Space Adventures # 10, Spring 1954, by Steve Ditko
An early cover by Ditko. He’d been professional since 1953 and his first published cover was on a comic cover dated February 1954, (The Thing #12) also pulished by Charlton, a company he had a long standing association with.
I don’t know how many covers he’d had printed prior to this but the date suggests it could have only been a handful. To my eye it shows that he found his mature style early in his career. It’s pure Ditko and recognizable at a glance.
What Kirby does for heroics and energy, Ditko does for menace, paranoia and base fear. Ditko’s work was often inked by himself too (unlike Kirby) so what you see is exactly what he wanted to produce.
This cover was used for the black and white reprint collection Steve Ditko: Space Wars, published by Vanguard, ISBN: 9781887591676, which I intend to write about in the not too distant future.
Mad Thinker
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