Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

Just watched all of them. Fascinating and actually kind of moving. Ditko comes off as a tragic figure. Makes me want to read all his stuff.

That was great. I'm doing readings on ekphrasis at the moment and the struggles of artists vs poets in the 19th century over whose half of an illustrated text was supreme. I found it fascinating that Ditko and Stan Lee had exactly the same battle going on. Why can we not just agree that an idea (thought; text) is incomplete until it is drawn?

I am of that particular nerd sect that devours everything I can get my hands on that's Ditko. At this point all I'm really missing is the Marvel monster, supernatural, and sci fi stuff, Charlton non-superhero stuff, and the unreadable independantly published stuff---and there is TONS of it, and yes, some of it is pretty bad, but there's just something incredibly compelling about the way he draws and tells stories. The Charlton superhero stuff is very underrated, in particular. All those Blue Beetle and Question stories. He even made mediocre Captain Atom stories readable. I'd love to see a Konga and Gorgo collection.

Kirby is typically given the credit for everythng Hulk, but Ditko's Hulk stories were some of the best!

And yes, his politics were wacky, but I like being a Ditko anthropologist and finding the secret (and not so secret) Ayn Rand agenda in some of those earlier stories.

Ditko continues to be totally mesmerizing!

Alas, even agreeing that an idea is incomplete until it is drawn may not be enough of a concession for Mr. Ditko. I wonder what attribution he would have accepted? "Spider-man, created by Steve Ditko, inspired by Stan Lee"? That hardly seems right to me either.