Steve Ditko

• Born: November 2, 1927
• Birthplace: Johnstown, Pennsylvania
• Died: June 29, 2018
• Place of death: New York City, New York

Biography

Steve Ditko, of Ukrainian heritage, was born on November 2, 1927, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and had a brother named Pat. Beyond those meager facts, few personal details of Ditko’s life are known because he was an intensely private man. He almost entirely refused to grant interviews after the 1960s, shunned profiles and public appearances, and kept an unlisted phone number in his quest to let his work speak for itself.

After studying under Jerry Robinson, the second artist for the Batman comics, at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School in New York City during the early 1950s, Ditko broke into the comic book industry in 1953. Working for such publishers as Farrell Comics, Prize Comics, and Charlton Comics, he drew across a wide range of genres, including science fiction, romance, horror, Western, and mystery stories. His early work includes interior stories and covers for Daring Love, Black Magic, Captain 3-D, Strange Fantasy, Blazing Western, Crime and Justice, Fantastic Fears, Racket Squad in Action, Space Adventures, Strange Suspense Stories, This Magazine Is Haunted, and The Thing!.

Late in the 1950s, while still contributing artwork to other comics, particularly those produced at Charlton, Ditko added Atlas Comics (formerly Timely Comics and later to become Marvel Comics) to his client list. At Atlas, he worked with editor Stan Lee and later with artist Jack Kirby on such titles as Strange Worlds, Journey into Mystery, Astonishing, Journey into Unknown Worlds, Marvel Tales, Spellbound, Strange Tales of the Unusual, and World of Suspense. Ditko became known for his five-page stories included in each Atlas book, spooky, atmospheric tales with a twist.

During the first half of the 1960s, Ditko produced hundreds of pages and dozens of covers for Atlas, and in the process he helped revive the superhero in what became known as the Silver Age of comics. With Lee, he cocreated Captain Atom, the first nuclear superhero, Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange, as well as a cast of villains to provide worthy opponents, including Doctor Octopus, the Vulture, the Scorpion, and the Green Goblin. Ditko’s clean, moody, instantly recognizable artistic style became a fan favorite, particularly in the thirty-eight Ditko-drawn issues of The Amazing Spider- Man and in his occasional work on The Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk.

In 1966, after a disagreement with Lee, with whom he had not spoken for many months, Ditko left Marvel to concentrate on his work for Charlton. Among the dozens of heroic and villainous characters he created were the Blue Beetle, Killjoy, and the Question. Independently, he also created the character Mr. A, who appeared in the adult-oriented Witzend publication and embodied Ditko's interest in the Objectivist philosophy of author Ayn Rand. Two years later, he began producing work for DC Comics, creating the Creeper and Shade the Changing Man, and cocreating the Hawk and the Dove.

Ditko worked intermittently for Charlton until its demise in 1986 and also worked for DC, Marvel, and a number of independent small-press publishers, producing panels and covers for such characters as Machine Man, the Sub-Mariner, and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He retired from mainstream comics in 1998, continuing to work on his own for the rest of his career. In the mid-1980s, his longtime friend from Charlton, Robin Snyder, began publishing the artist’s work in a series of books, including All-New Steve Ditko’s 160-Page Package, Steve Ditko’s Missing Man Package, Steve Ditko’s Heroes Package, and Avenging World, a collection of Ditko stories and essays spanning three decades. Later Ditko used the crowdfunding website Kickstarter to finance self-published works, which were then sold online.

Ditko was inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1990 and the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994. A new wave of interest in his work came in the twenty-first century as big-budget films featuring some of his signature characters became popular. Notably, he received mention in the credits of films such as Spider-Man (2002) and Doctor Strange (2016). A retrospective of his work was presented at Spain's Casal Solleric museum in 2016. However, Ditko remained highly reclusive and uninvolved with these projects.

Ditko was found dead in his apartment in New York City on June 29, 2018. He was ninety years old.

Bibliography

Bell, Blake. Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko. Fantagraphics, 2008.

Dean, Michael. "Steve Ditko 1927–2018." The Comics Journal, 6 July 2018, www.tcj.com/steve-ditko-1927-2018/. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.

Herman, Daniel. Silver Age: The Second Generation of Comic Book Artists. Hermes Press, 2004.

McMillan, Graeme. "Steve Ditko Was More Than Just the Guy Behind Spider-Man." Wired, 9 July 2018, www.wired.com/story/steve-ditko-remembrance/. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.

Webster, Andy. "Steve Ditko, Influential Comic-Book Artist Who Helped Create Spider-Man, Dies at 90." The New York Times, 7 July 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/07/07/obituaries/steve-ditko-dead-spider-man.html. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.