MattBrady
11-27-2002, 05:41 PM
Following its critically acclaimed hardcover coffee table book on Bernie Krigstein, Fantagraphics is readying another hardcover volume focusing on a single creative voice – Steve Ditko. The 244-page book will be written by noted Ditko historian Blake Bell, and is slated to ship in June of 2003. The book will showcase the art and career of the creator, as well as shatter some long-held myths that have grown up around the reclusive artist.
From pre-hero monster work to Mr. A, Spider-Man, the Question, Dr. Strange, and even Rom, the hardcover will explore all aspects of Ditko’s career. The Fantagraphics volume won’t be the first time such a book has been in the works – while a two-volume French retrospective of Ditko’s work was published in the late ‘90s, Eclipse was planning on publishing an Art of Steve Ditko book in the ‘80s, but ultimately didn’t. For Bell, and many Ditko fans, the Eclipse book still lingers in their minds as a large “what could have been” and a slight motivation to put this volume together.
“I do remember some of the ads for the Eclipse book – I was 12 then, so I don’t think I was living my life for it, though,” Bell said. “But it blew up – I interviewed Cat Yronwode for four hours recently, concerning her whole experience with The Art of Steve Ditko, and what she says versus what Steve says, and how it was supposed to be an art book, and it became something deathly personal. So yeah, that’s always kinds of hung over any Ditko fan as the book that was never made.”
With another book in production (I Have to Live With This Guy! from TwoMorrows), Bell pitched a Ditko book last year, and it slowly started lumbering to life – for a while. Plans for the book were scuttled when the potential publisher received word that Ditko didn’t want to participate in the book – something Bell cites as an example of Ditko’s quirks. “I tried to explain to them that Steve is very literal, and just because he says he doesn’t want to participate means just that,” Bell said. “He wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with an art book being done on him, or responding to queries on material.”
Despite the book being cancelled, Bell organized an “Art of Steve Ditko” panel at this year’s San Diego Comic Con International, which ultimately led to the book’s prospects greatly improving. “I was talking to [Fantagraphics publisher] Gary Groth about the panel, and showing him some of the examples I had of Ditko’s ‘50s work, and he said, ‘Maybe we should get you to do a Ditko book,’” Bell said. “The panel went off so well that as soon as it was over, Gary turned to me and said, ‘Let’s do a Ditko book.’”
Bell’s Ditko fascination dates back to his early teens, shortly after he discovered Ditko’s superhero work for Marvel. “I’m not unlike any others who were born around the early ‘70s and found those Pocket Books editions of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange that reprinted Steve’s work – that was my first real big exposure to that, and from there, it was just craziness,” Bell said. “My friend and I who lived in Toronto were about the only 14 year old Ditko fans looking for his pre-superhero work in the mid ‘80s. Of course, back then, Ditko, Kirby, and all the Silver Age guys were déclassé and out of style – they didn’t have the rebirth that they’ve had in the last five or ten years, and any deals who we ran into thought we were insane to be that old, and be so into pre-superhero Ditko.”
From there, Bell’s friend showed him the Steve Ditko mailing list on the internet, and he was off to the races. “Not seeing any kind of resource on the web about Ditko, I wanted to do something about it, so I put something together with a checklist that had been circulating,” Bell said. “That hit in early ’98, and it wasn’t really until early last year that I pushed Robin Snyder, an old publisher of Ditko’s, to have an internet presence. So we did a website together, and we did the Snyder-Ditko website, which was interesting, because it afforded me some correspondence with Steve. Nothing specifically sycophantic, but just discussions about objectivism or the topic at the time. That all came to a crashing halt in last September, so from there, I went ahead with the other book, and now this one has moved in.”
Ditko Shrugged
One of the things Bell said he will explore in the volume are the political and philosophical themes that have always swirled around Ditko, particularly his attachment to objectivism and a Ann Randian approach to his work and career.
