Marvel Masters Of Suspense!

These two hefty volumes title Marvel Masters of Suspense hold between their covers the complete non-superhero work of Steve Ditko for the company. The first volume showcases Ditko's earliest work for the company when he returned to comics work after a long break because of a breakdown in his health which caused him to return home to Pennsylvania to recover. He drew mystery tales and even a western. His first tenure at Atlas ended when Martin Goodman discovered a glut of unpublished material and ordered all of it be printed before commissioning more. So Lee was forced to slash the staff. So Ditko returned to Charlton Comics where he went on to co-create Captain Atom. 

These earliest stories in this first volume still show an artist trying to meld his inspirations into an original style. Most of the stories though come from Ditko's later tenure when he was working for both Charlton and Marvel. 

The second volume contains some of the best work Ditko created for Marvel, some say the best of his career. Ditko is an artist, not unlike Kirby, who developed fans throughout his career, and they seem to like what he was doing best when they discovered him. I'm no different. But to my eye, Ditko is still developing in these stories, becoming a completely original talent having fused his influences into an original style. The stories by Stan Lee are ideal for Ditko's amazing talent to render the "everyman". These are small stories, almost always tucked away behind a Jack Kirby story about the latest giant monster from space, beneath the sea or the ground, or a product of mad science. These stories by Lee and Ditko owe more to The Twilight Zone than the movies inspired by King Kong and Godzilla. (Ironically at about this same time Ditko was drawing Konga and Gorgo for Charlton.)

Lee was always looking to strike out in different ways and when the comic Amazing Adventures featuring a new hero named Doctor Droom lost traction it was converted into Amazing Adult Fantasies. It was a vehicle just for those cozy Lee and Ditko yarns of mystery and weird intrigue. And for the first time Ditko was given a chance to make a book truly his, even including the cover images. Below are those covers. 

But alas, this comic too failed to find a sufficient following and faced cancellation. But before they could give it the heave-ho, Lee decided it might be a place to try out a new superhero he'd concocted in tandem with Steve Ditko. Perhaps you've heard of him. 

Despite being cloaked beneath a "King" Kirby cover, this new hero in the fifteenth and final issue of Amazing Fantasy (the "Adult" was removed because some fans said it made them ashamed to be seen with the comic) marked a turning point for Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. More on this Spider-Man in a few weeks. 

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Ditko At Marvel - The Early Years!

The month of May will be busy as I am squeezing in most all of Steve Ditko's early Marvel Comics work. That includes his earliest work for the company as well as his later work on fabulous mystery tales with Stan Lee from the pages of Amazing Adult Fantasy and elsewhere. And without a doubt it will include his epic work on both The Amazing Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. Ditko also worked briefly on The Incredible Hulk and The Invincible Iron Man. It is during this era in which Ditko's fame grows with the new fandom which sprang up around the House of Ideas. Even today when most folks who think of Steve Ditko at all, think of his work on Spidey and Doc Strange, if they think of him at all. 

Here are the volumes I'll be reading to get this swift overview of Ditko's Marvel output. 

And while I'm reading all of that, I'll be watching the 1960's version of the animated Spider-Man series which ran for three seasons, and which brought to the small screen some of Ditko's most delicious villainous designs. 

And as has become custom here at the Dojo, I will also be taking a week-long hiatus during May, but more on that later. 

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Children Of Doom!

"Children of Doom" is a story I've examined before, but this time I'm focusing on it as an atomic fable. The yarn of how the story was composed is interesting in itself as it was put together quickly when a scheduled story for Charlton Premiere failed to appear and that Denny O'Neil (under his Charlton pen name of "Sergius O'Shaunessy") wrote it quick and artist Pat Boyette (who typically did pencils, inks and letters for his jobs) handled the rest. It's weird and oddly compelling, even if it doesn't totally make sense all the time. 

We begin at the end with a story told in flashback of how an atomic Doomsday device was made to scare mankind into peace. But a tinpot dictator used other technology to create massive firestorms which were the targets of missiles from space which caused the firestorm to overspread the entire planet. It resulted in mutations of three kinds -- firestarters, blind soothsayers, and mysterious others who stay hidden from the mass of humanity who survive but just barely.

The astronauts who fired the missiles think they can get their ship to Venus where they think they might survive and there they encountered a mutated human, one of the mysterious hidden variety who is apparently able to transport himself across space, and they bring him back to Earth.

But all that folderal activates the Doomsday device and only the weird powers of the mysterious and shunned mutants can save the day for the rest of humanity which hangs on by a thread as the story winds up. It's not a happy tale, it's not really a sad tale, it's an enigmatic fable which does and doesn't make sense at the same time. 

But one thing it is for certain and that's a parable preaching against the dangers of war and particularly atomic war, as if that needed preaching against. But there we are. This story is widely reprinted but I read it this last time in The Unknown Anti-War Comics from Yoe Books. 

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Captain Atom In The Rough!

This gorgeous cover shows off Steve Ditko's watercolor conceptual artwork for the "new" Captain Atom costume which debuted in Captain Atom #84. I might be in a distinct minority on this, but this is my favorite Captain Atom look, distinctive, colorful and cheery! His old gold costume was pretty dang good, but this one was better. And sadly, nothing they've designed at DC (and there have been oodles) has surpassed either of these two originals. The artwork here is used as a cover for an issue of the fan published CAPA-Alpha. 

(Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar)

(George Perez & Dick Giordano)

Here's that classic costume used for Captain Atom's DC's Who's Who entry. The actual entry is by artists Denys Cowan and Rick Magyar who attempt to evoke Ditko's classic feel. I like the way George Perez and Dick Giordano render him on the cover. (There's very little that Perez drew that I didn't like to be truthful.)

(Steve Ditko & Rocke Mastroserio)
But nothing beats the classic. It's been grand fun revisiting Captain Atom these past several weeks. More radioactivity from Charlton tomorrow as we wrap up the month. 
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Captain Atom In Space Adventures!

I first read Captain Atom's earliest adventures in these four issues of Space Adventures published by Charlton Comics in 1978. I still have fond memories of finding these issues on the newsstand, back in those days when grocery stores were still a primary location for getting hold of comics. Charlton was raiding its backlog to keep afloat during a grim time in the comic book marketplace. I fell in love with the charming Joe Gill and Steve Ditko stories and have never looked back. I've since purchased these stories in the original as well as copious reprintings since. 

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Atomic Reactions - Nukla!

Nukla was one of Dell's unsuccessful attempts to tap the supehero trend of the 60's. Perhaps more than any other publisher, the folks at Dell seemed to lack all sympathy with the superhero concept, and so they mostly farmed out the few attempts they had to others, notably folks who often worked for Charlton. Nukla is the work of Sal Trapani, who along with his esteemed brother-in-law Dick Giordano and Steve Ditko fashioned the four issues of Nukla. Veteran writer Joe Gill was tapped to supply the scripts, a situation which is somewhat ironic since he along with Ditko had fashioned Captain Atom, the hero who Nukla is clearly based on.

To give Nukla a 60's cachet, he is C.I.A. agent Matt Gibbs, a U2 spy plane pilot,  fitting him directly into the political fabric of the age. He caught in a nuclear explosion and as usually happens in comics survives and in fact is transformed. Always preferring to wear his stylized pilot's uniform he gives off a vaguely military feel in the four issues of his comic which have him battle spies and maniacs across the globe. 

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Atomic Reactions - In The Bullseye!

The Captain Atom saga stopped abruptly with the publication of the eighty-ninth issue of the comic, but there had been more work done as so often happened in those halcyon days of comics. The story of Captain Atom, Nightshade, and The Ghost was not finished. But it had been plotted and drawn by the team of Dave Kaler and Steve Ditko. It rested dormant until George Wildman gave some fans the golden opportunity to take the penciled story and apply the finishing touches. The group was the CPL Gang (Contemporary Pictorial Literature) who had proven their worth by publishing the one-shot Charlton Portfolio magazine. Charlton wanted a fan mag like Marvel's FOOM and DC's Amazing World of DC Comics, and so they let the CPL Gang do the honors. So, it came to pass that in the mid 70's the final Captain Atom story "Showdown in Sunuria" was at long last published in two issues of The Charlton Bullseye. The inking was done by John Byrne and the final scripting was done by Jon Michaels and Roger Stern. The outstanding black and white cover was drawn by Al Milgrom. 

So, without further ado, here is the belated "Showdown in Sunuria".  Enjoy! 

Here is the Joe Staton cover of Charlton Bullseye #2 which featured the second half of the story. I finally added this to my collection only this year, completing a search of decades. 

The story was reprinted in the second volume of DC's The Action Heroes. 

Here's a poster image by a young John Byrne and Jo Duffy. 

Here's an outstanding poster image of the good Captain by Jim Starlin and Al Milgrom. That Captain Atom was an inspiration for Starlin's Captain Marvel is all too evident in this magnificent image. 

As the fires of Charlton Comics dwindled, the fate of their properties, in particular the high profile heroes such as Captain Atom and Blue Beetle became uncertain. Prodded by fanboy interest the company published a last-ditch effort in the early 80's called Charlton Bullseye. This second volume of the title featured work by fans using existing Charlton heroes as well as brand new characters. This was primarily a showcase for new up and coming talents, but along the way we got two new action hero stories.

And that was it. DC took over the character and after the Crisis On Infinite Earths (more on that next month) the Charlton characters (who lived on Earth-4 in the DC multiverse, albeit briefly) were fused into the DCU. Blue Beetle got his own series which lasted a few years then he joined the Justice League.

Captain Atom proved to be the most successful of the batch, with a run of his own title which approached sixty issues. He too joined the Justice League and was even a leader of sorts for different versions of the team. The folks at DC seemed oddly ashamed of Cap's origins and wrote off the Charlton stories as mere fantasies concocted by the military to hide the true nature of Captain Atom who was a much more grim character in the slightly darker DC Universe.

Captain Atom remains a reasonably potent part of the DC Universe, getting his own title from time to time. I don't follow these new adventures, so the details are a mystery to yours truly, but the images in which his classic look still supplies the inspiration sure can be compelling.

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