“I Dared to Defy Merlin’s Black Magic,” a 5-page story, is one I remember well from the days when I picked up anything by Steve Ditko. It is richly textured artwork, and a story well told. Okay, so the story isn’t very surprising. The early Marvels didn’t stray too far from some basic plots, all of which I was familiar with even at my tender age in 1959. But at least Ditko tells it well.
In those days I went for artists I liked who signed their names to their work. With these post-Atlas-early-Marvel titles I collected for Kirby and Ditko because they signed their work. Other artists I especially liked were the
Mad artists I first saw in the paperback reprints,
The Mad Reader, Inside Mad, et al: Wood, Elder, Davis. Wallace Wood was then doing illustrations for
Galaxy magazine and
Mad; Will Elder and Jack Davis could be seen in some of the
Mad imitations crowding the magazine racks. Davis did the cover for this issue:
The fun of collecting for me was in the artwork of comic books, and that is only right, because it is a visual medium. When I got more interested in stories it was because of
The Fantastic Four and
Amazing Spider-Man, with two of my favorite artists, Kirby and Ditko. When I found out years late they had responsibility for the stories as well, it made me appreciate Kirby and Ditko all the more.
From
Strange Tales #71 (1959):
4 comments:
I too will settle for a passable script with good art. In the case of these early Marvels, the scripts are usually or always no more than passable. But, as I've said previously, I think that Ditko did his best work in tales of the occult for Marvel, and his art was often the only thing that made these stories worth reading.
(I'll also settle for a good good script with passable art. I seem, lately, to have tried the patience of a friend, when I directed his attention to a manhwa with primitive art but what I regarded as a strong script.)
The artists carried more of the scripting responsibilities when Marvel returned to recurring superheroes. But Ditko was reined-in on Spider-Man, because Ditko wanted Peter Parker to become more fully self-actualized, while Lee wanted Peter to remain an angst-filled teen-ager. Doctor Strange could, on the other hand, be quite self-assured.
I don't care what Merlin says to himself on that last panel, he left that diary out fully well knowing what would happen!
Great Ditko here, and he's having a lot of fun with the art (lots of zany weird creatures around.) I especially love the panels with a lot of shadows, Ditko always had a really good eye for that. Lots of dynamic poses and gestures, something that would serve him well on Dr. Strange.
Bonus: That's a cool Davis cover! Always nice to see the EC people pop up on some Atlas/Marvel work here and there.
Someone printed a quote, ostensibly from Ditko-- and I say "ostensibly" because he gets misquoted a lot-- in which he said he wouldn't do magic stories any more since coming out in favor in rational Objectivism.l Of course, he did continue to do them for Charlton until the company died, and occasionally introduced magicians where they didn't seem all that necessary, like MACHINE MAN. Most of the time the magicians in the stories seem to be enacting a higher moral law, not evil Faustian sinners, so maybe they were Objectivists in disguise.
Daniel, I looked up a word from your comment, the unfamiliar (to me) word manhwa. For anyone else who shares my ignorance, I now know it refers to Korean comics. Usually South Korean, but, as more than one entry on manhwa said, a comic book industry is appearing in North Korea.
The mind boggles! We could have a whole line of comic books from that country starring a short, rotund superhero. We could have the Korean version of Herbie!
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