“Objectivism is all about the power of the individual, about a free market economy,” Bell explained. “For individuals who are artists or creators, I think it really hits home that they the ones who must be in control of their creations. The whole perspective behind Atlas Shrugged was the idea that creators have to have control over their work and the distribution of it, because, what else gets them up in the morning? If you take that away from them for the good of society, as they say, then you’ve essentially robbed them of any point of existing. So, in Atlas Shrugged, all the creative minds just disappear, and rob the world of that.
“But really, it comes down to a black and white morality – society doesn’t like to make hard choices about what is right or wrong, and tends to hide in the gray. For Ditko, it became quite the opposite – he couldn’t live with that at Marvel, I gather, allegedly, he was promised monies for ancillary materials and merchandising by Martin Goodman. When that did not come to pass, he bailed. There’s never just one reason, and there are stories of editorial interference in there as well, but it really comes down to the philosophy of John Gault from Atlas Shrugged which is that you shouldn’t starve and die for your choices, but just given ‘them’ the most minimal amount of work, but save your work, the stuff you feel passionate about for yourself, and don’t compromise it.
“You can say one thing if the work is of any value, or whether Ditko’s choices have ultimately hurt him in the long run, but he has certainly been consistent in his values system and his beliefs system all the way down the pike. Paul Levitz said to me once that he’s never seen an individual think harder about the choices he makes, and live by those values that he chooses to live by.”
Indeed, Ditko has chosen to remain at the borders of the comic industry for decades, keeping his participation extremely small, and shying away from any public spotlight. As Bell said in his press release for the volume, Ditko will “die having reaped but a pittance of the wealth he could have amassed had he simply compromised his Randian views of art, commerce and morality.”
Since it greatly affected his art and career, the intersection of art and philosophy will be a point that the book examines. “It’s okay to adopt a philosophy or point of view, but when you take it into the world of drama, what comes first?” Blake asked rhetorically. “Does the narrative come first, the dramatic pretense, or do you allow the message of the philosophy or values you’ve chosen to completely overwhelm the work to the point of where you might as well just be writing essays as opposed to sequential art?”
For some of the clearest examples of Ditko’s philosophical works, Mr. A is, Bell feels, the “purest” Ditko produced, with The Question a slightly diluted second. Under Ditko’s control, both characters were steeped in morality issues, both as observers of society, and participants in their adventures.
That said, Bell stressed that the book won’t beat objectivism into the ground and serve as a philosophical treatise on the subject. While it will address Ditko’s philosophies, The Mysterious Traveler will largely be a celebration and analysis of Ditko’s work.
“We’re going to have a lot of fun,” Bell said. “The first chapter will be examples of all eras, back to back to back, and giving readers a chance to see all the art, stylistically, of how he started off as Joe Kubert, or Jerry Robinson influenced, and then developed into his own style by the time he hit Marvel in the late ‘50s. It will also look at all the revolutionary aspects of his work throughout his time at Marvel with Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, perhaps culminating with his best work at Warren with Archie Goodwin – all the pen and ink he did there, as well as his line work and wash work. Then, we have to look at what came after – did the experience of the sixties destroy him in terms of being able to continue upwards, or did the art become cartoony and almost a caricature of itself?
“And we’ll have a lot of pros on board to assist in that kind of commentary – people who really like Ditko in terms of Batton Lash or Michael T. Gilbert. I’ve been talking to Jose Villarrubia who’s spoken with Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, and she’s offered to do an illustration for the book, because she and Alan, when they had their band together, had a song called ‘Mr. A,’ which was Ditko’s very Randian hero. So, I’ll be heading out to England soon – I’ve been invited by Alan to come and say hello.”
Bell’s point of speaking to pros about Ditko is not to get more anecdotes, per se, but rather to gain critiques of the work for specific standpoints. “We’re going to have people like Seth to talk about the work,” Bell said. “Terry Austen is a big Ditko fan, so we’re going to have a section on Ditko’s inking where he’ll pull it apart and see what makes the work tick.”
