I just discovered this, and felt copying it here wouldn't be infirnging (anyone please tell me if it is).
cat yronwode's copious memory of her work on the lost Ditko bio is enlightening and sorely missed. My text ends.
DAD
Friday, 22 August 2003
While we're waiting for the release of Blake Bell's Steve Ditko: The Mysterious Traveler, his look at the career and life of the co-creator of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, here's an extensive letter from Catherine Yronwode, who twenty years attempted to write a similar book. This letter was forwarded by Robert Beerbohm to the Ditko mailing list, and in it Cat Yronwode explains why she tried to write this book, the level of participation Ditko himself had in it, and why it was never published. Besides some formatting changes, the only editing I've done is to remove Cat's phone number at the end.
Bob [Beerbohm] sent me copies of some elist traffic about the Steve Ditko book i abandoned due to a flood. I hereby give him permission to forward these notes back to the elist and trust he will do so.
Bob's reply to someone on the list told it pretty much like it was. He knew all about the work i was doing, and -- many miles away -- he also got flooded out in that flood of 1986.
Here are some facts from my end that may help:
Fact 1: I did not seek Steve Ditko's approval to write a book about him. The book was not an "homage" to Steve Ditko, although he was my favourite Marvel COmics artist of the early 1960s. I never wished to get his permission to write about him, nor did i feel the moral or legal necessity to do so. I knew he abjured publicity and had not been interviewed in years. When my project began, i simply wished to address what some critics now call "The Stan Lee Question" -- that is, "What, if anything, did Stan Lee contribute to the creation of Dr. Strange and Spider-Man?"
Fact 2: In my original approach to the book as a fannish project, i began compiling an index to Steve Ditko's work. In this i received the help and enthusiastic support of APA-I members Lou Mougin and Dean Mullaney. I also set myself the goal of owning every Steve Ditko comic so that i would have adequate resources for covering "The Stan Lee Question." I also tracked down a copy or photocopy of every early to mid 1960s fanzine article i could find about Steve, including interviews, and every article or interview about or with Stan Lee in which Steve Ditko was mentioned.
Fact 3: My reason for spending years on the indexing and acquisition of Ditko comics was to prepare a base from which i could compare Ditko's pre-Stan, co-Stan, and post-Stan works, with reference to their thematic content. My goal was to find and identify autobiographical, socio-cultural, and environmental embedding (conscious or unconscious) in the comics. I prepared a list of recurrent visual and textual themes in the works of both men. (Examples: Stan referenced Jewish ethnic foods, pulp fiction of the 1920s-30s, Nazis, and Shakespearean pentameter; Ditko referenced receding male hairlines, Will Eisner's artwork, and men with white shirts -- either a single-placket shirt with long collar or a "Slavic" full yoked shirt with gathered bodice.) To test for embedding, i planned to research family histories for both men and then check for evidences of autobiography or features in the artwork such as landscape and architecture styles that resembled places the men had once dwelt. (This latter point had previously proved fertile in my research into Carl Barks -- the farther back in time one checks his art, the more the landscape resembles that of his native Oregon, whereas after WW II his landscapes are those of Southern California, where he then lived.) Since what i was doing consisted in large part of looking for Stan's unique literary fingerprints, or their absence, i needed as much non-Stan Ditko work as i could get so that i could assess it for the presence or absence of literary elements that Stan used elsewhere, particularly "New York Jewish humour," which was outside of Steve's upbringing, and allusions to fantasy and adventure books and movies that Stan had previously referenced or told interviewers he had read, but which were not referenced in Steve's non-Stan works. The early fanzine articles were to function as reality checks to the published comics. For instance, in one early article Stan told fans about Dr. Strange, "'Twas all Steve's idea!" yet a few short years later, he was claiming he was the creator of Dr. Strange and that he had hired Steve to illustrate the series. I felt that assembling these items in chronological order of publication would help me bring out the truth, whatever it might be.
Fact 4: Dean Mullaney moved in with me in 1981. He was a publisher and he hired Steve Ditko to produce episodes of a comic book series called Static for his magazine Eclipse Monthly. I did not work on Static directly, although as Dean's then-partner, i did meet with Steve Ditko once, at the time that Dean met with him to discuss the contractual terms for Static. My major interest was to see Ditko's hands -- and to confirm that he did indeed move them like the twisty hands he was known for drawing. I also noted that his body was lithe and long, like Peter Parker's and Stephen Strange's and that he wore a single placket white shirt. (Of course, i never had seriously entertained the notion that Stan Lee had contributed the look of his hands, body, or taste in shirts to the artistic modelling of Spider-Man or Dr. Strange, but i had to be sure.)
