Steve Ditko Archives, Vols. 1 & 2

Steve Ditko Archives

Vol. 1, Strange Suspense (ISBN 1606992899)

Vol. 2, Unexplored Worlds (ISBN 1606993801)

Published by Fantagraphics. Compiled by Blake Bell

Is it really worth me writing a lengthy piece in regard to these two Steve Ditko collections?

The truth is, that just knowing that these volumes collect the earliest work from Ditko will either turn you on so much that you have to own it, or you won’t give a squat.

Seriously though, they’re amazing.

Volume 1, subtitled Strange Suspense, reprints every strip from the first two years of Ditko’s career in the order that Ditko produced them, which is much more revealing in terms of the artists growth, than reprinting them in the order that they were actually published. The vast majority of these tales were created for Charlton Comics, who would let their creators do pretty much anything, they were noted for the almost complete lack of editorial censorship. Combine that with the fact that these are all Pre-Code too and you have some pretty gruesome stuff.

It is mostly horror, but you’ll also see some science-fiction, crime, some quite risque romance for the time and the odd western too. The quality of Ditko’s penmanship is evident from the very start of his career, as too are his influences. EC published Haunt of Fear 15 in 1950, in it there was a Harvey Kurtzman strip titled “House of Horror”. Ditko produce a story called “Die Laughing” which was published in The Thing 13 in April 1954, which is essentially a “remake” of the original EC strip.

In Volume 2, Unexplored Worlds, Ditko’s art improves dramatically. He begins to lay out the page as a whole rather than just the individual panels and his ability to tell an incredibly concise story with a minimal page count is extraordinary. Between the work presented in volumes one and two, Ditko was seriously ill with tuberculosis, I can only imagine that during his recuperation, which lasted near a year, he was constantly improving on his panel and page designs.

Whilst the art improves in this volume, unfortunately the stories are not up to the first volume’s standard. During the time in which Ditko was recovering, the Comics Code was introduced, this essentially de-fanged the genre of horror comics. Within a few years of the Code’s introduction many of the industry’s more creative writers found ways around the Code’s restriction. But in the early days, writers were still struggling to find the type of story that was acceptable to the censor’s and entertaining to the audience. There are several satisfying tales in this volume, but the general feeling is one of uncertainty in regard to how far the stories can go.

Both of these volumes are beautifully presented. The colouring of the originals has been preserved, so there’s no digital enhancement or blending. It looks and feels like a ‘50’s comic.

There really is no reason that they shouldn’t be in your collection.

Mad Thinker.