Something else that creators will be offering are their opinions of Ditko’s influence over them and the industry as a whole, something that’s somewhat slippery to pin down. “It’s easy to see with Jack Kirby how artists after him aped his style, but with Ditko it’s more like a Bill Everett scenario,” Bell said. “John Romita said it best – Ditko’s art may look more on the cartoony side, but because of the strength and uniqueness of the visual rules that he had for his universe, you actually bought into it more than you would than with a hyper-realist who was just trying to re-create real-life or a photo. He never broke the laws that he set up visually, so you could actually sink yourself into his world easier than you could of someone who was just trying to recreate reality.
“Copying that is much more difficult, because it was so unique to him. We’re going to get in the notions of say, how was Paul Smith influenced by Ditko? We’ll get someone like Frank Miller to talk about whether they were influenced or inspired by him, and where that shows up in the later work? It’s easy to see with the aping, say, with a Kirby clone, but how was Ditko’s influence later shown by the artists who his work touched? It’s more subtle, and much more inspirational. That was Paul Smith’s big point that he made when I spoke with him about it – he received inspiration from the artwork to go out and do his own unique thing rather than just aping. Ditko stands on his individualism and inspires people to go out and do their won thing, rather than copying him. He really had that subtle kind of inspiration than what a lot of artists give him credit for.”
Facts Yes, Myths No
Bell said he’ll also keep a careful distinction in the book, making sure that the book focuses on the work as much as possible, and not the man and the stories that have grown up around him, such as the rumor of Ditko being near-destitute and living in a YMCA. The Y rumor is clear example of what won’t be covered.
“A lot of that rumor stemmed from Alan Moore’s comment, which I’ll be questioning him about, that he heard that around the anniversary of Spider-Man Steve was living in a YMCA,” Bell said. “To me, why publish that? If you’re doing a critique of someone’s career or chronicling history, why publish myth that you can’t even hope to back up, because then you’re not publishing the truth. You can make it splashy and make things that are fun to speculate on, but if I can’t get first person recollections, then I’m not going to go with it, because that just continues to spread the myths that exist out there. I’d rather shatter the myth, and I’ll bet that what you find after the myth is shattered is more interesting than these elaborate myths that have been created.”
However, Bell did acknowledge that in Ditko’s case, the perpetuation of rumors and myths is the result of a mix – a small part due to Ditko’s reclusive lifestyle, but mostly the fault of society. “Any time you have a Greta Garbo type personality, you have these myths that are attracted to them,” Bell said. “People love the work, and they attracted to more than just the work. Why are we speculating upon this persona’s private life when we have no solid foundation to back it up? I’ll offer solid information and hopefully shatter some of the myths. If I can’t back things up – it’s the worst thing to do – to continue to promote what is out there, knowing it’s not true.”
While Ditko myths won’t be addressed in the book, Bell’s unsure about Ditko’s participation in the volume, hedging his bets on the side of minimal participation, if any. “I’ll be talking to him next week about it,” Bell said. “I’ll never say no until he says no. If you approached him and come at it from an objectivist slant and guarantee that the project won’t savage his personal life, and we’re interested in doing an art book…a critique of his career, would he be interested?
“Given what’s happened before, he may say no – and that’s one of the questions that we’ll be examining – the experience he went through with The Art of Steve Ditko[/i]…was that the final nail in the coffin? Up until that point, and another point that I’ll expose in the book, he was constantly contributing to fanzines from the mid’60s. He’s regarded as such as recluse now, but from the mid-60s all the way up to the mid ‘70s, he was always giving art to fanzines. He wouldn’t go to conventions, but he certainly had a connection to fandom that few other professionals had at the time.
“There was an experience in terms of someone taking his artwork that he had sent them for nothing, and later sold it on the open market. Did that and the Cat Yronwode experience put the final nails in the coffin to this guy ever considering going near any kind of book? Did that just finally convince him to live by the idea that the work speaks for him?”
