Fantagraphics Books will publish the first critical retrospective of Steve Ditko, the co-creator and original artist of the Amazing Spider-Man on his 80th birthday next June. Ditko’s current fame is currently on the rise due to the success of the recent Spider-Man movies, but his involvement with the web spinner is only a small part of his 50-year career in comics.
According to Fantagraphics, “Ditko is known amongst the cartooning cognoscenti as one of the supreme visual stylists in the history of comics, as well as the most fiercely independent cartoonist of his generation. From his earliest days in the 1950s, working for the notorious low-budget Charlton Comics (the Roger Corman Productions of the comics industry), Steve Ditko broke every convention in comics, with his innovative special designs and imaginatively hallucinatory landscapes of Dr. Strange, the almost plebian earthiness of The Amazing Spider-Man, and his black-and-white views on morality and justice through his uncompromising vigilante of the late 1960s, Mr. A (inspired by the work of Atlas Shrugged author and Objectivist philosopher, Ayn Rand).”
Author Blake Bell says the book will also appeal to non-comic-book readers because “we tell the narrative of Steve Ditko, the artist, from humble beginnings in Johnstown, Pennsylvania; to the dizzying heights of co-creating Spider-Man; to the spectacular Howard Roark-like determination, and tribulations, in bringing his personal and philosophical vision to a recalcitrant audience. There’s a fantastic, dramatic storyline running through Ditko’s career; the artist having walked away from the Spider-Man franchise (and the billions it was to generate) as it was reaching the height of its popularity. What price did Ditko pay, and what was the impact on his work?”
Comic-book fans, Bell says, will latch onto the book “as we explode many of the myths surrounding key moments in Ditko’s career, as well as present reams of rare and unpublished Ditko artwork. For the comic art scholar, we also break down the ‘hows’ of Steve Ditko as a great sequential storyteller, dissecting his work in depth for the first time, also with analysis and commentary by some of the most skilled and articulate comic creators of the day.”
Bell will be putting the book together in public view, on the web. At www.steveditkobook.com, he will have a blog offering on-going commentary on the process of creating the book, as well as commentary by professional comic-book creators on Ditko’s career and artwork, and feature artwork that won’t make it into the book.”
Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko by Blake Bell will be a $39.99, 220-page hardcover book. Fantagraphics expects to publish it in June 2008.