Steve Ditko: Classic or Dud

how instrumental was Stan in the idea that all the Marvel heroes existed in a close-knit interconnected universe?

I'd be more inclined to attribute this to Kirby, given that he was doing the initial layouts/pencils for the vast majority of the early books that established this via multiple cameos (Fantastic Four sees Thor fly by etc) but who knows, really. Obviously there was a huge marketing advantage to plugging other characters/books within various titles so maybe Stan came at it from that angle. By all accounts the way they worked was that Kirby would do the layouts/pencils, often with dialogue+captions written in the margins (as is evident from existing original artwork), Stan would then add in his own dialogue and exposition (sometimes completely ignoring Kirby's notes in the process and thereby fucking up continuity/storytelling etc as noted in the above anecdote), and then turn it over for inking and coloring, etc. Where accounts differ has to do with Stan's lifelong claim that he would give Kirby character and storyline ideas prior to Kirby doing the artwork, and that he would hash these out with Jack. Kirby vehemently denied this, especially in later years, and in a number of cases Lee's claim is quite obviously highly suspect (the Fantastic Four bears a striking similarity to Kirby's previous Challengers of the Unknown, Thor is very clearly a product of Kirby's lifelong obsession with mythology, etc.)

Ditko, incidentally, refuses to discuss how his "partnership" with Stan worked.

really? so the whole "Marvel" way of doing a comic book (writer comes up with plot, gives it to penciler to do roughs, then the writer comes up with dialogue, then everything is lettered, inked & colored) was nothing but a sham? I figured it seemed so counterintuitive that it had to seem legit...

"had to be legit..."

The Marvel Method was a real thing; the dispute is in how much involvement Lee had in plotting each issue before the pencilling.

the whole plotting before pencilling, and then writing of the dialogue, this just seems like such a strange way to make a comic book. I imagined that it must have been the way that Stan Lee preferred to work and then he just kind of mandated the method company-wide once he got other writers in there. Otherwise, why split up the writer's job like that?

in order to cover up the fact that you can't actually write, duh

makes sense

http://www.comictreadmill.com/CTMBlogarchives/2006Images/Day11Funky.jpg

http://www.guiadosquadrinhos.com/ShowImage.aspx?path=./upload/personagens/3095person_2276.jpg

http://www.supermanartists.comics.org/silverage/FunkyFlashman-MMiracle06.JPG

"I'll just sip my martini by the ocean -- and wait for the next fish to jump!!"

Words to live by.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_tHVfHpnv17g/TPJ3MMqJPwI/AAAAAAAAMsc/bfaUVvIDNIo/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2010-11-28%2Bat%2B9.11.37%2BAM.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4N6ybVLERfQ/SYMMpfkgk7I/AAAAAAAAIIs/jUkxApZdO28/s320/Mr+Miracle+06-22+Funky+Flashman.jpg

did i already tell you guys my george perez story? i'll make it quick in case i did somewhere. i went to the opening of forbidden planet in nyc when i was kid - huge lines and a big mob scene - and perez was there doing marker drawings for ten bucks a pop. i sat down to get one and he asked me what comics i liked. he asked me if i liked the teen titans - his big book at the time - and i said yeah! i liked the teen titans! he said great! so what character did i want drawn? and i said: nightcrawler!

did he draw Gar Logan transformed into Nightcrawler?

Ok, I think I may have found a reason to hate on Stan Lee

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=86075&tsp=1

thanks universe

he did a nice quick bamfing 'crawler. dude was a pro.

x-pst

that was my chillwave x-post.

stan is stan. the man never met a dollar or a reason to have his picture taken that he didn't like.

he's old school corrupt. he probably thinks he's doing you a favor all the time.

hahahaha OTM. He's a Boss Tweed kinda guy.

thanks universe

Stan announces a new cartoon co-developed with a public figure every second Wednesday at 3pm, this will never actually happen

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_EBqnetSEcQw/SeX7o5kcL-I/AAAAAAAAAHQ/-gOKdn8nzec/Stan%20Lee%20realistic%20caricature%20as%20carnival%20barker.jpg

stan is doing manga now. he's new wave.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Heroman_Vol_1.png

Joseph Carter "Joey" Jones (ジョセフ・カーター・“ジョーイ”・ジョーンズ, Josefu Kātā "Jōi" Jōnzu?)
Voiced by: Mikako Komatsu
Joey is an orphaned boy living with his grandmother, working at a restaurant to make ends meet. His life changes when he fixes the Heybo that he names Heroman. He is able to issue commands to Heroman via a controller that forms a gauntlet around his left hand. This controller also gives Joey his own powers, such as super speed and the ability to create force fields.
The name "Joey Jones" was chosen by Minami at the behest of Stan Lee to choose a name that had identical initials, much like various other Marvel protagonists such as Peter Parker.[11]
Komatsu was chosen to voice Joey because of her boyish voice and the difficulty in finding a young man that had the voice the production team wanted.[11]