For participation from Ditko, everything, according to Bell, has to be on his terms. “For example, he’s doing the Spider-Man essays now in Robin Snyder’s The Comics,” Bell said. “I guess he’s a point now where he feels he’s been pushed, and I stress ‘I guess’ because I haven’t spoken to him about it, but I guess he feels so pushed by this whole idea that Stan Lee created Spider-Man that he’s finally talking. Issue by issue, he’s going through the run of Spider-Man, talking about his experiences there, who created what in a rather cold way, rather than the giantly hyped, ‘I did everything’ manner. He’s doing that because the publisher will let him do anything he wants, and won’t question it, and it’s all on his terms for what he feels needs to be said and just what needs to be said.
“As for our book, the idea of him critiquing things that he’s already worked on, probably seems rather passé to him, and counterproductive. Why spend his time talking about something that’s 40 years old when it’s already there, and I put everything I had to say into the artwork at the time?”
[b]Art Hunt
Given the focus of the volume on Ditko’s art, Bell said he knows he’s got a challenge on his hands. Ditko’s career has spanned over 40 years, and therefore, finding good quality reproductions of his art will be troublesome.
“50% of the book is going to be in color, and a lot of his Charlton material is pretty rancid when it comes to reproduction, as is the pre-superhero Marvel stuff,” Bell said. “If we can get the highest quality reproduction, God bless. You never know what’s going to come out of the woodwork – some interesting things have already shown up. You have to remember that Ditko is part of that whole era in comics where artwork just disappeared – no one knows where it is or where it’s traveling in its circles. I had a guy at San Diego who had been at the panel come up to me and showed me a page from Amazing Spider-Man #9 that he’d bought with Electro on it that had cost him $12,000. I was thrilled to see it, but then the guy ended up taking it home on the bus.”
Bell is seeking scans and copies of original Ditko artwork from all sources, and can be contacted at ditko37@sympatico.ca, and will be speaking on Ditko Monday, November 11th in Toronto in " target="_blank">http://www.ditko.comics.org/ditko/newsbeg.jpg]</a> conjunction ( <a href="http://www.ditko.comics.org/ditko/newsbeg.jpg) with The Beguiling.
From pre-hero monster work to Mr. A, Spider-Man, the Question, Dr. Strange, and even Rom, the hardcover will explore all aspects of Ditko’s career. The Fantagraphics volume won’t be the first time such a book has been in the works – while a two-volume French retrospective of Ditko’s work was published in the late ‘90s, Eclipse was planning on publishing an Art of Steve Ditko book in the ‘80s, but ultimately didn’t. For Bell, and many Ditko fans, the Eclipse book still lingers in their minds as a large “what could have been” and a slight motivation to put this volume together.
“I do remember some of the ads for the Eclipse book – I was 12 then, so I don’t think I was living my life for it, though,” Bell said. “But it blew up – I interviewed Cat Yronwode for four hours recently, concerning her whole experience with The Art of Steve Ditko, and what she says versus what Steve says, and how it was supposed to be an art book, and it became something deathly personal. So yeah, that’s always kinds of hung over any Ditko fan as the book that was never made.”
With another book in production (I Have to Live With This Guy! from TwoMorrows), Bell pitched a Ditko book last year, and it slowly started lumbering to life – for a while. Plans for the book were scuttled when the potential publisher received word that Ditko didn’t want to participate in the book – something Bell cites as an example of Ditko’s quirks. “I tried to explain to them that Steve is very literal, and just because he says he doesn’t want to participate means just that,” Bell said. “He wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with an art book being done on him, or responding to queries on material.”
Despite the book being cancelled, Bell organized an “Art of Steve Ditko” panel at this year’s San Diego Comic Con International, which ultimately led to the book’s prospects greatly improving. “I was talking to [Fantagraphics publisher] Gary Groth about the panel, and showing him some of the examples I had of Ditko’s ‘50s work, and he said, ‘Maybe we should get you to do a Ditko book,’” Bell said. “The panel went off so well that as soon as it was over, Gary turned to me and said, ‘Let’s do a Ditko book.’”
