“Comics Should Explore The Great Range, Opportunities of Fiction and Fantasy”- On Ditko’s Influence & Influences

You’ll have to bear with me with this entry as it’s a bit stream of consciousness and would likely be a better comment on an article than an actual article itself. It also will speculate, which I generally frown upon when pushing a case for the argument; however, I believe the speculation here has significant context to support its validity.

Recently, the Golden Age comics heroine Spider-Queen was shared in a prominent Facebook group; the purpose of which was to illustrate that, in the years before Ditko’s Spider-Man appeared, another spider-themed character used web fluid and veritable web shooters. The obvious implication being that Ditko was subconsciously influenced by this character that he possibly read. I believe that he did read it, and indeed, I do believe it was a subconscious influence from his childhood- and not the only one.

Spider-Queen was published by Fox Feature Syndicate, a prominent Golden Age publisher perhaps most famously known for originally publishing the original Blue Beetle. Ditko’s father was a serious enthusiast of comic strips and comic books, often having his sons run to the newsstand to bring him new reading material every week.

The significant reason that I believe Ditko had a subconscious foundation rooted in the Golden Age stories he grew up on is one I’ll get to soon enough; but another reason is because Spider-Queen isn’t the only Fox Feature Syndicate character who shares a prominent character trait with a later, more famous Marvel character.

Though the Hulk was created by Jack Kirby & Stan Lee, its widely accepted that it was Ditko that introduced the famous “triggered by stress or anger” transformation motif that’s such an integral part of the Hulk’s various incarnations in comics and media.

It was pointed out several years ago that the 1940s character The Green Mask shared this aspect with the Hulk; an inversion of the Billy Batson/Captain Marvel concept, young Johnny Green would transform into The Green Mask in times of anger or stress. Initially, Green would be aware of this change though later stories established that he was unaware of his other identity. Also, The Green Mask would revert back to Johnny when his anger or energy subsided; extremely similar to the general Hulk concept of rage and tension triggering the metamorphosis and relaxing and resting being the catalyst for changing back.

I think it’s also significant that Johnny Green is generally orphaned with an absent father, has recurring money issues and an aunt-figure who serves at his landlord.

So yeah, there’s an argument to be made that you can find several similarities with pre-existing characters if you’re actively looking for them; but I’ve got a better- or the best- reason for believing that Ditko, if not consciously or subconsciously influenced by the Fox characters, had at least read the Fox characters. That reason?

Ditko himself told me.

It’s somewhat common knowledge now that Ditko was a prolific letter writer; to clarify that, he was certainly a prolific letter responder. Ditko was prone to giving replies to apparently each and every letter sent to him, regardless of the letter writer’s intent or sense of entitlement; Ditko’s graciousness has been repaid by an unfortunate flooding of misguided fanboy enthusiasm now sharing such letters in a Facebook group dedicated to back patting and dick measuring in regard to who got what from Mr. Ditko.

(above: a curt, one sentence response from a wary Ditko is celebrated like a shrine rather than held with self-awareness and regret from the rude letter writer who, presumably, was aware that Ditko did not like to be bothered with such questions. courtesy of the Steve Ditko Letters group)

I ask you to give me the benefit of a doubt when I tell you that I, sincerely, do not wish to share my correspondence with Mr. Ditko. I am forced to share it both for context and to establish that I won’t make things up; I’ve seen obviously forged letters show up online and it’s ridiculous that anyone would go to such lengths. I also would like to stress that I am far from the only person that Mr. Ditko carried on a regular correspondence with; I am one of several people that shared conversations with Mr. Ditko for years and years. I state this because my intention is not to paint myself as a special case; certainly, those of us that exchanged letters were not the majority; but I was one of the few that had the privilege of communicating with Steve Ditko for about a decade and a half. Therefore, I wouldn’t share it if I didn’t know it.

With Ditko, you didn’t immediately barrage him with questions about comic books; it was only if they came up in context of a larger conversation that he would speak on them. I certainly never asked him about Spider-Man or Stan Lee or any of the things that he very famously didn’t like to be asked about so why did dorks keep doing it, but now and then the subject would come up.

I asked Mr. Ditko which Golden Age publishers he had been especially fond of, or whom he remembered being distributed in the town he grew up in. Helpfully, I listed some of them- Centaur, Fox, Holyoke, etc. He replied briefly on that, with a “Centaur-no, Fox-yes, Holyoke-yes”, and so forth. He basically told me he didn’t remember that period and wasn’t interested in revisiting it. I took the hint and moved on.

But that stayed with me when talk of Spider-Queen came up; it reminded me of the Green Mask and prompted me to consider how common it is for nearly every comic creator to be influenced by the vast tapestry of media they’ve absorbed in their life; is it outside of the realm of possibility to consider that Ditko had these subconscious seeds buried inside of him from childhood?

I’d seen a bit of The Green Mask on a Golden Age blog but decided to delve in and look through all of his published stories from the Forties. That’s when I found something that I felt was significant; something I hadn’t seen before, something that was extremely notable and, perhaps, lends itself to the argument that Ditko, like Kirby, brought the bulk of what became the Marvel Universe as we know it.

It’s from the very first story featuring Johnny Green as the Green Mask. We are introduced to him outside of a school; students are gathered around discussing him. He’s fifteen, socially awkward. He’s known to be a solitary figure who doesn’t seem to show much interest or success in girls or sports.

Am I reading too much into it? It’s possible. But it does occur to me that it’s a very familiar opening, a very familiar character introduction… nineteen years later:

This would lend support to the theory that Ditko generated the plots and character outright based on a name given to him; see also Jim Shooter’s account of personally seeing Kirby’s rejected Spider-Man pages which share nothing in common from the published Ditko version. (Which again, leads me to ask… if Stan Lee wrote and created these characters, wouldn’t both versions of Spider-Man basically share the same concept and plot, even if the artwork differed? Just asking.)

Anyway, this is technically all speculation. But I wanted to share it. Steve Ditko was an incredible person and a generous, gracious man of manners and patience. Seeing the recent mention of Spider-Queen simply triggered my memory of his confirmation that he’d read the Fox Syndicate characters, and that triggered my deep dive into the Green Mask stories… which led to my discovery of the remarkable similarities between the introduction of Johnny Green and the introduction of Peter Parker.

So naturally, I had to share them with all of you.

In closing, I leave you with an excerpt from a letter that Mr. Ditko wrote me on August 9th, 2015:

“Comics should explore the great range, opportunities of fiction and fantasy.” – Steve Ditko