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Ditko Shrugged: The Uncompromising Life of the Artist Behind Spider-Man
Steve Ditko was the last of a sturdy generation of American comic book artists who produced iconic, modern day mythology and was among the most influential and original creators of the 20th Century. A prime architect, together with Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, of a universe of heroic characters that took Marvel Comics from an underdog New York publisher in the 1960s to the world-recognized brand of comic book superheroes and multi-million-dollar movies of today, Ditko co-created Spider-Man but walked away from the character he designed over 50 years ago, to never again return to the enduring superhero and retreating completely from the public eye thereafter. Seeking his own individualistic paths for creative and personal expression would lead to condemnation from some, restricted work opportunities from others and a reclusive life peppered with memories of interfering editors; original artwork that had been stolen from him and a life-long adherence to his Objectivist convictions. With the book sourcing a decade-long correspondence between Steve Ditko and its author David Currie, the history of the formative years of American comic books and the rise of Marvel Comics is revealed, illuminated further by interviews with many other comic book creators from all periods. It's an intrigue-filled story of heroes and villains, both fictional and real; visionary artists on zero-hour contracts and one man's artistically productive and diligently uncompromising life.
208 pages, Hardcover
Published January 12, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 3, 2022
Steve Ditko, who died in 2018, will inevitably be most remembered as the co-creator of Marvel Comics’ most iconic character, Spider-Man. In fact, there was a lot more to him than that, which is why this isn’t the first book devoted to the man and his work and will not be the last.
What gives this book the edge over previous biographies is the surprising amount of input from the artist himself. Ditko famously attended only one comic convention in the 1960s, hating it so much that he never went to another. He also never gave interviews, rarely contributed to fanzines and disliked being photographed to the extent that only a handful of images of him are known to exist. He believed his work should speak for itself and had absolutely no interest in being a ‘celebrity.’ He was also deeply reluctant to talk about the past, preferring to focus on current projects. Given all this, it is extraordinary that ‘ditko shrugged’ author, David Currie, somehow managed to engage the artist in a long and detailed correspondence during which Ditko responded to his many questions politely and often remarkably fully. Hence we discover much more about what Ditko himself thought about his work, his collaborators, the characters he created, the world in general and the world of comic books in particular. This alone is worth the price of admission which, incidentally, should be about £35 if you look around.
Perhaps to prove he isn’t just making up this correspondence, Currie reproduces several of Ditko’s letters in the book, all written in pencil in the artist’s distinctive, crabby handwriting. It’s nice that Ditko habitually wrote these letters in pencil. It conjures up a picture of him sitting at his drawing table, breaking off from work to write a letter using the implement of his craft that he already has in his hand.
Another thing that this book offers is well-researched information about what was going on in the world at large as well as in comic books at the time Ditko was working. In the comic book world, Currie has either interviewed or corresponded with a host of people who were around at the time, including Stan Lee, Lee’s brother, Larry Leiber, and Lee’s protege, Roy Thomas. Where people are no longer around to be interviewed, Currie has carefully researched written sources. All this provides real insight into Ditko’s influences, friendships, working partnerships and working conditions. Hence we get more understanding of the reasons why Ditko walked out on Spider-Man and Marvel just as both were attaining the height of their popularity in the mid-1960s. We also learn that Ditko was far from the only artist to have been shafted by Stan Lee’s ‘Marvel Method’ that saw artists doing all the work of creating plots, characters and stories while Lee claimed all the writing credit because he filled in the word balloons.
The book also benefits from a lot of great art from its subject, including a full-page reproduction of the original art for page 5 of The Amazing Spider-Man #33, which remains, more than half a century later, one of the most striking and iconic pages in the entire history of super-hero comics. Personally, I’d have liked a few more pages from Ditko’s other great Marvel co-creation, Dr. Strange, but then I was the kind of weird kid who actually preferred Dr. Strange to Spider-Man. As well, we’re given examples of Ditko’s art from his earliest work in the 1950s through to the highly personal, self-published work he continued to produce through to the end of his life, reflecting his long fascination with the radical right-wing philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of the novel, ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ from which this book gets its title.
