Adventure Comics #469 [1980]

Adventure Comics #469 [1980] features the 9-page third (of twelve) chapter of the Levitz/Ditko/Tanghal Starman series, "Death In A Dark-Starred Void".  This was actually the last chapter of the story I read, as I first got chapter 2, got the book regularly from chapter 4 to 12 and had to later find 1 and 3 as back issues years later.  Terrible chapter to miss, as it's the first half of the origin of the character, and while there's enough recapping in later stories to catch up (as was the style of the time) there was some pivotal information I was lacking.

This story see's Starman, formerly Prince Gavyn, remembering his earlier life as one of the possible heirs to the imperial throne, who after the sudden death of the Emperor must deal with an odd tradition that insists all potential claimants to the throne (marked by permanent tattoo on their foreheads) are to be executed except the one chosen to rule. Seems like a poorly thought out law, but that's what they have.  Gavyn of course is passed over for the throne in favour of his sister, but clearly found a greater destiny after being blown out of an airlock into the vacuum of outer space.

I really like this chapter, Levitz does a lot of world-building, deeply rooted in genre tropes but still fresh and imaginative, and I think the art team of Ditko and Tanghal really start to click on this chapter.

Forbidden Worlds #138 [1966]

The 3-page story "You'll Know No Rest" is one of eight stories that Steve Ditko did for ACG circa 1966, all  inked by Sal Trapani and written (under various pseudonyms, this time "Karuto Osaki") by Richard Hughes.

It was published in Forbidden Worlds #138 [1966], and feature the story of Captain Jabez Green, an 19th century whaler, who lost his beloved wife Emily early in life, erecting a statue of her on her gravesite. Eventually in the Civil War he drowns on a mission for the Union navy, but is cursed by his adversary to wander the Earth with no memory, which he proceeds to do for over a century, indeed until the very year this comic was published, when fate intercedes.

A very nice story, very dense in its three pages and gives a lot of interesting things for Ditko and Trapani to draw. Might be my favourite of the Ditko ACG stories.

Marvel Comics Presents #56 [1990]

One of several stories featuring the Masked Marvel after his series SPEEDBALL was cancelled, Marvel Comics Presents #56 [1990] has the 8-page "Any Number Can Play", written and drawn by Ditko, scripted by frequent Masked Marvel scripter Jo Duffy and inked by Sam Grainger, a long-time journeyman inker going back to the 1960s, but only working on Ditko's art this one time.  Looks very solid and faithful to Ditko's work of the era.

Bit of an odd story building on some of the previous events of the series which led to masks being illegal in Robbie Baldwin's hometown of Springdale. He encounters six men who are wearing masks that are based on the pips of a standard six-sided die, with nicknames to match (Solo, Duo, Trio etc). Actually feels a lot like something Ditko would have done in one of his 1990s independent works.

Solar, Man Of The Atom #15 [1992]

SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM #15 [1992] is the third and final issue of the Valiant series that Ditko drew back in 1992, with the 21-page story "The Power Trip".  Ditko is credited with the co-plot and pencils, while Bob Wiacek is credited as "finisher and inker".

It's a pretty basic story.  At the end of the previous issue Solar has accidentally given a portion of his powers to a man named Bender, who goes a bit crazy with the powers, so Solar has to deal with that in addition to various personal issues like his employer shutting down and disagreements with his girlfriend.

Not a huge amount to recommend this if you're not into the history of Solar.  I thought the inking by Wiacek had a few interesting bits, for the most part the Ditko style of the era comes through, but sometimes it's overwhelmed, presumably those bits where Waicek was more of a "finisher".

Adventure Comics #478 [1980]

ADVENTURE COMICS #478 [1980] features the twelfth and final chapter of the Starman space opera by Paul Levitz, Steve Ditko and Romeo Tanghal with the story "...and Death's Icy Touch Shall Come Searching...".  Following his discovery of his imprisoned teacher Mn'torr last issue Starman confronts the elders of Mn'torr's people and their reasons for punishing him, and we get a short interlude with the supporting cast back home setting up future complications before a final scene with teacher and student.

They announce the story will continue in the Superman team-up title DC COMICS PRESENTS, and so it did eight months later, but without Ditko (or even Tanghal), so not relevant to this site.

A decent wrap-up to a good year of comics, highly recommended as an example of Ditko's commercial work of the period.  All chapters were reprinted in THE STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS #2 [2011], and should be again next year in THE DC UNIVERSE BY STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS.

Beyond The Grave #1 [1975]

BEYOND THE GRAVE #1 [1975] launched a new title for Charlton, and Ditko was there with the 6-page story "Nightmare Flight", written by Gary Petras, the story of a businessman take a flight across the Atlantic to London, only the find himself possessed by a spirit obsessed with killing women with knives and which can only be seen by a young boy on the flight.

