THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER
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THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER.
Below is the introduction, by Mark Evanier, to the 1990
Eclipse TPB
TALES OF THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER
Thousands of years ago, back when used books stores sold old comics at a nickel a
piece/six for a quarter, I got a bargin. Boy, what a bargin, but only because of Steve Ditko.
The proprietor of my local shop had come into a cache of old Charlton comics and was
willing to let them go at half-price, meaning twenty-four for a dollar. Sounds like a bargain
but there was a catch: I had to take all of them. That meant taking all the issues of Young
Brides (a veritable festival of Vince Colleta artistry) along with a near-complete run of
Strange Suspense Stories (ghost/s-f stuff). It meant taking a ton of old Western Books, largely
indistinguishable from one another with their Nicholas/Alascia art, to get the issues of Space
War in which one might find the occasional treasure by Rocke Mastroserio, Dick Giordano...or
Steve Ditko.
I said yes, a bit hesitantly. Thirty-eight dollars was alot of money to me at the time. I
haggled the storekeeper down to twenty-five for a dollar (hardly worth the haggling) and
hauled home roughly a thousand Charlton titles, one of everything they'd published for five or
six years.
For a time, I wondered about that collection, wondered who had amassed it and hocked it at
the bookstore for credit. It was hard enough to fathom anyone collecting Space Adventures at
all, let alone continuously, let alone coping with the spotty distribution that Charlton books
had in the Los Angeles area. But to collect all the love and humor and cowboy titles, as well?
I formulated the theory - and I suppose I'll never know for sure - that the books were all
traded in by someone in L.A. who, through bloodline or business contact, had been placed on
the Charlton freebee mailing list. The comics just came every week and this person tossed them
into a closet until he or she needed space for something. That's my theory and I chose to
believe it...especially since, in twenty-plus years since of frequenting comic shops and
conventions, I've yet to espy anyone who collects that stuff...
(Except for the stuff by Ditko. Which is the point on this introduction.)
As I plowed through my newly-acquired trove of Charltons, attempting foolishly to read
everyone, pausing in mid-Cheyenne Kid to wonder if I hadn't drastically overpaid, the Ditko
pages leaped out at me. Coming across an issue that was all his work was a special treat: No
bland Bill Molno art to plow through. I suppose the scripts Ditko was drawing were no better/no
worse than what the others were handed to illustrate. Still, his work was interesting,
his people fun to look at, even when one had zero interest in the ghostly plotline that had
ensnared them.
I didn't know then how badly Charlton paid most of it's writers and artists; how even the
worst pages were probably better than they deserved to be for the money. But you could tell
from their lousy printing, unrelenting catchpenny contests, and ads that were tacky even by
funnybook standards, no one was working for Charlton to get rich. I suppose I paused to wonder
why Steve "Spider-Man" Ditko bothered with them.
The answer, I learned years later when I met Ditko; They never bothered him. A fiercely
private man, who would supply neither bio nor photo when editors demanded them, Ditko liked to
get the script, draw it up, send it in, get the check, and be left alone. And Charlton left him
alone, I suppose, with their rates, it was the least they could do.
The effort Ditko put into the work, considering how little Charlton expected of its other
freelances, is testimony to a fierce pride in craft. I have never seen a Ditko art job work
that looked rushed, "Knocked-out," short-cut, etc., even when - as was obvious at the Charlton
of the period - he could have spent half the time per page and they'd have been happy.
Quite the contrary : On his zillion Charlton ghost stories and on those he drew for the
pre-super-hero Marvels, Ditko seems to have regarded each job as a personal challenge. And if
the script was a bore, as so many were, it was all the more a challenge. It was in these books
that Ditko honed and developed his unique style...the style that served him so well when called
upon to conjure up Dr. Strange's mystical, magical dimensions. Others called upon to put
''magic'' on a comic book page resort to special effects, ''op-art'' pastedowns,
shattered-glass panel shapes, and the like; Ditko did it most convincingly within conventional
panel borders, achieving it all with imagination design. You can see it in this book : Mood
achieved by the way people are posed and designed. Like most of you, I knew Ditko's work first
from the Super-Hero Marvel work where it struck both his fans and occasional detractors as a
style all of his own, something born out no comic book preceddents.
As you look back on his early work, though, you see that was not the case : Ditko started
out, clearly an artist who had seen and loved the work of Mort Meskin, Jerry Robinson, and Will
Eisner. So did Joe Kubert; there was a brief period in which their pages were close enough in
style that back issue dealers have off-labelled one as the other - an amazing (but
understandable) confusion of two men who envolved into perhaps comics two most distinctive
stylists.
Tales Of The Mysterious Traveller offers Ditko at the point of discovering himslf as
he concocted some of the most arresting graphics in fifties' ghost comics. His panel designs
seem almost conservative by comtemporary standards but, in the fifties, they must have raised
eyebrows at many a newsstands. With so many of these in comics in print (hundreds and hundreds
each month), his work could not have helped but stand out. The man was incapable of being
conventional. And of a comic book artist, what more can we ask?
Mark Evanier
Los Angeles, California.
If you have any stories or articles concerning Ditko's Mysterious Traveler work, please E-MAIL me.
You will receive full credit for your contributions.