Bell’s Ditko fascination dates back to his early teens, shortly after he discovered Ditko’s superhero work for Marvel. “I’m not unlike any others who were born around the early ‘70s and found those Pocket Books editions of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange that reprinted Steve’s work – that was my first real big exposure to that, and from there, it was just craziness,” Bell said. “My friend and I who lived in Toronto were about the only 14 year old Ditko fans looking for his pre-superhero work in the mid ‘80s. Of course, back then, Ditko, Kirby, and all the Silver Age guys were déclassé and out of style – they didn’t have the rebirth that they’ve had in the last five or ten years, and any deals who we ran into thought we were insane to be that old, and be so into pre-superhero Ditko.”
From there, Bell’s friend showed him the Steve Ditko mailing list on the internet, and he was off to the races. “Not seeing any kind of resource on the web about Ditko, I wanted to do something about it, so I put something together with a checklist that had been circulating,” Bell said. “That hit in early ’98, and it wasn’t really until early last year that I pushed Robin Snyder, an old publisher of Ditko’s, to have an internet presence. So we did a website together, and we did the Snyder-Ditko website, which was interesting, because it afforded me some correspondence with Steve. Nothing specifically sycophantic, but just discussions about objectivism or the topic at the time. That all came to a crashing halt in last September, so from there, I went ahead with the other book, and now this one has moved in.”
Ditko Shrugged
One of the things Bell said he will explore in the volume are the political and philosophical themes that have always swirled around Ditko, particularly his attachment to objectivism and a Ann Randian approach to his work and career.
“Objectivism is all about the power of the individual, about a free market economy,” Bell explained. “For individuals who are artists or creators, I think it really hits home that they the ones who must be in control of their creations. The whole perspective behind Atlas Shrugged was the idea that creators have to have control over their work and the distribution of it, because, what else gets them up in the morning? If you take that away from them for the good of society, as they say, then you’ve essentially robbed them of any point of existing. So, in Atlas Shrugged, all the creative minds just disappear, and rob the world of that.
“But really, it comes down to a black and white morality – society doesn’t like to make hard choices about what is right or wrong, and tends to hide in the gray. For Ditko, it became quite the opposite – he couldn’t live with that at Marvel, I gather, allegedly, he was promised monies for ancillary materials and merchandising by Martin Goodman. When that did not come to pass, he bailed. There’s never just one reason, and there are stories of editorial interference in there as well, but it really comes down to the philosophy of John Gault from Atlas Shrugged which is that you shouldn’t starve and die for your choices, but just given ‘them’ the most minimal amount of work, but save your work, the stuff you feel passionate about for yourself, and don’t compromise it.
“You can say one thing if the work is of any value, or whether Ditko’s choices have ultimately hurt him in the long run, but he has certainly been consistent in his values system and his beliefs system all the way down the pike. Paul Levitz said to me once that he’s never seen an individual think harder about the choices he makes, and live by those values that he chooses to live by.”
Indeed, Ditko has chosen to remain at the borders of the comic industry for decades, keeping his participation extremely small, and shying away from any public spotlight. As Bell said in his press release for the volume, Ditko will “die having reaped but a pittance of the wealth he could have amassed had he simply compromised his Randian views of art, commerce and morality.”
Since it greatly affected his art and career, the intersection of art and philosophy will be a point that the book examines. “It’s okay to adopt a philosophy or point of view, but when you take it into the world of drama, what comes first?” Blake asked rhetorically. “Does the narrative come first, the dramatic pretense, or do you allow the message of the philosophy or values you’ve chosen to completely overwhelm the work to the point of where you might as well just be writing essays as opposed to sequential art?”
For some of the clearest examples of Ditko’s philosophical works, Mr. A is, Bell feels, the “purest” Ditko produced, with The Question a slightly diluted second. Under Ditko’s control, both characters were steeped in morality issues, both as observers of society, and participants in their adventures.
