DC Ditko Mystery Tales!

In the late 1970's and early 1980's Steve Ditko turned his attention to work at DC. Charlton was drawing back from the marketplace and Ditko needed places to draw comics, and despite his independent work, DC was a good place to get a check. In addition to some creative series which we'll get around to next month, Ditko also drew many stories for the myriad horror and science fiction comics that DC produced during this era. In comics such as House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Ghosts, Weird War Tales, Secrets of Haunted House, Mystery in Space, Time Warp and Unexpected Ditko brought to life many a monster and creepy crawler. These stories are collected in The Steve Ditko Omnibus Volume One. Actually, the first two short stories in this collection are from 1964 from two issues of Strange Adventures. Then we leap to the later material written by such DC stalwarts as Jack Oleck, Jack C. Harris, Len Wein, Paul Levitz, Michael Fleisher, Arnold Drake, Steve Skeates among others. Ditko even writes the last story in the volume himself, a wacky yarn named "Em the Energy Monster". 

Sadly, Ditko only drew one cover for DC's haunted books during this era, for House of Mystery #277 seen above. Below are the comics in which Ditko stories appeared and the covers are by a host of talents such as Jack Sparling, Mike Kaluta, Berni Wrightson, Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, among others. But most are by the great Joe Kubert who was the master of DC covers during this time. 

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Above is the cover for The Steve Ditko Omnibus Volume One. With Shade the Changing Man getting the cover attention, you'd never realize wealth of weird tales inside by one of the genre's finest. 

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The DC Spirit - Diverse Hands!

When Darwyn Cooke chose to leave the title, it was up to Groo's creators Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier to step in and continue The Spirit. They debuted under a cover created by Jordi Bernet. The stories created by this team were one-shots filled with the light-hearted humor the duo had famously brought to all of their projects. Abandoned was the continuity and while we stayed in the modern world, Central City looked more like it had traditionally. The artist on the first issue was former Eisner assistant Mike Ploog. 

Paul Smith stepped in to draw the next two issues with covers by Bruce Timm. In addition to Smith, Aragones and Evanier were joined by a cadre of younger artists such as Aluir Amancio, Jason Armstrong, Chad Hardin, and Wayne Faucher.

We were treated to some great covers, sometimes by classic talents such as Joe Kubert. 

With the twenty-sixth issue writer Michael Uslan stepped in with artist Justiano to give the reader a trio of stories which returned classic femme fatales the series such as Silken Floss, Lorelie Rox and Plaster of Paris. Brian Bolland knocked out some outstanding covers for this triad. 

Dean Motter took over the writing and was joined by artist Paul Rivoche for one issue. 

He was followed by Michael Avon Deming for a single wild story with a cover by Kevin Nowlan. 

Mike Ploog returns as both writer and artist for the final two issues of the series in a weird story which brought magic to Central City. He was joined by inker Dan Green. Covers were supplied by Nick Cardy and Gene Ha. 

And that was it. The series came to a sputtering halt after a sizzling beginning. But DC was far from done with The Spirit. He would as ever, rise from his grave to fight crime yet again. 

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