Fact 5: In the 1980s, a customer at a store owned by Jim Hanley happened to be a comics fan whose mother had gone to both Junior High and High School with Steve Ditko. Hanley kindly alerted me and the man loaned me two of his mom's school yearbooks containing pictures of Ditko. The woman did not herself remember Steve well, only that he was "shy" and was not in the academic classes offered at the school. I noticed other Slavic names in the yearbooks -- names like Witko, Datko, and Blitko. This led me to investigate what standards were in place in Johnstown in the 1930s-40s with respect to academic placement and also what social standing the Polish and Czech families in Johnstown had there at the time. I even researched the far earlier Johnstown Flood and its social impact. The results of all these studies were predictable -- namely, the "academic track" in Johnstown's public schools was reserved for Anglo-Americans; all the children of Eastern European descent were confined to the "industrial track" in school, in preparation for their eventual work in the local steel mills.
Fact 6: I have made a life-long study of the implications that race, gender, national origin, religion, gross yearly income, type of employment, neighborhood placement, and so forth have on the social stratification in this and other countries, in this and other eras. I approach this study from an egalitarian, humanist point of view, with acknowledgment that my parents were socialists, and that i have spent many years in experimental anarchist communities.
Fact 7: Through the yearbook pictures i gained great insight into "The Stan Lee Question" -- for instance, i saw Flash Thompson in his striped sweater, the crenelated high school building that both Steve and Spidey attended, and the donning of glasses by Steve part way through his teen years. But that was not all. Put Fact 5 together with Fact 6 and you will see how and why my interest in Steve Ditko grew far beyond the compiling of indices or even trying to decide "what, if anything, did Stan Lee contribute." When the yearbooks appeared on my horizon, i realized that although i had set sail for an allegorical India, i had reached an allegorical New World. The unexpected core of the book became the issue of how and why an obviously brilliant young boy with great natural art talent was placed in the "industrial track" in a steel mill town while his teachers justified their plans to make him a mill worker -- followed by how and why he left there and became an artist in New York and a proponent of Objectivism. Through the yearbooks, i saw Johnstown as the dripping wet "ten-ton doo-hickey" and Steve Ditko as the plucky teenager who somehow finds the inner strength to throw it off of himself and take control of his own destiny.
Fact 8: Given the many names in the two yearbooks, it did not take me more than half an hour to locate several old school chums of Steve's and, within an hour, his brother. The questions i asked of these folks were not so much about comic books as they were about the socio-economic situation in Johnstown in their youths. None of his childhood friends associated "shy" Steve Ditko the model airplane builder at school with Spider-Man, although they all knew who Spider-Man was. All of them mentioned Steve's childhood love of comics -- specifically Batman by Jerry Robinson and The Spirit by Will Eisner. The replies i received to my questions broadened my objective. My enlarged goal was to write about the entire Ditko family, not merely Steve -- their father's love of Hal Foster's Prince Valiant series, their working-class poverty, their closeness and intentional isolation from non-family social engagements. These interviews supported my personal theories on "the Stan Lee question" but that was no longer my primary focus.
[Side-note for fans: here are two examples of how the interviews cast light on the autobiographical origins of Ditkoesque comic book themes that are not found in the non-Ditko collaborations of Stan Lee: the image i called "sickly and bedridden child or woman, propped up with a pillow in a narrow bed against a wall" was echoed by a Ditko girl cousin who lived in the family home and had had a long convalescence after rheumatic fever and by Steve himself, who had had at least two bouts of tuberculosis; the visual image i called "woman in cotton house dress and apron with wispy grey hair tied back in a bun scrubs floors on her hands and knees with a bucket by her side" (Steve drew her often, not only as Aunt May, and i had previously procured what i believed to be a "template" still of the actress Betty Garde in this pose in the 1948 film "Call Northside 777") turned out to probably be Ditko's own mother, whom Pat Ditko recalled often worked that way in the family home.]
Fact 9: Dean Mullaney told Steve Ditko that i was working on a book about him and his art, similar to, but more detailed than the one i had written about Will Eisner. Ditko had been, as i had already learned, a childhood fan of Will Eisner, so i assumed this news pleased him. The Eisner book had focussed heavily on Eisner's childhood family experiences and earliest art influences. Ditko seemed happy with the idea. Dean asked whether Steve would sign a tip-in plate of original art for a limited edition hardcover if Eclipse published the book. To Dean's extreme surprise (and mine) Ditko said yes!
Fact 10: About a year after i first interviewed Pat Ditko, Pat apparently mentioned it to Steve and Steve hit the ceiling. He called Dean on the phone and more or less ordered him to "tell that woman" (me) to "stop phoning my family." Dean tried to talk to Steve about how poorly such a arrogant attempt to abridge the creative process would play in an Ayn Randian context, but Ditko was insistent. At that point i realized that i had emotionally cut myself free from the (1) the Ditko indexing project, (2) "The Stan Lee Question," (3) the need to make an "art book" like the Eisner volume had been, and (4) any remaining fannish adulation i had for Steve Ditko. Instead, i had a blank slate before me -- a book i was going to write about Johnstown, the snow, the way Steve carried Pat on his back to go buy Spirit sections in the Sunday paper from out of town. I had been to Johnstown several times previously, but never as part of this research plan; i had just happened to pass through on my road travels. I decided i needed to visit there again and talk to more people.
