15 January 2020

In The Company Of Ditko

I noted last that i had been getting sidetracked a bit by the folks with whom Steve Ditko was co-working back in the period i was mining (the mid-50s). A good way to lead into that might be through a few of the stories drawn by others for which Ditko drew the covers.

For example, here's Steve Ditko's cover for This Magazine Is Haunted #16 -



...and for the story, we've got Shelly Moldoff...



On Space Adventures #11, we get a Ditko cover...


...for a story drawn by Joe Shuster and Dick Giordano!


And on rare occasion, we get it the other way around. On Daring Love #1 we get a cover from Bernard Bailey...


...for a tale drawn by Ditko...


Appropriate to the types of tales we've been looking at, it's time for an odd Twist Ending!

That's not Joe Shuster at all.
<Dramatic Fanfare>

According to One Who Generally Knows (Martin O'Hearn), that's actually Bill Molno ghosting for Joe. Here is Martin's article Joe Shuster's Charlton Ghost on his site, Who Created The Comic Books?.

Damn. Even when we get credits, we still don't know who did it.

page art by Steve Ditko, Sheldon Moldoff, and Bill Molno for Daring Love #1, Space Adventures #11, and This Magazine Is Haunted #16 (1953, 1954)

14 January 2020

Ditko Days



I started digging into some old comics to pull out some more Ditko covers to run with the covers to Amazing Adult Fantasy after our weekend binge on Stan Lee & Steve Ditko's work before Spider-Man. However, i got kind of lost along the way - distracted by all those old Ditko pages that kept popping up.

So, covers later - more stories today; 24 pages of Ditko. We don't know who wrote any of these tales, as is often the case from those ancient days.

Before you ask - Yes, this first story is pre-Code...



As you can tell from the top of the page, i rather liked the creepy imagery for this one...
 

This next tale is from 1954. I mention the date because i'm wondering if this was the first story printed with this particular twist...
 

Okay - more Ditko this week, along with some of the other folks he was working alongside back in those days.

Meanwhile, i may actually paint something for the first time since Kirby's 100th. Work is set up, now it's time to find out if the graphics tablet is still working, and if the system will avoid dying if i try to paint.

Oh, the suspense...

page art by Steve Ditko from The Thing! #s 13 & 15 and Space Adventures #10 (1954)