It’s these big plus points that kept me reading despite a number of poorly structured sentences, typographical errors and misused words that would have made me abandon other books. Of these errors, the most ironically amusing comes while the author is criticising Jack Kirby’s epic Fourth World saga for “self-penned, dense and peculiarly phrased dialogue to accompany the stream of inspired but unrelentless concepts that emerged from him, editorially unchecked…” Not only is the full sentence from which this is extracted “dense and peculiarly phrased” itself, but it contains the non-word ‘unrelentless’ in place of either ‘unrelenting’ or ‘relentless,’ the sort of thing that should have been picked up by any decent copy editor! This is far from an isolated example. One character is referred to as being a “steel magnet” instead of a “steel magnate!” I can, however, forgive such unfortunate gaffs in a book that is well-researched and well-structured, taking us through the remarkable life of a truly remarkable artist.
What gives this book the edge over previous biographies is the surprising amount of input from the artist himself. Ditko famously attended only one comic convention in the 1960s, hating it so much that he never went to another. He also never gave interviews, rarely contributed to fanzines and disliked being photographed to the extent that only a handful of images of him are known to exist. He believed his work should speak for itself and had absolutely no interest in being a ‘celebrity.’ He was also deeply reluctant to talk about the past, preferring to focus on current projects. Given all this, it is extraordinary that ‘ditko shrugged’ author, David Currie, somehow managed to engage the artist in a long and detailed correspondence during which Ditko responded to his many questions politely and often remarkably fully. Hence we discover much more about what Ditko himself thought about his work, his collaborators, the characters he created, the world in general and the world of comic books in particular. This alone is worth the price of admission which, incidentally, should be about £35 if you look around.
Perhaps to prove he isn’t just making up this correspondence, Currie reproduces several of Ditko’s letters in the book, all written in pencil in the artist’s distinctive, crabby handwriting. It’s nice that Ditko habitually wrote these letters in pencil. It conjures up a picture of him sitting at his drawing table, breaking off from work to write a letter using the implement of his craft that he already has in his hand.
Another thing that this book offers is well-researched information about what was going on in the world at large as well as in comic books at the time Ditko was working. In the comic book world, Currie has either interviewed or corresponded with a host of people who were around at the time, including Stan Lee, Lee’s brother, Larry Leiber, and Lee’s protege, Roy Thomas. Where people are no longer around to be interviewed, Currie has carefully researched written sources. All this provides real insight into Ditko’s influences, friendships, working partnerships and working conditions. Hence we get more understanding of the reasons why Ditko walked out on Spider-Man and Marvel just as both were attaining the height of their popularity in the mid-1960s. We also learn that Ditko was far from the only artist to have been shafted by Stan Lee’s ‘Marvel Method’ that saw artists doing all the work of creating plots, characters and stories while Lee claimed all the writing credit because he filled in the word balloons.
The book also benefits from a lot of great art from its subject, including a full-page reproduction of the original art for page 5 of The Amazing Spider-Man #33, which remains, more than half a century later, one of the most striking and iconic pages in the entire history of super-hero comics. Personally, I’d have liked a few more pages from Ditko’s other great Marvel co-creation, Dr. Strange, but then I was the kind of weird kid who actually preferred Dr. Strange to Spider-Man. As well, we’re given examples of Ditko’s art from his earliest work in the 1950s through to the highly personal, self-published work he continued to produce through to the end of his life, reflecting his long fascination with the radical right-wing philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of the novel, ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ from which this book gets its title.
