Review by Comix
Steve Ditko is a man who gets around. Not only is he considered to be one of the most influential artists in the comic industry, but he is also responsible for creating such huge characters like Spider-man and Dr. Strange and contributing heavily to Iron Man and The Hulk. He is a friend of Stan Lee, a follower of Ayn Rand, and hasn’t been photographed since the sixties. But the real question is, why should you care? You don’t come to Brutal as Hell to be educated about old-timey comic artists, but to be shocked, appalled, and titillated! Well, if you know anything about me, you know where this is going. That’s right! Another classic horror comic review! Get out your cognac and cigars, old top, we’re going on magic carpet ride to that strange and bizarre era known only as THE 1950’s!
Mysterious Traveler, Steve Ditko Archives Vol.3, is a collection of Ditko’s horror work for the now defunct Charlton Comics for part of 1957. There’s really not much I can say plot wise that I haven’t said about any of the other older comics I’ve reviewed. The comics are short morality plays, usually with a twist ending, that sometimes feature a host that will introduce each story. Surprisingly, there is a huge lack of traditional monsters in the comic, like vampires and werewolves, which is probably due to the newly instated Comic Code Authority. The collection in Mysterious Traveler focuses more on either inter-dimensional beings, strange happenings, curses, and human morality. I suppose it’s a bit more sci-fi horror than traditional horror, which would make sense as he went on to pen some of the horrendous Adult Amazing Fantasy for Marvel, but don’t mistake the two! While AAF was nothing but poorly executed crap created to fill popular demand, the MT collection gave Ditko a lot more freedom and (for how poorly he got paid) much more a labor of love than anything else.
I have to admit, I’ve never read much of the Steve Ditko stuff despite how influential he has been in the comic field. Maybe it’s bias, maybe it’s laziness, but I hear “guy who created Spiderman,” I think “wow, boring.” But had I known he had done horror work (outside of AAF), I would have definitely read his stuff earlier. It’s pretty awesome. Like I said, it’s pretty standard stuff but it’s really fun to read, and interesting to see the roots of a lot of our horror now. Though it’s not obvious in our era, he was also incorporating a lot of more modern techniques into his sequential art, such as sweeping scenery, close-ups of faces and dramatic angles. Ditko is part of the second generation of comic creators, the ones who grew up on the paper funnies and original Superman, and was one of the first to explore the artistic side of the medium. (Well, outside of Will Eisner, but that’s a whole different story.)
The way the Mysterious Traveler collection is set up really reflects the super cheap Charlton Comics that Ditko was writing for. Charlton Comics was first thought up of by two men who met in prison and they ran the company as cheap as possible. I mean, the quality of the reprinted stuff is good, but the original comics were printed on the cheapest paper possible and ran very specific to a certain amount of pages. Once that amount was reached, they would literally stop the story, no ending or nothing. There are a couple good examples in here where you’ll be eye-ball deep into a horror story and it just stops. It’s kind of bizarre. Also, the comics are reprinted in order of when they were drawn, not published, because Charlton Comics would sit on a story for years, only to pull it out when they needed to fill some space. Mysterious Traveler is a good example of good comics gone bad. Honestly, if it was anyone else but Ditko, we never would have seen these again.
The Mysterious Traveler is the third out of four collections of Ditko’s horror from Fanatagraphic Books. The reason I chose this one instead of one of the others is, well, it’s the first one I read… but if the other three are as good as this one, I’m gonna read them. They are all hardbound with a pretty reasonable price of forty bucks and come with full color reprints, covers, and some hefty introductions about Ditko’s life. If you interested in seeing what the Mysterious Traveler was first inspired by, you can get the original radio broadcasts from the late 40’s/early 50’s on CD or MP3’s or whatever you kids are into these days. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a roaring fire to sit by and cackle maddeningly into the pits of Hell! Long Live Ditko!