Pretty standard Jack the Ripper based story, and typical of Ditko's work for the period, clear and straightforward with some nice use of shadows.

Daredevil #162 [1980]

DAREDEVIL #162 [1980]

Steve Ditko had an interesting history with Daredevil, which is a story for another time and place, but part of it is that he did four issues of the series in the 1980s, all pretty much fill-in issues.  This was the first, with the 17-page story "Requiem For A Pug", written by Michael Fleisher, with whom Ditko had worked a few times on different projects at DC in the recent past.

It opens up with a 4-page scene where an accident in a lab threatens to explode and Daredevil responds as the radiation is distorting his radar sense.  As it does.  One lab guy is so happy to see DD that he says "if anyone might be able to avert this catastrophe, it's you", and sure, you take what help you can get, but maybe Reed Richards would have been a better fit?  Tony Stark?  Bruce Banner? Peter Parker? Stephen Strange?  I mean, pretty much anyone but the acrobatic blind lawyer? Of course he fixes the problem, but after putting on his civilian garb again he collapses, and wakes up with amnesia.  So that entire opening might as well have been "a piano fell on Matt Murdock's head".

And of course the amnesiac Matt falls in with a crooked boxing promotor with a pet leopard, becomes a successful boxer until a demand that he take a dive in the ring overwhelms him with memories of his father.  So yeah, not a very good story.  Doesn't even try to address how he's going to explain Matt Murdock being missing for over a month.  I seriously doubt if Fleisher read beyond DD #1 in preparation for this story.

Ditko's art is much better than the story.  I thin this is the first time he draws the Wallace Wood design of DD's costume, and he does that well, and provides a few interesting versions of Daredevil using his enhanced senses and radar.  And of course the whole boxing storyline gives Ditko a chance to do some down-to-earth action.

Ditko also draws the cover to the story, although regular art team Frank Miller and Klaus Janson also did a cover, published a few issues later.

Marvel Super-Heroes #1 [1990]

MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #1 [1990]

A year after the SPEEDBALL series ended its ten issue run they published a few more stories of Robbie Baldwin, the Masked Marvel, by his creator Steve Ditko in a few of their anthology titles, five in all over the next year.  This was the first of them, in the debut issue of this quarterly title which often featured unused inventory issues from various Marvel books.

"Pulitzer Patty" is an 11-page story opening with a Patty, a student reporter in Robbie's school, interviewing some of the students about hard-hitting stories like the cafeteria food and what they think of the Masked Marvel.  She also gets the janitor on camera, which upsets him.  As you might expect the janitor is a criminal in hiding, afraid of being exposed, and tries to get the video, not even considering it would be backed up to the cloud... oh, sorry, 1990, I forgot. Robbie has to activate his speedball effect and go into action as the Masked Marvel to save the day.

Nice little story, I liked the little scenes of what other students think of Robbie's alter ego, and the emphasis on the civilian life of Robbie with just a quick well staged action scene.

The script is by Fabian Nicieza and the inks are by Chris Ivy, who mostly do okay (except a painful opening bit written in verse).

Ghostly Tales #70 [1968]

GHOSTLY TALES #70 [1968] from Charlton features the 8-page Ditko story "Finders Keepers...Losers Dead!", with host Mr. Dedd hanging around on a quiet beach as the despondent Simon Randall takes a stroll hoping to take mind off his business troubles, only to find an ancient locked chest washed ashore.  Of course this leads to a story involving Spanish conquistadors, betrayal, revenge and ghosts.

A nice story with some interesting twists and good designs by Ditko.  This is also in the brief period where he was often experimenting with layouts outside the standard rectangular grid.  It feels a bit disconcerting at times, but there are a few points where Ditko uses it imaginatively to get some interesting storytelling effects.  Someone should do an examination of that period (which includes the last few issues of BEWARE THE CREEPER).  Not sure if he ever returned to that kind of thing for a full story, but there are a few short scenes where he does, along with other storytelling flourishes in the 1970s especially.

Warp #3 [1983]

WARP #3 [1983] has "A Masque In The Hand", the second of the three-part "The Faceless Ones" story by Jack C. Harris and Steve Ditko.  After a scene on Paragwen's original world giving some background on her quest, and then a recap of the first story in rhyming couplets, we catch up with Paragwen and the Faceless Ones arriving from Earth to a fantasy realm, just in time to rescue the local King from an attack by a bird controlled by his brother and a wizard. The Masque appears in this world as a falconer's gauntlet so Paragwen's quest intersects with the King's interests.

