Creepy Presents Steve Ditko!

It was with glee that I collected up Creepy Presents Steve Ditko , the latest reprint from Dark Horse of their Warren Magazines material. I've yearned to get a glimpse of this Steve Ditko collection since it was announced months ago. It lives up to expectations. Steve Ditko famously left Marvel and his most famous creation Spider-Man after a creative dispute with Stan Lee. He then needed new work and found it at Charlton, Tower, and at Warren.

For a year, from 1966 through most of 1967 Ditko produced a monthly story for Warren which found its way into Creepy and Eerie. He delivered a range of compelling work, experimenting with his techniques, especially washes, and created some of the most memorable artwork of his career. This is Ditko at the height of his powers in glorious black and white.

The stories are nearly all written by the late Archie Goodwin, a revered editor and a masterful writer. So you can be certain the words live up to the art. This is an utterly fantastic package, and at a mere twenty dollars for one hundred and thirty pages of great material is a bargain. Here's a link which gives further details on the individual stories.

I had not realized until I assembled these covers that Ditko's contribution to Warren had been so rock steady. In a further demonstration of his complete professionalism, he did not miss a month alternating stories between the bi-monthly Eerie and Creepy magazines for well over a year.

Get this collection. You won't regret it. Here is a gallery of the issues in which Ditko had a story featured.

Frank Frazetta

Frank Frazetta

Gray Morrow

Frank Frazetta

Frank Frazetta

Frank Frazetta

Gray Morrow

Gray Morrow

Frank Frazetta

Gray Morrow

Frank Frazetta

Gray Morrow

Dan Adkins

Frank Frazetta

Gray Morrow

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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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