With great robot, comes great... uh....

was flipping though the first issue of Kirby's Silver Star - had totally forgotten this contains a dozen-page long full-color backup feature by Ditko called "The Mocker" which basically looks exactly like 60s-era Ditko. 1981, I think...?

cool find!

d'oh, number 2, not number 1

"According to Ditko1, he first started working with the concept in 1981, drawing the first ten page story and working on the breakdowns for the next episode. The page story found its way to Pacific Comics and was published in Jack Kirby's Silver Star #2. Ditko was not aware of this sale and was not pleased with the format. (The story was meant to be magazine size, or twice the size of a comic book page; and had been colored when it was meant to be published in black and white.) The original story (restored to black and white) and the others were published in a 1990 graphic novel published by Ditko and longtime partner Robin Snyder.

The originally intended format of the book influences much of its look. Planned to be published in a black and white magazine, the art is a study in various methods of adding texture with pen and ink. The Mocker's special power is signified by squiggling thin lines, various characters have an affinity for pinstripe suits or polka dots or have distinctive facial hair patterns that display the various skills Ditko had mastered in decades of comic work. The book was never published in magazine size, however, so the sixteen panels per page are slightly cramped.

Much of the dialogue and especially contents of thought balloons is in sentence fragments. The basic concepts floating around in the characters mind are tied together with commas, partly to display the characters' confused, unfocused, state, and quite possibly partly due to economy of space in the small panels."

color is actually really nice

http://carlscomix.com/when-i-got-a-letter-from-steve-ditko/
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Screen-Shot-2015-06-28-at-5.02.16-PM.png
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Screen-Shot-2015-06-28-at-5.02.34-PM.png

!

love

Thank you for inventing Spider-Man.

90 was a hell of a run.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/steve-ditko-dead-spider-man-creator-was-90-1125489

oh no!

v sad news. his run on spider-man is one of the all-time great works in comics.

steve wilkos still lives

it's kind of wild how much some of the self published stuff resembles Ben Garrison cartoons (though better drawn, obv)

https://blogintomystery.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/awc.jpg

Sending my psychic condolences up the I-5 to Bellingham.

RIP to a truly gifted lunatic

reading the obit now and

Ditko maintained a Manhattan studio until his death, where he continued to write and draw, though how much, and what unpublished material remains, is unknown.

a) why not ask Snyder, his publisher and only trusted collaborator of the last three decades, rather than include this vagueness

b) "how much" can be pretty easily estimated by actually adding up his output. it's very clear that he thought what he published was what was fit to publish, and he's generally been putting out around 100pp a year (!) since getting really busy again this decade.

Comic book creator Graig Weich of [...]

"He wasn't 90. He seemed like a young, cool artist who happened to have an aged body," Weich tells THR. Weich recalls asking Ditko about his relationship with Lee, and says the artist looked down and told him, "We're peaceful."

wtf at using a repugnant scam merchant as your source!!? unchecked and without caveat!

also eeesh, Ditko's latest Kickstarter may have finished the day he died. that's some 'Schulz dying the day his final Sunday was shipping' timing

^ belay that, I misread the "two days ago" bit

Graig is promoting his own new comic in a selfie-stick-shot youtube video titled "STEVE DITKO FOUND DEAD AT 90 - CO-CREATOR OF SPIDER-MAN & DOCTOR STRANGE IN NYC Dies NOT STAN LEE"

May we all have “NOT STAN LEE” on our gravestones

I think he had a bigger impact on me than any other artist of any kind. Meant a massive amount to me.

I'm curious about what will happen to all his unseen art in his studio, I assume it'll never be seen, I though he might have burned or shredded the stuff already because he really didn't want people seeing it, some said there was unseen Dr Strange stuff that were like an unabridged version of the ending he did to his run. Still keeping my fingers crossed that he changed his mind and will let people show it all.

I thought that Graig guy is the one who broke the news?

That doesn't mean you take his reportage of other peoples' words at face value, after the last 20 years of his reportage.

(and the disgusting motivation behind it! is it likely that Snyder had been notified by the NYPD, and knew that Ditko wouldn't want the news publicised?)

Mike Dean obit at TCJ.

aww rip steve

one of the all-time greats both in artistic achievement and total swivel-eyed lunacy

after the last 20 years of his reportage.

― kelp, clam and carrion (sic), Saturday, July 7, 2018 4:10 AM

Is he that well known? I never heard of him until now.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iH7JIpCRKg4/V1Qs3Iv3CwI/AAAAAAAAQQM/uh6EeC4CopM_AjM6g49UUj4XnKfH-MCOgCLcB/s1600/ditko_spiderman_creation.jpg

<3

I thought you meant Weich's reportage.

I really liked this Jeet Heer thread about Ditko and Kirby, also the Gail Simone thread he links to

1. This is a good tweet in a good thread & I want to expand on this point. Kirby & Kirby both had styles that were curiously at odds with their politics. https://t.co/5kJacKlCwB

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 7, 2018