Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #22 January 2016 | Page 52

Ditko took over the plotting on Spider-Man for his last
few issues, he used a succession of largely anonymous
villains (see ‘A Guy Named Joe’ for example), and
the comics are less interesting as a result. Ditko and
Lee fell out. Ditko, artist on one of the most popular
comics out, walked away from Marvel. To this day
Lee and Ditko differ on who truly created Spider-Man.

perhaps best shown in the hundreds of short crime and
ghost stories he has done, bears little in common with
the world around us but is well worth seeking out in
the numerous archive collections available.

A comic by Steve Ditko is unlike a comic by
anyone else. He’s been working in the industry for
over sixty years. For most of the first forty years, he
mainly did freelance work for big companies, with the
exception of occasional creator-owned projects like
the Objectivist-preaching Mr A. For the last twenty
years, he has increasingly produced his own, undiluted
stories published with low production values by small
press. His artistic powers are sadly diminished, but his
ideas are still interesting, even if I rarely agree with
them.
The more entrenched Ditko has become in his
Randian views the more obviously his philosophy is
revealed in his comics. The work does speak for itself
but suffers dramatically as a result. Ditko’s world,
Mr A, copyright Steve Ditko

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