Steve Ditko's 160 Page Package!

Steve Ditko's 160 Page Package is one of my favorites of his Indy productions with Robin Snyder. It hit the market two decades ago and it was at the time one of the exceedingly few collections of Charlton stories anywhere not featuring some of the "Action Heroes" (and even those were rare). It contains work by Joe Gill and Steve Ditko from 1971 to 1975 when the duo were at a long time teamed to create scary yarns to fill the pages of Charlton's ghost-host books such as Ghostly Tales, The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves, Ghostly Haunts, and more. The tome includes a passage from both Joe Gill and Ditko reflecting on their work together and their friendship because as unlikely as it seems for two men with such divergent personalities, they were friends apparently. There's also a biographical sketch about Joe Gill by Robin Snyder I assume. 

One of the real treats in a Ditko ghostly tale was the clever ways he'd incorporate the host into the story. Some artists were content to have the host pop up at the beginning and again at the end, but Ditko regularly had Mr. Dedd, Dr. M.T. Graves, Winnie the Witch, Mr. Bones (or even Impy who Bones replaced in Haunted) hang around panel after panel and page after page mouthing off giving the whole affair a nifty fourth-wall-breaking illusion. 

These are done in tasty black and white and that's an advantage in many respects since Dtko's work holds quite well in black and white. I have many if not most of these in the original and some in later reprint volumes and the color is great, but this dandy too. Now Steve Ditko didn't create Mr. Dedd, the host of Ghostly Tales, that was mostly likely Rocke Mastroserio, but when Ditko drew him he made him his own. 

Likewise his Dr. Graves is more or less definitive for me, as Dikto took him and often fashioned him into a low-key Dr. Strange. But no one drew the eventual hostess of Ghostly Haunts Winnie the Witch like Ditko. She was demure in the hands of Pete Morisi or Wayne Howard, but beneath the inky pen of Ditko Winnie was buxom and bold and intoxicating. It's like she might want to smack you around any moment if you didn't pay close attention to her tale, and who could ignore her tail when Ditko drew it. 

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