It’s these big plus points that kept me reading despite a number of poorly structured sentences, typographical errors and misused words that would have made me abandon other books. Of these errors, the most ironically amusing comes while the author is criticising Jack Kirby’s epic Fourth World saga for “self-penned, dense and peculiarly phrased dialogue to accompany the stream of inspired but unrelentless concepts that emerged from him, editorially unchecked…” Not only is the full sentence from which this is extracted “dense and peculiarly phrased” itself, but it contains the non-word ‘unrelentless’ in place of either ‘unrelenting’ or ‘relentless,’ the sort of thing that should have been picked up by any decent copy editor! This is far from an isolated example. One character is referred to as being a “steel magnet” instead of a “steel magnate!” I can, however, forgive such unfortunate gaffs in a book that is well-researched and well-structured, taking us through the remarkable life of a truly remarkable artist.
January 16, 2022
(Really 2.5 stars)
I’m really on the fence about this book. On one hand, it’s an extremely rare biography of comic book artist Steve Ditko, the first to appear after his death, and apparently has the blessing of the remaining members of his family. Ditko is an artist who is almost impossible to know: He was an extremely private person and pretty much gave up on interviews and personal appearances in the 1960s (he died in 2018 at age 90, continuing to work on his comic art until the very end). As the co-creator of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, he left behind a rich legacy of characters and stories which are incredibly popular 60 years later, including the blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home movie, which features both of his co-creations. Ditko did, however, correspond with some people, and author Currie was one of them; part of the book is built around that correspondence, which is being revealed for the very first time. That’s the good part of this book: Hearing from Ditko in his own words, however enigmatic they may be.
Unfortunately, on the other hand, the book is flawed and overpriced ($49.95 for 144 pages, with 72 color and black and white illustrations and photos). It’s indifferently edited and designed, with numerous mistakes (Stan Lee did not attend the first comics convention, New York Comicon in 1964: he sent Flo Steinberg instead; Jerry Siegel is spelled Seigel more often than not, often in the same paragraph); the author is British so all the British spellings are left intact (colour, etc.) when it’s the norm for a book published in the U.S. to use American spellings. The design is oppressive, with type set very compactly (little space between the lines) and long stretches of pages with just text, making for a very claustrophobic read; some of the scanned art seems smeary (including the cover where the fine lines drop out). And the book is really only half about Ditko; there’s a lot about the comics industry (“the Rise of Marvel Comics"), and one chapter seems to have more about Steve Gerber than Steve Ditko.
While there is stuff I didn’t know (Ditko created the famous Marvel “corner box,” making the company's books stand out on crowded newsstands; he left an estate of $1.5 million upon his death, suggesting he may have gotten some movie money from Marvel or Sony, in addition to accepting payments for reprints of his work), Ditko still remains a mystery. No one knows why he left Marvel when he did (he insisted Stan Lee knew), and his later work, mired in his personal views of Objectivism, are impossible to read, let alone enjoy. Steve Ditko will remain an enigma … this book doesn’t do much to solve that.
I’m really on the fence about this book. On one hand, it’s an extremely rare biography of comic book artist Steve Ditko, the first to appear after his death, and apparently has the blessing of the remaining members of his family. Ditko is an artist who is almost impossible to know: He was an extremely private person and pretty much gave up on interviews and personal appearances in the 1960s (he died in 2018 at age 90, continuing to work on his comic art until the very end). As the co-creator of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, he left behind a rich legacy of characters and stories which are incredibly popular 60 years later, including the blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home movie, which features both of his co-creations. Ditko did, however, correspond with some people, and author Currie was one of them; part of the book is built around that correspondence, which is being revealed for the very first time. That’s the good part of this book: Hearing from Ditko in his own words, however enigmatic they may be.
Unfortunately, on the other hand, the book is flawed and overpriced ($49.95 for 144 pages, with 72 color and black and white illustrations and photos). It’s indifferently edited and designed, with numerous mistakes (Stan Lee did not attend the first comics convention, New York Comicon in 1964: he sent Flo Steinberg instead; Jerry Siegel is spelled Seigel more often than not, often in the same paragraph); the author is British so all the British spellings are left intact (colour, etc.) when it’s the norm for a book published in the U.S. to use American spellings. The design is oppressive, with type set very compactly (little space between the lines) and long stretches of pages with just text, making for a very claustrophobic read; some of the scanned art seems smeary (including the cover where the fine lines drop out). And the book is really only half about Ditko; there’s a lot about the comics industry (“the Rise of Marvel Comics"), and one chapter seems to have more about Steve Gerber than Steve Ditko.
