Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko (Hardcover)

~ Blake Bell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

A must have for both fans of the artist in particular and comic book history in general. (Rick Klaw - Sfsite.com )

A personal and professional portrait of the brilliant storyteller and polemicist. (Richard Pachter - Miami Herald )

Bell’s insight into Ditko’s work and its enduring appeal combine with an abundance of powerful artwork to make this lavish volume indispensable to comics fans. (Gordon Flagg - Booklist )

Blake Bell does the impossible and explains Steve Ditko. (Alan David Doane - Comicbook Galaxy )

Ditko is one of the most enigmatic, mercurial talents in comic history. (Newsarama )

Ditko remains widely recognized as one of the comic world’s most admired visual stylists. (The List )

Ditko’s life, like that of R. Crumb or Harvey Pekar, has enough obsessive oddity and outside struggle to be a tale told wide. But Bell goes the opposite direction, getting as narrow as the lines Ditko used to restrain the action in the old Marvel and Charlton comics. (Geoff Boucher - Los Angeles Times )

His legacy is undeniable…visually he was revolutionary. (Macleans Magazine )

Now even the comics newbie can experience the full range of Ditko’s accomplishments, thanks to Blake Bell’s masterful, copiously illustrated biographical study. With passionate, yet unremittingly objective scholarship, Bell chronicles the life and work of this notoriously reclusive and stubborn artist. (Paul DiFilippio - Barnes and Noble Review )

Peculiar and tremendously talented writer and artist. (Steven M. Bari - Weekly Comic Book Reviews )

The portrait that emerges here is of an artist whose principles have ossified into bitter perversity. (Douglas Wolk - The New York Times Book Review )

This fascinating tale of a bull-headed individual who gave his all to the masses and then withdrew from their adulation offers a stark twist on the American Dream. (R. C. Baker - The Village Voice )

[An] effervescently written history about this peculiar and tremendously talented writer and artist. With additions of reprinted strips and un-inked pages, Bell strips away the heavily-shaded areas of this man’s life and helps the reader better understand him. (Steven M. Bari - Weekly Comic Book Reviews )

Product Description

Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko is a coffee table art book tracing Ditko's life and career, his unparalleled stylistic innovations, his strict adherence to his own (and Randian) principles, with lush displays of obscure and popular art from the thousands of pages of comics he's drawn over the last 55 years.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books; Reprint edition (July 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560979216
• ISBN-13: 978-1560979210
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #426,321 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ditko, a fascinating and uncompromising artist, August 20, 2008

By	Grant Watson (NC) - See all my reviews

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This is an incredibly entertaining book. Looking at the cover, one can tell they are not looking at just another comic book artist. Opening the book one sees the first glimpse of Ditko, a five page black and white story called "Stretching Things". The story is a look at a man grown bitter by his handicap, so much so that a possible cure to his condition doesn't bring a happy ending, but a descent into evil. This isn't your average "comic book artist". The book is a entertaining yet somber look at the career and art of Steve Ditko. The author touches lightly on his pre comic book days, perhaps too lightly in that the interesting tidbits of his life that the author gives us wets the appetite of the reader but leaves us wanting. The book quickly jumps into his career as a comic illustrator, Eisner, Foster and Jerry Robinson being his early inspirations.

The book has a nice balance between text and what most Ditko fans really want to see, his art. There are nice full page splashes of art opposite the beginning of each chapter. The chapters covering his time at marvel and charlton are laced nicely with art of Spiderman, Dr.Strange, Captain Atom, as well as his later Charlton work with pictures of Blue Beetle and The Question. There is a very interesting chapter on his time working at Warren, the publisher that put out the "Eerie" and "Creepy" magazines of the late 60s. This is interesting in that it shows some of Ditkos "wash" technique, a water/ink brushwork style of art of which Ditko was a master. The book covers his time at Marvel and the historic clashes with Stan Lee that drove him to work at other companies such as DC where he created characters such as "The Creeper" and Hawk&Dove and Charlton where he had more creative reign if less pay.

The book examines Ditko and his objectivist philosophy which he would incorporate into his work often. Such work as "The Question" and his "Mr. A" are examined at length, and holds the reader captive and left wanting more. The efforts of Ditko to keep his work uncompromising are as epic as any Ayn Rand novel. There are a lot of treats for those looking for rare and often unseen Ditko art. The last thirty pages of the book are dedicated to nothing but Ditko art and sketches. A chapter on Ditkos relationship with comic fandom has plenty of examples of his "fanzine" work.

Stories of comic book artists who didn't receive proper credit or compensation for their work are frequent when talking about gold and silver age artists. The book is, if anything, as much an indictment of the industry as it is a look at the artist. The battle over who owns art (and in some cases who "stole" art), over who created what and who didn't are exposed with jaw dropping effect. With Ditko however, the stain on the industry looks even greater by comparison than it does when held up to giants like Kirby or Superman creators Seigal and Shuster. Ditko doesn't come off as being "handled" or "paid off" or "swept under the rug" like so many companies did with artists who were vocal about creative rights. He comes off as an artist who kept his integrity intact, a rare character trait in any era. Ditko was about the "work" not about the money. One can't help reading this book and walk away looking at Marvel, DC, or Stan Lee in the same light.

