A Touch of Genius - Ditko at Charlton: 1971 is the first of five tomes dedicated to gathering Steve Ditko's output for the little Connecticut company year by year. This lovely book gathers together mostly ghost stories from the titles Ghost Manor, Ghostly Tales, Haunted, and The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves. There are also two romance stories by Ditko for the titles I Love You and Just Married. 1971 is according to the preface, a unique year for Ditko in that all his output for the year was published by Charlton and written by the uncanny Joe Gill. This volume is no less a celebration of that rapid-fire scribe. The duo of Gill and Ditko had birthed Captain Atom a decade earlier and now they teamed up to scare young readers in Charlton's many ghost host titles. The hosts in these stories include the Imp from Haunted (Gill and Ditko did the entire debut issue), Winnie the Witch from Ghost Manor, Mr. Dedd from Ghostly Tales and of course Dr. M.T. Graves from his self-titled book. One of the things I love about Ditko's work on these stories is how he infuses the hosts into the storytelling, on nearly every page we get them reacting to the story they narrate. In tale I was most surprised to see Mr. Dedd actually assume a more human appearance and actually help save a damsel in distress. There are threats from malignant spirits, greedy relatives, long-dead mummies, mad musicians, and tempting witches.
On that last note let me stress the appearance of Winnie the Witch, who had been created by Gill and Ditko for the first volume of Ghost Manor and who would continue in that role in the second volume. This buxom verdant beauty was perhaps created in the wake of the success of Vampirella at Warren Magazines, but whereas the latter is a fetching modern lady, Winnie seems to hearken back to an earlier era of bosomy pin-ups, despite her miniskirt. She seems more of the time of Betty Page than Bridget Bardot.
Here are the covers reprinted in this issue.
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