Steve Ditko, the co-creator of Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and many other enduring comic book characters, is 82 today. Long revered for the work he produced in association with writer Stan Lee and Marvel Comics in the 1960s, Ditko is seen as one of American comics most influential figures. In spite of this, many readers are unfamiliar with the material he's worked on since those halcyon days and the huge impact it's had on the comics field.
Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania on November 2nd 1927, Steven J. Ditko cultivated a love of comics from an early age. His father's love of classic adventure comic strips of the era (like Hal Foster's Prince Valiant) rubbed off on young Steve, who was also enamored by the exploits of Jerry Robinson's Batman and Will Eisner's The Spirit. By the time Ditko graduated from high school in 1945, he was determined to become a comic book artist himself. After a stint in the military Ditko traveled to New York City, then the undisputed hub of the American comic industry. He enrolled himself at The Cartoonists & Illustrators School, where, under the tutelage of his hero Jerry Robinson, he learned and refined his sequential storytelling chops. Soon after graduation, Ditko found work at a variety of publishers, including Crestwood, Charlton and Atlas (later rechristened Marvel).
Ditko's early work encompassed all the myriad genres popular with comic readers at the time, from horror to western to romance. At Atlas, Ditko worked with writer Stan Lee on various Twilight Zone-style twist ending stories in titles like Strange Tales and Amazing Adult Fantasy while at Charlton he co-created the superhero Captain Atom in 1960. A year later, Atlas/Marvel began to switch its focus to superheroes with Fantastic Four #1. Fantastic's success spelled the beginning of the end for the monster and science fiction comics that had been Marvel's bread and butter up to that point, and one of the first casualties was Amazing Fantasy, scheduled to end with issue #15. Seeing the cancellation of Fantasy as a opportunity, Lee decided to introduce a new superhero in the title's final issue and began working on the concept with his Fantastic Four partner Jack Kirby. When this initial attempt stalled after a few pages, Lee turned to Steve Ditko, who used Lee's idea of a teenage bookworm who is granted powers as a springboard for designing a costume and a character that, as writer Blake Bell puts it, "was the first truly revolutionary comic-book superhero since Superman": Peter Parker, alias Spider-Man.
Amazing Fantasy #15 was Marvel's highest seller the month of its release, and Spider-Man was quickly spun off into his own title; The Amazing Spider-Man #1 hit newsstands with a cover-date of March 1963. A hit out of the gate, Amazing's success has largely been attributed to its young readers ability to relate to Peter Parker's seeming inability to ever get ahead. Being able to defeat Dr. Octopus, The Vulture or the Green Goblin as Spider-Man didn't help Parker get the girl or stave off bullies; often, it hindered his attempts even further. While the basic concept of a teenage superhero began with Stan Lee, it was undoubtedly Ditko who created the details that made Spider-Man such a success. He resisted Lee's desire to include as much costumed action as possible, feeling that giving equal time and consideration to both Peter's mundane normal life and his extraordinary heroic one was the key to the book's success.
As the strip progressed Ditko became not only the artist on Amazing, but also the plotter, with Stan Lee contributing dialogue only. This change allowed Ditko to incorporate more of his own personal views into Amazing, most notably in the form of Objectivism, the philosophy created by Atlas Shrugged author Ayn Rand. Objectivists believe in self-interest and the achievements of the individual - they also believe in clear-cut morality, where there is good, evil and nothing in between. Ditko's increased devotion to Rand's beliefs led him to question whether he was receiving the credit and compensation he deserved for his Spider-Man work; eventually, feeling that he was being treated unfairly by Lee and Marvel in general, Ditko finished his remaining commitments and left Amazing Spider-Man for good with issue 38, published in 1966.
After leaving Marvel, Steve Ditko returned to Charlton and Captain Atom. During this second tenure he created a new iteration of the Blue Beetle character as well as The Question, a faceless vigilante who operated within the confines of the black and white Randian worldview to which Ditko subscribed. Around the same time, Ditko created another character inspired by Rand, specifically the Objectivist tenent of "A is A" - the idea that there is black and white, and no grey in between. Mr. A made his debut in witzend #3, a self-published comic in which creators were free to produce stories without interference from the industry's self-censorship organization, the Comic Code Authority. In this forum, Ditko was free to depict Mr. A's harsh justice unencumbered. The creative freedom afforded by small press publishing greatly appealed to Ditko, and in the early 70s he began producing tracts that expressed his Rand-fueled beliefs explicitly, without adventure strip trappings.
During the 70s, 80s and early 90s Ditko continued to produce work-for-hire assignments for his old employers Marvel and DC, as well as new upstarts like Pacific, Topps and Defiant. He continued to create or co-create characters for these publishers like Shade, The Changing Man, The Mocker and Speedball. He even worked on licensed property comics like Tiny Toon Adventures, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos. But these assignments meant little to Ditko; he saved his enthusiasm for the small press and self-published work that allowed him to depict his Objectivist views, unfettered by outside influences. In the 2000s he ceased working in the mainstream altogether, preferring to only produce work over which he had sole control, alone in his small Times Square studio in Manhattan.
While Steve Ditko remains a reclusive figure (having not giving an interview since the 1960s), his works and characters are arguably more visible and influential than ever. Many of the superheroes Ditko created or co-created for Charlton served as the templates for the characters featured in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' groundbreaking comic Watchmen; Strange And Stranger: The World Of Steve Ditko, a biography/artbook by writer Blake Bell, was published in 2008 to widespread acclaim; and the three Spider-Man films, based extensively on the characters and situations Ditko co-created or created outright, have to date grossed a combined $2.5 billion at the worldwide box office. Yet Ditko doesn't directly benefit from any royalties related to the use of the characters he helped create, and would likely consider these achievements unimportant anyway. He continues to quietly produce his own creator-owned material for a minute audience, seemingly content in the work being its own reward.
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