago Tribune in Sept. 2008 about the library's acquisition.
32.) DID DITKO EVER ATTEND A COMICS CONVENTION?
The only time that Ditko attended a comics con (that has been verified anyway) was the first comics convention to be held, the New York Comicon which took place on July 27, 1964. Ditko appeared unannounced along with Marvel secretary Flo Steinberg, and sat in the audience during a panel. A few fans spoke with Ditko at the con, including Ethan Roberts who wrote about the con in Alter Ego #7 (Winter 2001). Ditko also drew the convention booklet's front cover (of Spider-Man) and back cover (of Doctor Strange), which appeared several weeks after the con occurred.
33.) HAS STEVE DITKO EVER BEEN INTERVIEWED?
Ditko was interviewed in a few fanzines in the 1960s, such as RBCC #31 (a 1964 article by Bernie Bubnis about a visit to Ditko's studio containing quotes by Ditko; reprinted in Ditkomania #45, May 1995), Comic Fan #2 (Aug. 1965), Rapport #2 (1966), and Marvel Main #4 (Oct./Nov. 1968). Ditko declined interview requests since the 1970s, although he frequently made his thoughts known in essays that have appeared in Robin Snyder's newsletter The Comics! since 1990.
34.) WHY DIDN'T DITKO GIVE INTERVIEWS (OR, ATTEND CONVENTIONS; OR, HAVE HIS PHOTO TAKEN)?
He preferred to let his work speak for him. In the 1968 Marvel Main interview, Ditko said "When I do a job, it’s not my personality that I’m offering the readers, but my art work. It’s not what I’m like that counts [but] what I did and how well it was done. I produce a product, a comic art story. Steve Ditko is the brand name. I make no mystery of what I do, and where I can properly explain why I do what I do (like in this fanzine) I’ll do it." A list of Ditko's essays can be found here, demonstrating that Ditko did communicate with readers on issues that interest him, just not in interview form.
35.) I SAW A VIDEO THAT HAD DITKO'S VOICE TALKING. WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?
Ditko participated in Ken Viola's 1987 videotape The Masters of Comic Book Art which featured interviews with famous comic book artists both old and new, from Jack Kirby and Will Eisner to Frank Miller and Dave Sim. Ditko provided a short voiceover discussing his independent work while panels from them appeared on the screen. An article by Maggie Thompson appeared in the January 15, 1988 issue of the Comics Buyer's Guide (excerpted in Ditkomania #23 in early 1988) that gave background on how the video came to be. As Ditko biographer Blake Bell has noted, "It is the only know[n] recording of Ditko's voice."
36.) WHAT DID STEVE DITKO LOOK LIKE?
Several photos of Ditko from 1959 appear in Craig Yoe's book The Creativity of Ditko. For the past few decades, those 1959 photos were the most recent photos of Ditko available. (Photos from his 1940s high school yearbooks had been known since the 1980s.) In the mid-2010s, a photo from around 1970 surfaced, where he looked much the same as the earlier photos. Shortly before his death in 2018, more recent photos of Ditko at the building where his studio is located have been posted online. Two photos of Ditko from October 2017, taken by the wife of Bernie Bubnis, appeared in Alter Ego #160 (Sept. 2019). His nephew, Mark S. Ditko, has also since shared family photos with Ditko in them.
37.) DID DITKO HAVE CHILDREN? WAS HE MARRIED?
No children or spouse have been confirmed.
38.) WHERE DID STEVE DITKO LIVE?
According to the 1930 census, Ditko as a small child lived at 206 Iron Street, Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The 1940 census shows that the Ditko family had later moved around a mile southwest of Iron Street, on the other side of the Conemaugh River, to 1337 Tennessee Avenue, where (according to the census) they had lived for the past five years. Therefore it was at 1337 Tennessee Avenue that Steve Ditko spent his formative years.
In 1964, Ditko's address was 276 W. 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036. (This may be the same address for the studio that he shared with artist Eric Stanton at the time.) He was still at that address when Russ Maheras wrote him in 1973. In the 1990s, Ditko could be found at 145 W. 45 St. #711, New York, NY 10036. Since the 2000s, Ditko's studio was located at 200 W. 51st Street (also known as 1650 Broadway, the two are used interchangeably), Suite 715, New York, NY 10019. His home address, where he actually lived in New York during the past few decades, remains unknown. For several years, Ditko's phone number was listed in the phone book. A simple Google search of a person's name, city, and state will provide the publicly available information for that individual.
39.) DID DITKO DO ART COMMISSIONS?
Ditko generally declined such requests. For example, in the 1990s, Madman creator Mike Allred was commissioning pin-ups of his character by legendary artists such as Frank Frazetta and Alex Toth. In an interview in Comicology Vol. 2, #2 (Fall 2000, pg. 46), Allred notes that Ditko declined his request to provide a Madman pin-up for the series. "I sent him a bunch of comics, and he did write me a letter telling me that he liked my stuff, but, again, did not want to do anybody else's [material]."
40.) DID DITKO REPLY TO LETTERS FROM FANS?
Yes. Despite the popular perception that Ditko turned his back on fans and would have nothing to do with them, he in fact usually replied to letters from fans and even corresponded regularly with some of them. Many people have posted their letters on a Facebook group called "Steve Ditko Letters". Letters from Steve Ditko are not as uncommon and rare as some people seem to think.
41.) DID DITKO AUTOGRAPH COMICS FOR FANS?
According to fans who have written him in recent years requesting that he autograph items for them, he declined to do so, with the explanation that if he consented to one request, in fairness he would have to consent to every fan's request for an autograph. Therefore his policy was to decline all such requests. (See here, here and here for examples.) Autographed comics by Ditko certainly do exist, however, such as a very limited number of Mr. A. comics that Ditko had signed, several years ago.
42.) WHAT IS DITKO DOING TODAY? IS HE STILL DRAWING COMICS?
Steve Ditko passed away in late June 2018. Since 2008, Ditko and Robin Snyder had been releasing new publications a few times per year, totaling almost 30 comic books by the time of his death. These are B&W 32-page anthology comics that Ditko wrote and drew (as well as owning the copyright to) featuring new characters such as Miss Eerie, The Cape, The Hero, The !? and The Outline among others. In addition, Ditko continued to write essays on matters relating to the comics industry and fandom, not only in the pages of Robin Snyder's The Comics! newsletter, but in an all-Ditko essay zine called The Four-Page Series (which ran a total of nine issues). Ordering information for these recent releases can be found here. Recent Ditko work can also be purchased via the internet through Rodney Schroeter's eBay auctions. A list of recent Ditko-related publications from all publishers, including reprint collections, can be found here. A brief summary of several of the 32-pagers can be found here.
