Ditko At Charlton - 1972!

This Is How It Is - Ditko at Charlton 1972 is a bigger collection of vintage comic book stories than the previous volume -- three hundred and thirty pages or more, a cool one hundred pages more than the 1971 tome. All the stories in this one are written by Joe Gill and drawn by Steve Ditko. We get the usual gaggle of ghosts and mobs of monsters afflicting normal folks, many of whom deserve their torment. We have stories from Ghostly Haunts hosted by Winnie the Witch, Ghostly Tales hosted by Mr. Dedd, Haunted hosted by Impy, Ghost Manor hosted by Mr. Bones, and The Many Ghost of Dr. Graves hosted by the titular M.T. Graves himself. There's a lot of a vintage Charlton goodness here, classic stories told by two veterans. Ditko's art has become a bit more rigid, though his storytelling is no less efficient. Gill's scripts rattle off efficiently with a better variety than I imagined going into the volume. 

One thing that struck me reading this collection was the absolute dominance of the color green to represent the supernatural. Nearly all the ghosts are green and green in general seems to be used on the covers as almost a secret code for otherworldly activity. Some of Ditko's very best covers are contained in this collection. 

Here are the covers in this volume. 

More Gill and Ditko to come when we visit 1973 next week. 

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