To celebrate his birthday, I watched my SPIDER-MAN 3 DVD I picked up this past tuesday. When Stan Lee and Ditko created Spidey back in '62, no one was even remotely thinking that one day they would have laid down the foundation for a billion dollar film franchise decades later!
This has been a big year for the Ditko fans. Marvel has released several hardcover collections including the 1000+ page SPIDER-MAN OMNIBUS and the AMAZING FANTASY OMNIBUS that reprints tons of Ditko pre-Spider-Man sci-fi/monster stories he did with Stan Lee. And of course, the BBC http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifdocumentary IN SEARCH OF STEVE DITKO was all the rage when it hit the internet a few months ago (it's been put up and taken down numerous times on YouTube....and it's currently down again!).
The big new today is that Fantagraphics officially announced it will be publishing Blake Bell's long-awaited Ditko retrospective next June. This is the book that many of us are looking forward to. A career spanning, critical survey of one of the industry's premiere creators.
As an 8 year old discovering the love of comics, I was always intrigued by the uniqueness of Ditko art. And even now, decades later, I admire the man as much as an artist and as a person who stands his own ground and follows his own instincts. Here's a blog entry I wrote last year about a letter I once received from Ditko.
Again, a very Happy 80th Birthday wish to Mr. Ditko.
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