Blake: You once visited Ditko in his studio and have said, "It was really informative." Why?

Jim: 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.

Blake: What of Ditko's work was an influence on yours?

Jim: I never tried to emulate his artwork. It was more in my storytelling. I picked up on his quiet moments; times where the characters were reflecting and subtler emotion was being exhibited. When Peter Parker was having trouble with his girlfriend, you could tell how down he was just by the way Ditko drew him sitting in a chair. No one did it better than that.

Blake: In Comic Book Artist #2, you said, "Compositionally, I was more influenced by Kirby, but the spirit was more Ditko." Where's a specific example of where we'd see Ditko in your work?

Jim: My writing was more influence by Steve that any other cartoonist around. He was never near the continuity of the Marvel universe. They’d occasionally say to him, ‘Put Thor in the background going by,’ and they’d probably have to send him a copy of what Thor looked like. I took more from the cosmic part of Steve’s writing, like the Dormammu and Eternity material. Nobody, not even Kirby, was doing anything like that. Kirby was bringing you Gods that were spectacular. Steve was bringing you abstract concepts in a persona and giving them personality. Eternity was everything thing there was, and he’s right there talking to you.

Steve was one of the first artists to stretch out eight page stories over six months to a year. He was tempting you to come back. There was a deluge of it after him. He was confident enough in what he was doing that he’d say, ‘We’ll take this at a nice, slow pace. Come enjoy the ride with me.’

I wasn’t a big fan of The Creeper, for example. Stan Lee was a grounding element for Steve. The Creeper never had the human feel. I actually enjoyed Mr. A. much better. I enjoyed his right-wing outlook that no one else was doing at that time. That scene where The Question leaves the guy to drown in the sewer is still with me years later. It’s completely opposite of my own grain, having more of a liberal bent. As an artist, it was the craftsmanship that I admired.

Blake: What, from an artist's perspective, worked about Dr. Strange?

Jim: What he did artistically was break everything down to its most elementary elements, much the way Kirby did. Kirby went cubist, and Ditko didn’t go realistic, but he kept a tight rein on the anatomy, the gravity and the composition, but the things he was drawing were as minimalist as he could. His artwork didn’t try to get into rendering things up so you would believe it was real. You look at the background of those dimensions and a lot of them are just little swipes of lines that would give you an indication of something that’s not delineated at all.

Blake: Where do you see Ditko's influences - Meskin, Robinson, Eisner, Kubert - in his work?

Jim: He was the only one doing “light” in horror stories. Mort Meskin had worked very heavily with darks and lights, but Ditko was pretty much on his own at that time. I remember a story about an older man in one of these stories and every scene was hit by a light source; you could see where the light was coming from. You’d get that occasionally with Kubert, but no one else was doing that, unless there was an explosion in which case everyone was a silhouette. Steve was using light as a storytelling aspect.

Kubert and Ditko, back in the 1950s, had the same anatomy, the same weight of the characters. George Bridgman’s book is the best for teaching artists how gravity works on the human body. With Infantino’s work (to a lesser extent with Kane), gravity had nothing to do with them. They were eloquent hieroglyphics dancing around up there. Ditko’s characters looked like they stood on ground. Even when he had Spider-Man jumping around doing all those acrobatics, you could see he was eventually going to fall. When Adam Strange jumped off and flew around with his jetpack, there was no inertia there. It was impossible dance - beautiful, but without any reality.

Blake: Who else has Steve influenced?

Jim: In terms of whom he influenced, because of his unique style, you can see elements of his work but not like all the Neal Adams or Jim Lee clones. I could see it in a number of Neal Adams’ jobs. There would be a panel in Neal’s Batman or Green Lantern material that would have one of those quiet moments that Steve was so good at. The art may not look anything like Steve’s, but you could see where he left a mark for that artist to say, ‘Yeah, let me do it something like this.’ I know Neal was aware of Steve’s work and liked it. I don’t know of any professional out there who didn’t like Ditko’s work.

Blake: Any interactions with Steve over the years?

Jim: In our encounters since, Steve and I never broached politics. I wasn’t going to let it get in the way of our relationship. We weren’t friends, but we’ve always been cordial. He was surprised and thanked me when I dedicate the story with the Thing and Dr. Strange in Marvel Fanfare. He’s a very sweet man.