While there is stuff I didn’t know (Ditko created the famous Marvel “corner box,” making the company's books stand out on crowded newsstands; he left an estate of $1.5 million upon his death, suggesting he may have gotten some movie money from Marvel or Sony, in addition to accepting payments for reprints of his work), Ditko still remains a mystery. No one knows why he left Marvel when he did (he insisted Stan Lee knew), and his later work, mired in his personal views of Objectivism, are impossible to read, let alone enjoy. Steve Ditko will remain an enigma … this book doesn’t do much to solve that.
February 5, 2021
This book is worth reading, if you're interested in Steve Ditko or comics history. I would point out, however, that it's far less a biography of the man in the title than it is a history of Marvel Comics in particular and DC, EC, Charlton and others to a lesser extent. It's possible Jack Kirby's name is mentioned more often herein than Ditko's.
BUT...
Hermes Press is a good outfit, for all their books, like this one, come with a self-publishing level price point. It's surprising, then, that they seemingly did not hire an editor for this work. Oh, it was clearly proofread. I didn't find many, if any, spelling errors. Not TOO many outright grammar gaffes. But the writing style is AWKWARD. I wrote part of it off to English English laying down on the page differently than (different to?) American English. But that doesn't explain all of why this book is so damned hard to read. Run-on sentences abound, as do parentheticals so complicated that there's nothing to be done with them but swift euthanasia. And the factual errors glare for those who know the subject matter. It's not hard to find out that Ramona Fradon create Aqualad and Metamorpho the Element Man, not Aquaboy and the Elemental Man. And Ayn Rand did not live on welfare at the end of her life. She drew the Social Security and Medicare benefits into which she had paid.
And speaking of Rand, because you must when speaking of Ditko, it would have been appropriate to do a much deeper analysis of how the work of a bestselling novelist who, decades after her death, is still actively DESPISED by mavens of pop culture influenced the creation of Spider-Man. Or how it influenced Ditko's later career, for that matter.
There's a lot of good material here from the author's personal correspondence with Ditko, but it's way too peripheral to match the thematic promise of the title.
BUT...
Hermes Press is a good outfit, for all their books, like this one, come with a self-publishing level price point. It's surprising, then, that they seemingly did not hire an editor for this work. Oh, it was clearly proofread. I didn't find many, if any, spelling errors. Not TOO many outright grammar gaffes. But the writing style is AWKWARD. I wrote part of it off to English English laying down on the page differently than (different to?) American English. But that doesn't explain all of why this book is so damned hard to read. Run-on sentences abound, as do parentheticals so complicated that there's nothing to be done with them but swift euthanasia. And the factual errors glare for those who know the subject matter. It's not hard to find out that Ramona Fradon create Aqualad and Metamorpho the Element Man, not Aquaboy and the Elemental Man. And Ayn Rand did not live on welfare at the end of her life. She drew the Social Security and Medicare benefits into which she had paid.
And speaking of Rand, because you must when speaking of Ditko, it would have been appropriate to do a much deeper analysis of how the work of a bestselling novelist who, decades after her death, is still actively DESPISED by mavens of pop culture influenced the creation of Spider-Man. Or how it influenced Ditko's later career, for that matter.
There's a lot of good material here from the author's personal correspondence with Ditko, but it's way too peripheral to match the thematic promise of the title.
September 10, 2021
A book about one of my comic book heroes was not one to be missed, and I was delighted that my daughter Sophie bought this for my birthday. I appreciate the depth of research that supports this book, and it is filled with many fascinating facts about the comic book industry, but it is poorly written, badly designed and absolutely littered with typos and spelling errors. Dense pages of type with no alleviation give it the feel of a dissertation rather than a book. I have learned a lot through reading it, but was glad to have finished it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews