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 His first tenure at Atlas ended when Martin Goodman discovered a glut of unpublished material and ordered all of it be printed before commissioning more.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.
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.
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.
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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