Very dense little story that plays to a lot of Ditko's strengths

The background of this series, plus pencil artwork and more, is one of over a dozen Ditko features you can find more about in Jack C. Harris' recent book WORKING WITH DITKO.

Space Adventures #13 [1979]

SPACE ADVENTURES #13 [1979] is from early in Charlton's reprint era from 1978 to 1984, during which they published very few original comics but still averaged two books with Ditko work every month.  This issue reprints a trio of stories from OUTER SPACE #1 [1968], including the Ditko illustrated "His Own Little World" (uncredited but possibly written by Joe Gill).

Great opening page on this one, with a large establishing shot of a spaceship cutting straight to a classic Ditko fistfight in progress.  The story involves Rudd, the second in command of a patrol ship hijacking the ship to an uninhabited world that he wants to rule for himself, using an invention that allows him to duplicate anything that he can think of.  Of course, his choices of what to duplicate are questionable.

Fun little story, the ending is maybe a bit... of its time, but the road there is fun, with a lot of great things for Ditko to draw, including crashing ships and cute aliens.

Coyote #10 [1985]

Three years after it began in FANTASY ILLUSTRATED #1 [1982] the four part story of The Djinn by Steve Ditko and Steve Englehart ends in COYOTE #10 [1985] with the 12-page story "Riddle Mystery Enigma", inked by Art Nichols.

I think it was a bit of an underwhelming ending for a story which started off pretty promising.  It's solid 1980s Ditko work, but he's not given as many interesting settings to draw as he was earlier, and I get the feeling that Englehart kind of rushed the ending in fewer pages than he planned so he could get ahead to a place to include the character in his Coyote story.

This story was reprinted in THE COYOTE COLLECTION #4 [2007].

E-Man #2 [1973]

E-MAN #2 [1973] backs up the lead story by Joe Staton and Nicola Cuti with a new character, Killjoy, in an untitled and uncredited 8-page story.  Obviously it's by Steve Ditko (credited with both writing and art in contemporaneous issues of THE COMIC READER), and for convenience  let's call it "Killjoy And The Flame".

The story opens up with three single page scenes, as villains Robber Hood, General Disaster and Jungle Jake (and their various themed henchmen) find their capers foiled by a silent acrobatic hero named Killjoy. After being bailed out thanks to the Mr. Hart of the "Foundation To Protect The Guilty From Justice" they team-up to defeat Killjoy, joined by the mystery woman The Flame.

The two original Killjoy stories (the second in E-MAN #4) are a highlight of Ditko's work of the career, a melding of his mainstream super-hero work, his independent philosophical work and his often over-looked sense of humour into a seamless package.  The second story was actually one of my earliest exposures to Ditko, so will always be more dear to me, but this is also great.

Ditko acquired the rights to the story at some point and did a few reprints of it in black and white with a few minor shading additions over the years, most recently in THE HERO COMICS NO. 26 [2018].

Adventure Comics #477 [1980]

Adventure Comics #477 [1980]

This issue features the 8-page Starman story "The Search For Mn'torr", the penultimate chapter of the year-long run on the feature by Ditko with Romeo Tanghal and Paul Levitz.  The first main storyline for the feature had ended the previous issue, and in another world this would have launched a second, but it ended up being truncated to two chapters and a later (non-Ditko) epilogue in a Superman crossover.

Most of this story is taken with Starman, trying to find his lost friend, traveling to a legendary crystalline structure in space, hoping its similarity to Mn'torr's home will provide a link to his people.  It does, but not without some obstacles.

An entertaining transition issue, I think Tanghal got better on his year on the book, and right around this time he was starting his most prominent work on Titans with George Perez.

This story is reprinted, with the other eleven chapters, in THE STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS #2 [2011].

Astonishing Tales #21 [1973]

Astonishing Tales #21 [1973]

This issue reprints the 5-page story "The Man Who Captured Death", first published in AMAZING ADULT FANTASY #9 [1962], featuring an old scientist who fears the arrival of death so much that he creates a device to capture the embodiment of the concept when it comes for him.  Unfortunately, he hadn't counted on stopping Death causes more problems for the world than he counted on.

Fairly routine story, Ditko elevates it with some great faces and solid use of dark blacks for the Death scenes (not fully coming across with the printing here).

World's Finest Comics #251 [1978]

Part of a short run of Creeper stories Ditko wrote and drew and in the late 1970s, which saw Jack Ryder as the head of a security team at Cosmic Broadcasting, this time tasked with foiling an extortion scheme led by a masked figure who gives the 8-page story its name, "The Disrupter".

