Who is Steve Ditko? Why Steve Ditko?

The Question #1 - he's the co-creator, and original artist, of the Amazing Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Mr. A, Captain Atom, The Question, Shade the Changing Man, and a host of other memorable characters in the last 53 years.

The Question #2 - we highlight him here today because this April marks the 10th year that I began my "Ditko Looked Up" web site.

We are reminded that the Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus, on shelves April 25th (the week before Spider-Man 3 hits movie theatres) features a 1500-word essay written by yours truly.

The Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus can be ordered from Amazon.com in its two versions - the comic book store version, or the Alex Ross variant cover version.

We also wanted to share two other stories. The first is the story of the photo above. It was taken by Eric Stanton - the fame fetish cartoonist - in 1959 when Ditko shared a Manhattan studio with Stanton back in the late 1950s to mid 1960s. It's a series of three from the same "session" that are out there. The first one appeared in a Ditko feature in the L.A. Times back when the first Spider-Man movie appeared, the second featured on the front of my Ditko web site.

I think the novelty of "Ditko - the unsung, unpaid, artist of Spider-Man" wore off during the second movie's press run, even with the movie featuring a character that was a play on Ditko's last name, so I doubt we'll see another round of Ditko articles, even though yet another creation of Ditko's is featured - the villain, the Sandman.

The photo is interesting for many reasons. In the room at that moment, surrounding Ditko, is four pieces of artwork, all from Marvel Comics, all in various stages of finish. In the other photo on my Ditko web site, Ditko's holding what looks like a brush over what seems to be an unfinished cover in front of him. The interesting part? All four pieces are by famed Cracked artist, John Severin (the first person to name all four pieces gets a no-prize from no-one!).

Upon my pointing this out, an acquaintance wrote John, who didn't remember Ditko ever ghosting him, but...

How did Ditko get a hold of those two completely finished covers? Were they stats just collected from the Marvel offices? And what about the two black-and-white pieces? Did Severin, or someone at Marvel, just give them to Ditko, so Ditko could practice / observe Severin's work? Ditko's work during 1960 - his inking - does have certain elements of Severin in it, but...

Also, notice all the books / pictures of arms and anatomy. Ditko clearly studied the human form in great depth. When I interviewed artist Jim Starlin for my upcoming Steve Ditko book for Fantagraphics, Jim told me:

"The World’s Fair was going on in Queens when I visited Ditko in his studio in 1964. Ditko let me come over and it was the first time I had seen a cartoonist’s lair. He had a board up that had on it what the next few issues of Spider-Man were going to be, and the few before. There were notes on the board like, 'Joe. Guy named Joe.'

Steve’s got a formula for doing clothing. It’s abstract lines that work off into the folds. He had notebooks that he could go to, and if he needed to draw an arm in a sleeve at any position, he had a notebook just for sleeves. These were his drawings, most times just a pen stroke or two. This was probably one of the few things Steve took the easiest way out he could, but it was amazing the science that he had put together on how to do that. I had a feeling he had done them some time ago because the clothes were out of style. He had 1950s bent to his fashion back then. When everyone else was wearing jeans, everyone at Peter Parker’s high school was wearing baggy pants. I went back and tried to do the same thing, but never managed.

He would show me how to do an ink line, but it was mostly his quiet professionalism that impressed and willingness to share it. There were books in the studio, but very little of his art or anything else for that matter. I don’t think Steve was ever a fan of what he did, just dedicated to his craft."

The picture above would have been the same studio that Starlin would have visited. Too bad we only get a couple of views, as I'm sure (certainly with a studio-mate like Eric Stanton) the rest of the studio would have been equally as fascinating.

Join us here Thursday for the second Steve Ditko I'd like to share - my visit to Steve's studio a couple of months after 9/11.