Shade the Changing Man is the featured character in the omnibus, leading off the volume and presenting all nine issues of the 1977 series, including the final one in black and white, a casualty of the “DC Implosion” and previously available only in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade. Although I did fish all eight published issues out of a dollar box a couple of years ago, I never before read the series. To be perfectly honest, it was… just okay. The visual design of the character is striking, and although there are some pretty far-out concepts with a lot of potential, the scripts and plots are uninspired. You’d think Ditko’s weird names would make the characters more memorable, but for me they made the plots even more muddled.
Stalker is another matter. This 1975 four-issue series, penciled by Ditko and inked by Wally Wood with scripts by Paul Levitz, came out at a time I would buy every “new number one issue” I could get my hands on. Unfortunately, I missed #3 and never did find it. Stalker (and his universe) was featured in one of those “fifth week” events a couple of years ago, which is the last time I re-read it, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had to read it in its entirety. Not that the series itself is all that remarkable (apart from the artwork); for me the series is strictly sentimental.
The rest of the volume contains Ditko stories ranging from the mid-60s to the late-70s (except for his work on The Creeper which is in a volume of its own. It’s interesting to compare his later work in this volume with his earlier work in the two volumes of The Steve Ditko Archives, and a second volume of The Steve Ditko Omnibus is planned for future release.
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I haven't read the issues in a while, but I genuinely liked Shade as a kid. For me the series had an interesting storyline - the theme of a scientifically advanced democracy threatened by powerful conspirators like Sude and Coru still strikes me as interesting - and I like Ditko's brand of science fiction.
I didn't read any issues of Stalker until I was an adult. I remember them as very uninspired fantasy comics.
Stalker was the villain in The Justice Society Returns collection of one-shots named after Golden Age books like All-American, Sensation, National Comics and Smash Comics. It took place in 1945, I think and spotlighted heroes like the Golden Age Atom, Johnny Thunder, Mister Terrific, even Speed Saunders!
My favorite DC Ditko work was his "Starman" from Adventure Comics!
Volume two shipped this week and it features Ditko’s runs on the characters Hawk & Dove, Demon, Starman and The Legion of Super Heroes, as well as one-shot stories featuring Man-Bat (and Ditko’s only published Batman), Black Lightning, the Spectre and Desaad of the New Gods. It’s interesting to see what different inkers (especially Jerry Ordway) brought to Ditko’s pencils over the years. The volume also features an insightful introduction by Mike Barr. I think I may end up enjoying this volume more than I did the first.
HAWK & DOVE: Until this past weekend I had never read the first three appearances of Hawk & Dove, but I had a pretty good idea of what to expect… or at least I thought I did. I expected something very much along the lines of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ Grren Lantern/Green Arrow, in which one of the heroes was “obviously” right and one of the heroes was “obviously” wrong. But it wasn’t like that at all. As it turns out, both Hawk and Dove are wrong, and the voice of reason is their father’s moderating influence.
Judging by this feature and the Creeper (re-presented in volume one), origin stories weren’t all that important to Ditko, because neither of these features’ characters had much of one. Shades of Mavelman’s astro-scientist who revealed the key harmonic of the universe to newsboy Mickey Moran, bothers Hank and Don Hall were granted their powers by a mysterious Voice. No, I think it was more important to Ditko to get the characters of his little morality plays on stage as quickly as possible, whether it made much sense or not.
I can see why this feature didn’t catch on. Whereas Marvel Comics was empowering of teenagers, this feature continually denigrated them, pointing out they weren’t mature enough to make adult decisions. You’re not going to catch on by running down your primary audience.
MAN-BAT: I actually bought this one of the stands. I was already familiar with Man-Bat (from Batman #254), although I must admit I didn’t care much for him. Even at the tender age of 10, I considered him gimmicky, an opinion I still hold. And I didn’t like the art. (I didn’t come to appreciate Steve Ditko’s distinctive style until much later in life.) And I didn’t care for the story. (If I had my copy with me right now, I could easily cite specific examples of what’s wrong with it.) I didn’t like the character, I didn’t like the story and I didn’t like the art. That pretty much wrapped it up. I didn’t even see the second (and final) issue to not buy it.
DEMON: I previously read these stories for the first and only other time while in college following a Kirby phase. The first chapters of these stories were drawn by Michael Golden, but Len Wein does a much better job of entering the story in medias res than Gerry Conway did on Man-Bat. The villain, Dr. Tyme, crossed over from the Man-Bat story making a nice little bridge between the Ditko-drawn stories.
STARMAN: Never having read these before, I don’t have warm fuzzies for them, but I appreciate the short, punchy chapters as backstory for James Robinson’s Starman.
Correction to yesterday’s post: The Creeper wasn’t featured in volume one, Shade the Changing Man was;The Creeper had a volume of his own.
Addition to yesterday’s post: I was also going to add that I now believe Denny O’Neil’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow was heavily influenced by Ditko’s Hawk & Dove. It’s impossible that O’Neil was unaware of it, and unlikely that he didn’t take the black and white “hawk” and “dove” stances, add shades of grey and come up with “conservative” and “liberal.”
I’m still working my way through the Starman chapters. I can say I’m sure I like them better in one satisfying chunk than I would have spread out over the course of several months.
Is the material in the Creeper by Steve Ditko released in 2010 also in these volumes? I'd like to delve into Steve Ditko when I'm done charging through Jack Kirby's DC material.
I'll have to double check, Jeff, but I think that Creeper is complete, even including unpublished b&w stories from Cancelled Comics Cavalcade or somewhere. There are a lot of all-Ditko collections available from a variety of publishers. Marvel has a "Visionaries" collection, DC has released his Charlton "Action Heroes" work in two archives, the third volume of Steve Ditko Archives (featuring his early work) is soon to be release (from Fantagraphics?), and there's The Art of Steve Ditko edited by Craig Yoe. (Now, when is someone going to release the Mr. A collection I've been waiting for?) If you've a mind to "delve into Steve Ditko," there's certainly enough material to keep you busy for a while!
Just posted 2 pages of STEVE DITKO at my blog!
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