That said, Bell stressed that the book won’t beat objectivism into the ground and serve as a philosophical treatise on the subject. While it will address Ditko’s philosophies, The Mysterious Traveler will largely be a celebration and analysis of Ditko’s work.
“We’re going to have a lot of fun,” Bell said. “The first chapter will be examples of all eras, back to back to back, and giving readers a chance to see all the art, stylistically, of how he started off as Joe Kubert, or Jerry Robinson influenced, and then developed into his own style by the time he hit Marvel in the late ‘50s. It will also look at all the revolutionary aspects of his work throughout his time at Marvel with Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, perhaps culminating with his best work at Warren with Archie Goodwin – all the pen and ink he did there, as well as his line work and wash work. Then, we have to look at what came after – did the experience of the sixties destroy him in terms of being able to continue upwards, or did the art become cartoony and almost a caricature of itself?
“And we’ll have a lot of pros on board to assist in that kind of commentary – people who really like Ditko in terms of Batton Lash or Michael T. Gilbert. I’ve been talking to Jose Villarrubia who’s spoken with Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, and she’s offered to do an illustration for the book, because she and Alan, when they had their band together, had a song called ‘Mr. A,’ which was Ditko’s very Randian hero. So, I’ll be heading out to England soon – I’ve been invited by Alan to come and say hello.”
Bell’s point of speaking to pros about Ditko is not to get more anecdotes, per se, but rather to gain critiques of the work for specific standpoints. “We’re going to have people like Seth to talk about the work,” Bell said. “Terry Austen is a big Ditko fan, so we’re going to have a section on Ditko’s inking where he’ll pull it apart and see what makes the work tick.”
Something else that creators will be offering are their opinions of Ditko’s influence over them and the industry as a whole, something that’s somewhat slippery to pin down. “It’s easy to see with Jack Kirby how artists after him aped his style, but with Ditko it’s more like a Bill Everett scenario,” Bell said. “John Romita said it best – Ditko’s art may look more on the cartoony side, but because of the strength and uniqueness of the visual rules that he had for his universe, you actually bought into it more than you would than with a hyper-realist who was just trying to re-create real-life or a photo. He never broke the laws that he set up visually, so you could actually sink yourself into his world easier than you could of someone who was just trying to recreate reality.
“Copying that is much more difficult, because it was so unique to him. We’re going to get in the notions of say, how was Paul Smith influenced by Ditko? We’ll get someone like Frank Miller to talk about whether they were influenced or inspired by him, and where that shows up in the later work? It’s easy to see with the aping, say, with a Kirby clone, but how was Ditko’s influence later shown by the artists who his work touched? It’s more subtle, and much more inspirational. That was Paul Smith’s big point that he made when I spoke with him about it – he received inspiration from the artwork to go out and do his own unique thing rather than just aping. Ditko stands on his individualism and inspires people to go out and do their won thing, rather than copying him. He really had that subtle kind of inspiration than what a lot of artists give him credit for.”
Facts Yes, Myths No
Bell said he’ll also keep a careful distinction in the book, making sure that the book focuses on the work as much as possible, and not the man and the stories that have grown up around him, such as the rumor of Ditko being near-destitute and living in a YMCA. The Y rumor is clear example of what won’t be covered.
“A lot of that rumor stemmed from Alan Moore’s comment, which I’ll be questioning him about, that he heard that around the anniversary of Spider-Man Steve was living in a YMCA,” Bell said. “To me, why publish that? If you’re doing a critique of someone’s career or chronicling history, why publish myth that you can’t even hope to back up, because then you’re not publishing the truth. You can make it splashy and make things that are fun to speculate on, but if I can’t get first person recollections, then I’m not going to go with it, because that just continues to spread the myths that exist out there. I’d rather shatter the myth, and I’ll bet that what you find after the myth is shattered is more interesting than these elaborate myths that have been created.”
