Daily Breakdowns 052 - The Art of Ditko

The Art of Ditko
By Craig Yoe
Published by IDW Publishing. $29.99 USD

I was watching a National Geographic documentary the other night, Drain the Ocean, and there was a segment on the various creatures living deep below the Hawaiian Islands. Although connected, the fauna below each island is different, and mankind knows next to nothing about these various species. Some have said that we know more about space than we do vast parts of our oceans.

It's good to have a bit of mystery. I was doing a bit of rereading of Blake Bell's Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko in preparation for this review (and the upcoming review of the Bell-edited Strange Suspense volume), and realized that while that book is a biography, we learn little about Ditko the man beyond his principles, philosophy, and artistic theories and practices. He's comics' version of J.D. Salinger, and maybe we're better for it.

Sure, he still publishes work and he still writes letters to friend/publisher Robin Snyder's The Comics (which I've never seen in any comics shop, ever, but I digress), but that's just one aspect of the man. I can only be judged so far by my reviews, or emails, or online comments. Even a Ditko is not living Objectivism 24/7. He may have a decent sense of humor, who knows?

Craig Yoe has that little bit up on almost all the rest of us, in that he's corresponded with and even met Mr. Ditko. He's had that brush with greatness, savored it, and brings that anecdote here to a book that's in some ways a lavish package for that anecdote. Ironically, it seems reasonable based on the available evidence that Ditko might likely object to his private correspondence being used here apparently without permission, but let Yoe have this moment. It's only a small glimmer of a Ditko we haven't seen, and doesn't diminish the mystery.

It's with this fannish enthusiasm of Yoe's that the reader must accept The Art of Ditko. It's not an art book: Strange and Stranger actually has more original art, and the pieces in this book are a few Marvel and Warren pages that seem to be from Yoe's own collection. They're actually out of context in the book, which is mainly Charlton sci-fi and suspense stories from the mid-to-late '50s, with some '60s and early '70s pieces as well. The contents appear to be some of Yoe's available favorites, the Marvel and Warren pages nods to work owned by those publishers. The just under 200 pages of stories he is able to show, while varying pretty widely in both story and sheer craft, do paint an effective portrait of a restlessly creative artist, or at least they cut away at about the point Ditko's creativity is subsumed by his didacticism.

Yoe's a cartoonist himself, and in his introductory essay (half of which is the aforementioned anecdote), he concisely details a handful of the outstanding stories in the book and their key storytelling choices. "The 9th Life" is the only story here written by Ditko, and it's almost heartbreakingly earnest and wistful. Here is Ditko's dream girl in his dream world, a world that reflects the values he strives to uphold, seemingly alone, in the real world. "Imagination" and "The Blue Men of Bantro" also add shadings to the picture of Ditko as a sensitive, intense cartoonist. In fact, whether consciously or not, Yoe has selected other stories here that feature men out of step with those around them, men in the wrong time or shrunken or cast out. It's also true that one isn't likely to find many stories of camaraderie and contentment in horror and science fiction, but still, the tales do serve to add a bit to the myth of Ditko as the ultimate comics recluse. Consciously, however, Yoe seems to have chosen the majority of the stories simply because they have the most Ditkoesque art in them--aliens and panic-stricken eyes and nightmare worlds of crazy physics. As such, even if the "twist" ending is expected or corny, they're still pretty fun.

Yoe is a designer as well, and while I had some issues with the design of earlier Yoe-edited volumes in his Arf series, this one is pretty, with a gorgeous cover featuring a Ditko self-portrait, part of which is in glossy black ink to pop out from the rest, with a lovely red foil "Ditko" on the front and spine. The end papers, which use a detail from one of Ditko's stories for Eerie, are a smart choice, as is the repeating motif of the inkwell, reinforcing the idea of Ditko as not a dreamy fantasist but one of the harder-working cartoonists of his time.

The only place where Yoe gets off course, editorially speaking, is with his recruitment of several grand old men of comics. Well, P. Craig Russell isn't that old, and he actually has the most insight into Ditko as a creator. Jerry Robinson tells of his experience teaching a young Ditko the fundamentals of comics art. It's nice, but as it happened about 60 years ago, it unsurprisingly lacks detail. John Romita speaks respectively of Ditko's talent and principles and how it was tough to follow him on Amazing Spider-Man due to their very different styles, but he never actually talked to Ditko. Due to their difficult working relationship on the last year of ASM, it seems almost inappropriate to have Stan Lee write the Introduction to this book, but then we readers would be denied this hilarious hot/cold opening:

"It would be dead wrong for anyone but me to write this introduction. Not because I know Steve Ditko better than anyone. I don't. Steve is one of the most private people on Earth. He doesn't grant interviews and I haven't seen him in years."

The rest is respectful comments of Steve's work and, at best, a half-truth about how Steve came to become the plotter of ASM. Stan uses "inimitable" a bit much, but then, who's going to edit Stan? Yoe actually recalls Lee's style a bit in his introductory piece, where gets hyperbolic about this decent Ditko period of output being "comics at their zenith" or that splash panel being, "an unmatched accomplishment even in Ditko's oeuvre." It's a bit over-the-top, but for the most part he does at least call attention to the better aspects of the few stories he discusses. The book would probably be even better if he had spent a little more time discussing all the stories selected and why he chose them, and cut the brief gues essays and stray pieces of original art. Just as a collection of Ditko work, however, it represents a lot of what makes Ditko great and, yes, Stan, inimitable. We'll contemplate the islands and leave the oceans undrained.