http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/695/Trying to define the enigma that is Ditko.
Pretty fun write-up on Ditko.
With photos from his high school yearbook, and some interesting parallels between Peter Parker's high school and Ditko's own life!
I've always loved Ditko's work. Even more his late 1950's/early 1960's pre-Marvel work, but of course his AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and STRANGE TALES Dr. Strange work as well. All in MAsterworks editions on my shelf, in addition to my incomplete set of worn originals.
The first book I read that I knew was Ditko was his six-issue BEWARE THE CREEPER, and SHOWCASE 73 (the last one I first discovered reprinted in DETECTIVE 443).
I also enjoyed Ditko's STALKER series for DC (1975), and DESTRUCTOR series for Seaboard Atlas (also 1975). Neither of which are award winners, but ones I enjoyed at the time.
Also fun were the scattered short pieces Ditko did for DC's 1977-1980 titles TIME WARP and revived MYSTERY IN SPACE, that revive the kind of stories Ditko did in his pre-Marvel days.
Another reason I have a special connection to Ditko is he's from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where both my parents were born and grew up, and where I also spent a lot of summers and Christmases. So alone among comic artists, he comes from a place I have a connection to and am very familiar with.
A bit of odd coincidence, one summer in 1975, I was at a supermarket with my family in Johnstown, and picked up a pack of bagged coverless comics, and one of them was SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL 6, reprinting ANNUAL 1, along with the first meeting story between the FF (from FF ANNUAL 1), and "Spiderman Tackles the Human Torch" (from Amazing Spiderman 8), which is about as great a sampling of Ditko's work as you can possibly ask for! Purchased just a few miles from where he lived, no less.
