Ditko At Charlton - 1971!

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. 

More to come next week when we explore what Gill and Ditko serve up in 1972. 

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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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Man-Gods And Mad Monsters!

This October it's all about gods and monsters. Expect a ton of coverage of Steve Ditko as has been the focus all year. This month the spotlight is on his work at Charlton. More below. 

But also on the schedule is Charlton's magnificent Hercules series by Joe Gill and Sam Glanzman. These talents gave us the most reliable telling of the classic Hercules myths that I'm aware of. 

Hercules is almost certainly the most famous name in Greek mythology and certainly worthy of a thorough consideration. Before I re-read those Charlton tales, I took a closer look at the classic myths themselves as retold by Robert Graves in his exhaustively researched collection. That fresh information made the reading of the Charlton tales even more entertaining.

But on the weekends, it will be about Steve Ditko, often partnered with that same Joe Gill. Famous Comics have collected these Ditko classics year by year with five handsome and sometimes hefty collections already available. I'm eager to dive into these handsome books brimming with vintage Charlton material by Ditko and Gill, and a few other Charlton talents. 

Look for more than a few surprises as this Halloween month tumbles along. 

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Clocking The Watchmen!

Now having defended DC's efforts to develop the Watchmen universe, I must say that Doomsday Clock by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank is an uneven effort. Frank's artwork is outstanding as usual and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with writing by Johns. Both do a remarkable job of echoing the classic Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, but the final effort feels watered down. It's a clever trick to have some of the Watchmen characters (or revised versions at least) enter a more familiar DC universe, but adding Superman and Batman to the mix is well done but falls short of expectations. Frankly, we only get Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias and Rorscach. No Comedian, no Nite Owl, and no Silk Spectre. That's a mistake, particularly in regard to the final two. The story reads quickly, perhaps faster than I expected. Instead of the pirate tale traveling alongside the main plot, we get references to obscure DC character Nathaniel Dusk. This is a rocking good story, but put up against the classic original, it lacks the gravity and heft. Still a good read though. 

Here are the covers. 

 

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Debating The Watchmen!

What exactly is the controversy with DC Comics using The Watchmen as an element of a reborn-rebooted-revised-rehashed DC Universe. If you don't appreciate the "purity" of The Watchmen franchise being sullied by association with mere superheroes, then okay. Get mad, don't buy any of those issues and re-read the original story yet again and savor an excellent bit of storytelling. But why the outrage?

Many seem to suggest it's immoral for DC to use these characters as they desire. I'm not aware they need the permission of the creators to do with these characters as they desire, they own them, but they have been gracious in the past and asked both Moore and Gibbons to weigh in on any future plans. The characters have proven to be successful, so it's obvious why DC wants to market them, it's the nature of business. From what I can gather DC has lived up to their side of the bargain struck many decades ago with Moore and Gibbons. That the deal didn't work out exactly like Moore anticipated is not DC's fault. The flaw in Moore's reasoning is that The Watchmen proved to be more successful than anticipated. Shucks what a problem to have since Moore gets a cut of all sales.

Let me be clear. Comic book creators in the past have been royally screwed by comic book companies and famously so. Characters worth millions if not billions have been harvested and their creators have gotten little if any recompense for their dutiful and diligent effort. Companies screw people all the damn time, it's one of the more repulsive aspects to the celebrated capitalism everyone gets giddy about when the stock market tickers start buzzing. Winners and losers, part of the great game, and at least part of the target of the story told by Moore and Gibbons in their remarkable adventure.

But that said, Moore and Gibbons are not among those creators who have been screwed. They were lucky enough to come along when contracts were more fair if not ideal and they have reaped significant profit from their efforts, and Moore could've have gotten much more if he'd been more agreeable to what plans the publisher might've had. He's entitled to believe what he wants, but no one can say he's been screwed out of any money. And it's rich that folks suggest Moore of all creators is a victim of this kind of pilfering since he's made a sizeable portion of his post-Watchmen career scraping out the enormous bins of the public domain and using characters and situations originally developed by such giants as Verne, Rohmer, Baum, Stevenson, Dickens, Wells, Haggard, among countless others. I don't condemn him for these borrowings, I just find it rich that he is put up as a victim when he's a pilferer just like so many of us can be.

Now DC has incorporated The Watchmen into the broader DCU. So what? Why is everyone outraged? God, people get over it already. DC wants to sell comics and they've been rather poor at it in recent years despite making every effort to entice folks to drop five bucks for a slender slick and quickly consumed comic (could that be the problem). If they want to forestall their inevitable doom by using all the tools they have then so be it. There's nothing in the arrangement with Moore and Gibbons that suggests they cannot do it that I'm aware of.

So folks might think it's a bankrupt move creatively, but I cannot for the life of me get why folks think it's immoral. The Watchmen were hatched on the bones of characters from Charlton and elsewhere. Steve Ditko, Pete Morisi, Pat Boyette, Jim Aparo, and Joe Gill get no cut of the profits when characters clearly inspired by their stories featuring Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Nightshade, Thunderbolt, and the Question. Gibbons and Moore cobbled "new" heroes on the heap of the classics and made a damn fine comic. Great! They cut a dandy deal with DC for a piece of the action. Fantastic! Where's the particular and distinctive immorality on DC's part here?

Help me to understand.

More Watchmen tomorrow. 

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