Steve Ditko Omnibus Vol. 1

Collects Shade, the Changing Man 1-8, Stalker 1-4 & shorts from Strange Adventures, Plop, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Weird War Tales, Secrets of Haunted House, Tales of the Unexpected, Time Warp, Ghosts and Mystery In Space.

With an introduction by Jonathan Ross.

A year or so back, I very nearly purchased a couple of Ditko series from DC, namely Shade: The Changing Man and Stalker. For some reason that I can’t remember now, I ended up buying the ACG books that Ditko contributed to from the 60’s. In retrospect it worked out quite well, because there’s nothing in this volume that I already own, but I have to say that I’m not entirely satisfied.

In terms of Ditko’s input for this omnibus edition, his art is fantastic. If The Creeper was Ditko & DC’s attempt to recapture the kookiness of Spider-Man, then, visually, Shade is this volumes Dr. Strange. There are lots of motifs and design elements from the Dr. Strange strip that crop up again and again in the panels of Shade. Most obviously there is the unusual window pattern seen on Strange’s Bleeker Street residence that is repeated, in very similar circumstances in Shade. But there’s also the similarity in the unearthly dimensions that our hero travels through. Pure Ditko design. There are several examples of Ditko’s excellent visual style, but where this series falls short is in the narrative.



Shade #4 pg.7, Scanned from original comic

 Unfortunately, Shade, which is plotted by Ditko and written by Michael Fleisher, has quite a confusing plot, with characters jumping in and out of the story and what is meant to convey a sense of mystery only lends itself to perplexity. Perhaps perplexity is too strong a word, but it certainly had me turning back the pages to figure out who was who, but worst of all, trying to work out how we got from point A to point B.

Having said that, the basic plot itself is intriguing, Rac Shade, a government operative from another reality which borders our own, is wrongly convicted of treason and ends up on Earth with the secret technology of the M-Vest, which projects force-fields and distorts the perception of antagonists. The action moves between Earth and Shade’s home world freely as Shade discovers plots within plots. I’ll admit that my knowledge of the modern DC Universe is seriously incomplete, but I’m surprised that Shade’s world hasn’t been incorporated into it in the same way that Kirby’s Fourth World has. DC you’re missing a trick.



Stalker #2, p14. Scan from original comic not this volume.

 The other series reprinted in this volume is Stalker from 1975, written by Paul Levitz. Wally Wood provided inks for these issues and as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Wood’s inks on Ditko’s pencils produce unusual results. They look great, but they don’t look like any other Ditko work. Having said that, Ditko’s greatest strength is his panel composition and layout, essentially the way he tells the story rather than the rendering of figures and backgrounds, and this is still Ditko laying it out before us. Levitz takes his time telling this tale and the story feels like it’s just about to start on it’s main thrust before it was cancelled on #4. It opens with what appears to be a straight sword & sorcery story, but there are plenty of visual hints that we are going to be heading in a different direction, but the cancellation of the title meant that any further development failed to happen.

The rest of the page count (there are about 450 pages in total) is taken up with short stories anywhere between two to twelve pages from the titles mentioned above. They cover a range of genres from horror and sci-fi to comedy. It’s roughly half of the page count that is taken up with these short, one off strips and I’m surprised to say that these were the high point of this volume for me. Having bought this book primarily for the Shade and Stalker stories I enjoyed seeing Ditko bring his incredibly accomplished visual story telling back to his starting point in 1953 with these condensed tales. There are lots in here, accomplished with varying degrees of success depending on the writer, but they are all masterfully laid down by Ditko, with a couple of real gems scattered in, which I’m not going to name because I want you to experience to same surprise that I did whilst reading through.

In comparison to the other mainstream collections of Ditko that have been released over the last few years, I have to say that I found this to be the weakest. If you enjoy short and sharp Horror tales I’d recommend the first volume of the Steve Ditko Archives, Strange Suspense from Fantagraphics, if you prefer super-hero fare there’s always the first 38 issues of Spider-Man, or my personal favourite, volume 2 of the Action Heroes Archives featuring Blue Beetle II, The Question and Captain Atom.

But, if you’re already familiar with Ditko, there’s plenty here to like, just be aware that it will fall short of most of his earlier work.

Mad Thinker Reads…………………………

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