However, Bell did acknowledge that in Ditko’s case, the perpetuation of rumors and myths is the result of a mix – a small part due to Ditko’s reclusive lifestyle, but mostly the fault of society. “Any time you have a Greta Garbo type personality, you have these myths that are attracted to them,” Bell said. “People love the work, and they attracted to more than just the work. Why are we speculating upon this persona’s private life when we have no solid foundation to back it up? I’ll offer solid information and hopefully shatter some of the myths. If I can’t back things up – it’s the worst thing to do – to continue to promote what is out there, knowing it’s not true.”
While Ditko myths won’t be addressed in the book, Bell’s unsure about Ditko’s participation in the volume, hedging his bets on the side of minimal participation, if any. “I’ll be talking to him next week about it,” Bell said. “I’ll never say no until he says no. If you approached him and come at it from an objectivist slant and guarantee that the project won’t savage his personal life, and we’re interested in doing an art book…a critique of his career, would he be interested?
“Given what’s happened before, he may say no – and that’s one of the questions that we’ll be examining – the experience he went through with The Art of Steve Ditko[/i]…was that the final nail in the coffin? Up until that point, and another point that I’ll expose in the book, he was constantly contributing to fanzines from the mid’60s. He’s regarded as such as recluse now, but from the mid-60s all the way up to the mid ‘70s, he was always giving art to fanzines. He wouldn’t go to conventions, but he certainly had a connection to fandom that few other professionals had at the time.
“There was an experience in terms of someone taking his artwork that he had sent them for nothing, and later sold it on the open market. Did that and the Cat Yronwode experience put the final nails in the coffin to this guy ever considering going near any kind of book? Did that just finally convince him to live by the idea that the work speaks for him?”
For participation from Ditko, everything, according to Bell, has to be on his terms. “For example, he’s doing the Spider-Man essays now in Robin Snyder’s The Comics,” Bell said. “I guess he’s a point now where he feels he’s been pushed, and I stress ‘I guess’ because I haven’t spoken to him about it, but I guess he feels so pushed by this whole idea that Stan Lee created Spider-Man that he’s finally talking. Issue by issue, he’s going through the run of Spider-Man, talking about his experiences there, who created what in a rather cold way, rather than the giantly hyped, ‘I did everything’ manner. He’s doing that because the publisher will let him do anything he wants, and won’t question it, and it’s all on his terms for what he feels needs to be said and just what needs to be said.
“As for our book, the idea of him critiquing things that he’s already worked on, probably seems rather passé to him, and counterproductive. Why spend his time talking about something that’s 40 years old when it’s already there, and I put everything I had to say into the artwork at the time?”
[b]Art Hunt
Given the focus of the volume on Ditko’s art, Bell said he knows he’s got a challenge on his hands. Ditko’s career has spanned over 40 years, and therefore, finding good quality reproductions of his art will be troublesome.
“50% of the book is going to be in color, and a lot of his Charlton material is pretty rancid when it comes to reproduction, as is the pre-superhero Marvel stuff,” Bell said. “If we can get the highest quality reproduction, God bless. You never know what’s going to come out of the woodwork – some interesting things have already shown up. You have to remember that Ditko is part of that whole era in comics where artwork just disappeared – no one knows where it is or where it’s traveling in its circles. I had a guy at San Diego who had been at the panel come up to me and showed me a page from Amazing Spider-Man #9 that he’d bought with Electro on it that had cost him $12,000. I was thrilled to see it, but then the guy ended up taking it home on the bus.”
Bell is seeking scans and copies of original Ditko artwork from all sources, and can be contacted at ditko37@sympatico.ca, and will be speaking on Ditko Monday, November 11th in Toronto in " target="_blank">http://www.ditko.comics.org/ditko/newsbeg.jpg]</a> conjunction ( <a href="http://www.ditko.comics.org/ditko/newsbeg.jpg) with The Beguiling.