The end result is both a sad and heroic tale. But Ditko is not easily defined, and when the author tries to do just that in the last chapter, he misses the mark. The author seems conflicted in the end, longing for the Ditko of old, bemoaning the increasing amount of "telling" text in his art rather than "storytelling". He wants to both exalt and scold Ditko for his uncompromising attitude at the same time. The author talks about how Ditko found Marvel/DC just churning out the same old bland retreads of characters come and gone, unwilling to be innovative. He complains about how Ditko spent too much of his story on the villains juxtaposed with Ditkos objectivist vision of "Hero" as opposed to the flavor of the day, the conflicted, or "anti-hero" that had gained popularity. Yet the author makes statements about how Ditko had "become chained by the trappings of the superhero genre".

It's not hard to see that Ditkos work was a scathing commentary on the "anti-hero" and on what superhero comics had become in general. Clearly, Mr. Bell seems somewhat conflicted about exactly what he wants to say regarding Mr. Ditkos legacy. This is a thankfully short bit of editorializing on the authors part to be sure. Yet the author, by trying to define what Ditko is, or had become fails to allow for the possibility that Ditko might have been evolving into something that has no definition. An artist, a master at visual storytelling, an essayist, a commentator on society, one might even say a political illustrator. Combining all of those, one comes up with something that hasn't been seen before or since. Something that eludes even the author. Something new, creative, sometimes polarizing, but definitely original and always indefinable. I couldn't begin to put a name to it, all I can say is that it's pure Ditko. This book tells and shows an incredible story. I wish it was a hundred pages longer. A must have for any comic collector.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, Flawed Only By Author's Narrow Perspective, May 7, 2009

By	Outsider's View (Mountains of Carolina) - See all my reviews

This is a great book in it's subject matter, art and storytelling about a unique and massively gifted artist, flawed only by the overlay of the writer's small-minded commercial vison of what HE wanted from the artist. If he truly understood Ditko's work or his story, the writer would understand that this is THE very issue that Ditko seems to be fighting all these years;
crass commercial exploitation and marginalizing an artist's vision in favor of what the industry seems to perceive as a mindless comic market, while remaining blind to the artist's true vision. Some of us simple-minded comic readers actually "got" the message in Ditko's work, and comic books have never been the same since without him.

I personally think that the world and the message Ditko creates is perfect in itself,and the real loss is that no-one in the industry just let go and let him share it with us, nor would pay him commeasurate with his genius, or honor his ownership of his work. There are copyright laws for the music business; they should apply retroactively to Ditko and all the other artists in the comic book world that have been exploited.

When I think about a lifetime spent creating such subject matter as the endless conflict between good and evil, the directions that Ditko chose make sense; jst as Ditko's Spider-man or the early Batman were conflicted loners trying to fight for justice in an unjust world, the unjust treatment Ditko received at the hands of Marvel set him on his solitary path to create his own unique vision and world where
there WAS justice for the oppressed, and penalty for the criminals.

In our ugly world, the rich man gets away with murder, the banks steal from us then get government bail-outs as a bonus, politicians can start false wars, indulge in criminal war profiteering and illeagal torture, then walk away with billions. This garbage wouldn't happen in Ditko's world, period, and I like the thought of that. The concept of real justice must terrify such every-day con-men criminals; no wonder they squelched Ditko's absolute views on right and wrong.

I think we've all been robbed by greedy comic empire thieves and narrow-visioned hypocrites for the last 40 years; no-one told Picasso what to draw nor stole his work from him. We've been deprived of decades of visionary art and stories from Steve Ditko, simply because everyone wanted what THEY wanted from him, but no-one would simply allow him to freely create what HE invisioned, nor (it appears) treat him fairly and allow him ownership of his own work.

Ultimately, Ditko's work transcended "comic" books, and the bean-counting profiteers couldn't understand the more visionary concepts he offered us; so 60 years after their creation, we're still suffering talking mice and "faster than a speeding bullet" one dimensional heros.
I like to imagine that, like any great artist with a unique vision, he's been quietly working away for decades on staggering quantities of amazing works that will someday emerge into the world with stunning impact. Any real artist simply wants to create and mainfest his vision, regardless of wether there is a market or if anyone else understands;
I only hope that Ditko will eventually share it again with us.

Steve, thanks from a reader who "got" it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ditko!!!, October 26, 2008

By	Rich Kranjac "Korvac Saga" (New York) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko
A fascinating, thoroughly researched and insightful look into the enigmatic artistic genius that is Steve Ditko. Covers his early life + whole career in comics up to this present day. I cannot help but feel incredible joy for the epic work Ditko provided us and also great sadness for the philosophical choices he has made which rigidly limits his work and distances him from his many admiring fans. A great book which any fan of Ditko will enjoy and learn from.