Ditko did a lot of interesting slapstick humour in this series, which works well with the acrobatic abilities and quick change transformations of the character.  

All of Ditko's Creeper stories were collected in THE CREEPER BY STEVE DITKO [2010].

Marvel Comics Presents #80 [1991]

MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS was a long running twice-monthly anthology series which for most of its run featured four 8-page stories in each issue, with a mix of long-running serialized stories (as long as 25 chapters) and one-shot stories, and occasionally shorter serials like this one. Ditko was a frequent presence in the book from 1988 to 1991, mostly with single issue stories that he would usually plot and pencil, with other hands brought in to script and ink.

This Captain America story is a bit of an exception, being a two-part story, concluded in the next issue, and being scripted by Ditko. I think this might be the only time he did the final scripting on any work he did for Marvel. It's not quite an all-Ditko show as Terry Austin inks both parts of the story, the only time he inked Ditko. It's also the only solo Captain America story Ditko drew, though he did other team books with the character.

"Wargod" is the title of the first chapter, and features a new foe for Captain America by that name, an armoured villain who has just killed FBI agent Jake Bage (yeah, you can tell Ditko scripted this...) and is fighting Cap as the story opens. Eventually Cap follows up on some clues that Bage left about a secret army that Wargod is raising.

This story is surprisingly similar to a lot of the independent work that Ditko was doing in the era, with very little modification I could see it appearing in one of his own publications. There's a lot of exploration of patriotism, fanaticism and ethical business dealings mixed in with the action. Very unusual style for Marvel of the era, with a dense story and lots of dialogue and thought balloons. Austin's inks are pretty effective, a little slicker than is usual for Ditko, but not in an overpowering way like some other Marvel work of the era.

Adventure Comics #474 [1980]

This issue opens with "The Chains That Bind", chapter 8 of the 12-part space opera by the Ditko/Levitz/Tanghal team. At this point we're knee-deep in intrigue, plots and secrets, as the Empress Clryssa is assumed dead, but really in the care of Starman, still unaware  that he's really Prince Gavyn, her supposedly dead brother and potential claimant to her throne. As they stage a rescue of their confederates on a prison planet, the usurper Lord Oswin makes his own plans, involving further betrayals.

A very engaging story with a lot of plot in the few pages it got every month. Ditko's given a lot to do in the design department, with a variety of aliens, robots and spaceships to draw, and some nice action scenes.

The complete Ditko drawn adventures of Starman were reprinted in THE STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS #2 [2011].

Marvel Comics Presents #14 [1989]

Out of 26 stories featuring The Masked Marvel with the speedball effect by Ditko that Marvel published from 1988 to 1991, this 8-page story "The Feathered Felon" from MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #14 [1989], midway through the 10-issue series run of SPEEDBALL, was the only one that Ditko inked himself, in addition to his usual plotting and penciling work (Jo Duffy provides the script). Comparing it to the other stories, that's a shame, since it's probably my favourite of the Masked Marvel stories. Most of the other inking on the character was acceptable, some of it was really not suited to Ditko's style, none of it was quite Ditko.

This is also a pretty fun story. The felon of the title is a mysterious bird creature which swoops down at random and steals various objects, including the briefcase of Robbie Baldwin's father, which has some documents essential for a case he's prosecuting. Robbie tries to use his powers to follow the felon, but a combination of his general lack of control and the sheer randomness of the felon make it difficult. There's a nice combination of super-heroics and Robbie's civilian life in this story, and a good look at a few of the major themes that pop up in many of the stories.

The Unexpected #221 [1982]

"Em The Energy Monster", a 9-page story from THE UNEXPECTED #221 [1982], is an unusual story in Ditko's work at DC.  Of the three dozen non-series stories he drew in the various anthology books, this is the only one Ditko wrote as well, and is in fact one of the few stories he did for the DC/Marvel where he was the sole credited writer.

This story features an alien who crashes on Earth and has the ability to animate any type of matter, and causes great destruction while trying to find a suitable body. Meanwhile, Dr. Bazom is in charge of efforts to stop the creature he's dubbed EM.

The concept of this story provides for some interesting visual ideas. You actually see a hint of the concept in a cover from over two decades earlier and would see it again in a story Ditko wrote almost a decade later.

The story is well-inked by Gary Martin, although the opening splash page (which looks like it was designed to be a cover, with a large space for the title logo) looks like Ditko might have inked it himself. Overall it's one of the most wholly satisfying of the short stories Ditko did for DC. Unfortunately this would be the last Ditko drawn story published by DC for several years (and going by story codes might actually have been drawn several years earlier) and the last Ditko written story ever at DC.

This was reprinted in THE STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS #1 [2011].