QUICK THOUGHTS ON DITKO'S DEMISE

I've already devoted essays to some of Ditko's major stories, but I'll be culling through his other works looking for further illuminating Ditkoisms. At present I still feel that his Blue Beetle story "The Destroyer of Heroes" is the best statement of his philosophy, but there's definitely more worth investigating.

In lieu of a real Ditko overview, here are some cool but obscure moments of Ditko greatness:

Here's a lively scene from the adaptation of the movie GORGO, in Charlton's GORGO #1:

Here's his tantalizingly weird "The Missing Man" (paging Doctor Freud?)

Ditko's short-lived CREEPER magazine had some great art, but I even liked the character's later outing as a backup feature in WORLD'S FINEST, where Ditko sought to be more self-consciously looney. (It's also one of the few times Ditko came back to a character after some years, which the artist did not typically do.)

The even more short-lived KILLJOY was one of Ditko's few overt satirical works.

And it's been argued that his work with Stan Lee on the second HULK feature was far more important to making the character popular with readers, in contrast to the five-issue, somewhat scattershot Lee-Kirby effort.

And I should make a tip of the hat to Ditko's seemingly numberless anthology stories. An online blog carried this weirdly designed page from a story I've not read, from MANY GHOSTS OF DOCTOR GRAVES #24. Only Steve Ditko could tell a romance-story like this!