Spider-Man '67 - Season Two!

It's definitely a change, but I have to say I prefer this second season to the first. The stories were slightly more complex and had a vaguely more adult feel to them. This is especially so of the origin story in the first two episodes of season two. The art on those was pretty good and the story very much like a Spidey comic. I love the backgrounds in this series, the colors are vibrant and intoxicating often making up for admittedly lackluster animation.

Now after that beginning things get strange. But knowing that fantasy masters like Lin Carter on the writing and Gray Morrow on the art design are at the helm I can't be surprised all that much that Spidey spent most of the season out of the city and in some vague jungle/alien setting up to his webs in plants and weird bat-things. One thing I noticed was that many of the stories really threw curveballs, in that Spidey would begin his adventure normally enough with crime and thugs but then there would be a shift and he'd find himself in the future, underground, or on a bizarre island somewhere.

I consider these adventures to be similar to the kinds of adventures that Spidey would have in Marvel Team-Up in which he'd often venture into territories radically different from the classic big city crime story he's rooted in. The MTU Spidey would travel in time, go into space, venture into lost worlds and do all manner of things bizarre by his standards. This second season had that kind of feel to it.

Here a dozen things I learned watching this second season of Spider-Man:

1. The sky is often green and always dramatic as if a storm is about to erupt.

2. Purple gorillas are seen by the criminal set as effective disguises for some reason. Maybe it's a DC thing.

3. Spidey can pilot experimental jet planes and has ready access to them on a whim, and no one misses them when they fly away.

4. Mole Men are ridiculously stupid, getting duped by the same criminal in two episodes. And they like to gong a lot.

5. Giant doors are common in many alien landscapes, as if Kong himself were on the other side.

6. Spidey loves to swing and swing and swing and swing and swing though the city, often attaching his web line to no discernable object.

7. Villains are most often green, the sure sign of villainy in the Bakshiverse.

8. Peter Parker plays baseball.

9. Parker sure hangs out with a lot of different girls, but I'm guessing he's not a FWB (Friend with Benefits), accounting for that gloomy puss he wears most of the time.

10. Manhattan is a remarkably sturdy cityscape and can survive multiple sinkings of various buildings and even detaching from the earth and flying into the sky.

11. Martians look amazingly like ancient gods of Norse and Greco-Roman mythology.

12. The power of flight is achieved by putting a blender on your head.

Ralph Bakshi produced a wacky cartoon, that's so bizarre that I wouldn't mind watching it again in a few years. The stories are at once patterned and unpredictable. Spidey seems mostly trusted by the police, even admired by them save for the last episode when inexplicably he's seen as a baddie and a threat. The villains are cackling madmen, but interesting looking by and large.

Things happen in the Bakshiverse that require no explanation, they just are. And in the context of these stories, I can accept that. You might even dub this season of Spidey stories his "Weird Adventures" and be very close to capturing the feeling they have.

Next time it's Season Three.   

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Ditko's Iron Man!

Iron Man is credited to Stan Lee and Don Heck. Heck along with Jack Kirby and later Gene Colan all had hefty runs on the character. But a crucial but brief tenure on the series was held down by Steve Ditko. Ditko debuted on the Tales of Suspense series under a Kirby cover when Shellhead confronted the weird menace of Mr. Doll. 

To combat Doll's strange voodoo-like curse, Iron Man adopted a new sleeker armor. Designed by Ditko, this red and gold armor became the standard look of the character for many decades with various small changes over time.

In the next issue Ditko drew a story in which Iron Man battles a deluded Angel. This battle is strangely even as clearly Marvel thought they might have a future star in the high-flying X-Man. 

 

Marvel was getting excellent at cross-promotion of its comics, using every series as a chance to suggest another character to a potential reader. Paul Reinman inked both issues of Tales of Suspense that featured Ditko's art. And just like that, Ditko was gone, but not forgotten. 

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The Merry Marvel Marching Doctor Strange!

Above is the Doctor Strange design by Steve Ditko for Marvel's shirts. The master magician is presented in mid incantation. 
 

A fuller version of this same pose was developed and used as one of eight posters Marvel presented. 

Here's the full grouping with Ditko's pose nested between another of Spider-Man. Other heroes abound. 

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Ditko's Doctor Strange Pin-Ups!

Here's a fantastic Dr. Strange Marvel Masterwork Pin-Up by Steve Ditko. This first ran in an issue of Marvel Collectors' Item Classics. 

Above is Steve Ditko's earliest Dr. Strange Pin-Up from an early issue of Strange Tales. Along with the original there's a glimpse of a delightful Fred Hembeck homage. 

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Doctor Strange Classics!

The Steve Ditko Doctor Strange stories were again reprinted in four of the better reprints from Marvel's 80's surge of Baxter paper titles which were to some extent intended to drive competitors off the newsstands in the up-and-coming comics shops. These Ditko look alike wraparound covers are by John Byrne and Al Milgrom. 

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The Pocket Book Doctor Strange!

These two volumes of Doctor Strange from Pocket Books gather together almost all of Steve Ditko's epic run on the character he created. The covers are by Frank Brunner who was most associated with the character at this time in the late 70's. 

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Doctor Strange - Master Of The Mystic Arts!

Doctor Strange was created by Steve Ditko. Stan Lee said as much from the very beginning of the series. While the Amazing Spider-Man has many fathers -- Lee, Ditko, and even Joe Simon and Jack Kirby perhaps, there's no denying that Ditko came up with the notion of Strange and he pushed Lee to let him do it. The series appeared with little fanfare in the back pages of Strange Tales (appropriate) where at the time the Human Torch was holding down the lead feature. Strange began his magical career in a small way, an enigmatic man in dark hues who possessed a vaguely Asian look and who left his Sanctum to sally forth into the world to defeat mysterious menaces. 

Slowly the strip picked up steam and Strange became more fully developed, eventually getting an origin which made him a selfish American surgeon who sought a way to heal himself through magic, and who is transformed into a selfless defender of mankind. Restricted to only a few pages in the back of the comic and getting only a small cover push, Doctor Strange proved resilient. Eventually after his first fight with the other dimensional menace Dormammu, Strange came into possession of his famous red cloak of levitation and his magic amulet, the Eye of Aggamotto. 

As the series progressed, Ditko's artwork matured and in a utterly bizarre seventeen-part battle with Baron Mordo, then the agent of Dormammu, Doctor Strange became a fully functioning part of the Marvel Universe. By this time the Human Torch had departed, but was replaced on the covers by Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD. Despite his long tenure in the series, Strange was still not seen by Lee as a character who could sell a book. This despite the fact that Ditko had seen fit to crossover his two creations in the second Spider-Man annual.  Eventually the day came when Ditko left Marvel and Doctor Strange. 

In that final issue Doctor Strange was at last given full reign on the cover. Soon after Marvel would adopt a policy in all its split books that allowed the features to switch up covers, but by that time Ditko was off working for Charlton and Tower and other companies. Perhaps if Lee had seen fit to give Ditko's creation more of a push he might've felt better respected, but we'll never know. 

Although he's not even on many and when he is he's rarely featured and is most likely drawn by Jack Kirby, (At least Kirby did a decent version of Doc Strange, unlike Spidey who he could not draw at all for the most part.) here are the covers for Doctor Strange's Ditko years. 

Doctor Strange proved to be one of Marvel's more resilient heroes, and to date even has two major theater features to his name as well as a TV movie from decades ago. Ditko created something very compelling in those secretive back pages of Strange Tales so long ago. 

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