Fact 11: Around this time Dean and Steve had a falling out over the editing of a panel of Static artwork. Ditko had covered so much of his own artwork with polemic speechifying that one character's eyeballs were all that remained of what had been a wide and expressive facial close-up. There was not even room for a balloon tail. The lettering was on overlay, and Dean wanted to edit it for length so that the character's mouth and a short balloon tail could be seen. Ditko and he argued over it, with the result that Ditko left the Static project. This had nothing to do with me or the book i was writing. The two projects were entirely separate.
Fact 12: At no time in his argument with Dean over Static -- or after that -- did Steve Ditko say that he would NOT sign the tip-in plates he had promised for my book -- nor did he request, require, or receive approval over the book i was working on.
Fact 13: I didn't care much whether Steve did or didn't plan to sign the tip-in sheets, for by this time i was interviewing people from the comics business who had known Steve, and hoping to somehow align the essentially non-aligned facets of Ditko's personality. For instance, there was the matter of his obvious work in the porn field and his denial of it in rebuttal to an index i had published. I had no idea how i was going to handle that. Then there was Ditko's extreme social reclusiveness in New York and his intense love of family in Johnstown, a love so great that according to Pat he did not like even his cousins to visit the home while he was there on vacation, because they were not close enough "family." It was Dick Giordano who finally opened that area up for me. The tales he told me about events during Ditko's Charlton days matched perfectly with events Pat Ditko had told me -- except for their emotional content, which was non-congruent. So all i had to do there was to set forth, as non-judgingly as possible, the matter of Ditko's intense and decades-long emotional disconnectivity. And that brought me back to Stan Lee -- not to "the Stan Lee Question," but to actual Stan, the writer and editor at a small comics company during the 1950s and early 60s. It was obvious to me by now that Ditko was not your average Joe in the social sense, so how did Stan deal with him? I realized that i would have to interview Stan -- but Stan has his own social issues -- his self-aggrandizement, his blithe memorylessness, his cheerful product pitching. What could Stan really tell me about Steve? Would Stan have even bothered to look beneath the surface and see Steve? If Dick Giordano, a kindly and astute man, couldn't glimpse the inner Steve Ditko, how could Stan? These were the questions that delayed the book into early 1986.
Fact 14: The material for the book -- interview notes, audio tapes, old comics, art photocopies, maps and books about Johnstown, the two yearbooks, precious mimeographed and dittoed fanzines, etc. -- were in a large white cardboard box with a lid, the kind of box a case of reams of paper comes in. It was stored in one of the two identical 12' x 18' glass fronted "cabanas" or detached guest rooms built onto a large redwood deck attached behind the house Dean and i rented on the banks of Hulburt Creek, a tributary of the Russian River. The Ditko material was in the guest room where we kept our personal book collections, original artwork, and oversized collectible items. (The other building housed Eclipse back stock and film negatives.) When the flood hit, we lost everything that was not above the 8 foot mark. There was a small loft over the kitchen where we had put some framed art that didn't fit on the walls of the rented house, plus summer clothes not in use and comics so tall that we had no shelves to hold them. In other words, my Marvel Treasury Editions were saved, but my Simon and Kirby romance comics collection was flooded. So it goes.
Fact 15: If anyone has further questions, they can simply call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx. I have consistently volunteered to tell any of this to anyone who wants to pursue the subject themselves in the making of their own book. I myself am several books down the line since that one went under, and i do not look back on my research as proprietary material. This letter just briefly touches on what i uncovered. As Bob knows, there is a lot more -- and a lot more that could still be uncovered, even 15 or 20 years later. Go for it!
I had read that before. Interesting, but then, consider the source. I think cat yrnwode's opinions and biases would have polluted the project, and I'm happy that it came to an end. I would, however, love to see what she collected on the project!
>>For instance, in one early article Stan told fans about Dr. Strange, "'Twas all Steve's idea!" yet a few short years later, he was claiming he was the creator of Dr. Strange and that he had hired Steve to illustrate the series.<<
Interesting. If true, then that would at least question the assertion that Stan ALWAYS gave the artists proper credit. On the other hand: 1. Yronwode doesn't cite her specific sources. She's also not quoting Stan directly when she says that he "claimed he was the creator of Doctor Strange." Perhaps he didn't phrase it quite that way. Finally, Stan's memory problems are legendary (Yronwode mentions this herself in another passage). He scripted a LOT of comics, and to him, the creation of Doctor Strange was probably "just another job." It doesn't seem a stretch to me that perhaps Doctor Strange WAS Ditko's idea, but that Stan didn't remember it that way later. Who knows?
There's no doubt in my mind that Lee and Ditko both deserve credit for the creations of both Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. Question, though: Why is Lee's name always first? Should it perhaps be "Ditko and Lee?" Pretty much everything points to Lee having at least the initial idea for Spider-Man, but Dr. Strange's case seems much less clear.
