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Joe Hollon
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Joined: 08 May 2004
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| Posted: 23 January 2011 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | 1
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I recently purchased ACTION HEROES ARCHIVES Vol. 1 & 2. I'm a huge Ditko fan but this is a portion of his career I was totally in the dark about. I'm almost finished with volume one which reprints the original Captain Atom stories. I had no idea that Ditko began Captain Atom just prior to SPIDER-MAN and then returned just after leaving Marvel in the mid-60s. So in this collection you get a set of stories pre-Spider-Man and then post-Spider-Man. Very interesting. The early stories remind me of the old Fleisher Superman cartoons from the 40s. Very short (4 and 5 pages) stories, very simple plots. After Ditko returns from Marvel you can tell the focus is more on making Captain Atom a true Superhero comic. Full-length stories with flashy, costumed villains becomes the norm. The early, shorter stories seem to be my favorite with the pure Ditko art (another inker takes over the later stories).
The character of Captain Atom is interesting too. I had heard about Dr. Manhattan being based on him and now I realize that GODLAND's Adam Archer is an obvious homage to Captain Atom as well.
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Michael Todd
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| Posted: 23 January 2011 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | 2
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I remember having the issue where he changed his costume when I was a boy.
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Bill Conway
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| Posted: 23 January 2011 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | 3
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Some of Ditko's best Charlton stuff was his work on the monster titles GORGO and KONGA. Gorgo was Godzilla's UK cousin and KONGA was .. well .. not really related to King Kong. The early issues of these titles have the same quality Ditko work that can be found in his pre-hero Atlas stories of the same time period.
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Will Hansen
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| Posted: 23 January 2011 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | 4
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Robert Cosgrove
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| Posted: 23 January 2011 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | 5
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Some of the difference in stories is because of the difference in writers: Joe Gill on the earlier stories, Dave Kaler on the later. The age of the supervillain and the book-length and/or serial story hadn't arrived when the earlier books were done. From an art point of view, the later stories suffer from inkers other than Ditko himself. Rocke never got the hang of inking the original costume, and I suspect was uncomfortable spotting blacks, which Ditko often left to the inker--thus part of the difference in look when McLaughlin started inking. Perhaps JB, if he remembers, can tell us the extent to which the blackspotting in the story he inked was his own, and the extent to which Ditko had indicated the blacks.
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Jason Czeskleba
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| Posted: 23 January 2011 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | 6
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Joe Hollon wrote:
| I had no idea that Ditko began Captain Atom just prior to SPIDER-MANand then returned just after leaving Marvel in the mid-60s. So in thiscollection you get a set of stories pre-Spider-Man and thenpost-Spider-Man. |
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The first four issues of the revived Captain Atom actually overlapped with Ditko's final eight months on Spider-Man. So for a time, he was doing both.
I really enjoy those early Joe Gill five-pagers. Short, to-the-point, no fat storytelling. Gill was the antithesis of today's writers. And really nice early Ditko art.
The later stories are definitely more Marvelish, especially starting with issue #83 where Captain Atom is significantly powered down. I think a big reason for the change is that Ditko was co-plotting and/or doing all the plotting at that point. I agree about the inking, though I have to say that aside from Wood I've never liked anyone else's inking on Ditko.
Edited by Jason Czeskleba on 23 January 2011 at 8:44pm
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Wallace Sellars
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| Posted: 23 January 2011 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | 7
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JB inked that page? Neat!
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Brian Hague
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| Posted: 23 January 2011 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | 8
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I believe JB inked that entire story. It was presented (as I recall) in the first issue of the 1975 Charlton Bullseye fanzine. Later issues include such gems as an unpublished Cuti/ Staton E-Man adventure and an Alex Toth Question story. Good stuff!
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Jason Czeskleba
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| Posted: 23 January 2011 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | 9
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The story was for the unpublished Captain Atom #90. Only the pencils were completed in 1967, so Stern and Byrne added dialogue and inks in 1975. It was serialized over the first two issues of Charlton Bullseye.
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Joe Hollon
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| Posted: 24 January 2011 at 4:46am | IP Logged | 10
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"The story was for the unpublished Captain Atom #90. Only the pencils were completed in 1967, so Stern and Byrne added dialogue and inks in 1975. It was serialized over the first two issues of Charlton Bullseye."
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Thanks for that info Jason! My comic shop randomly had a page from that story for sale (they've never had any other comic art that I've been aware of). It finally sold before I was able to talk myself into buying it...still searching for my Ditko page.
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Jason Czeskleba
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| Posted: 25 January 2011 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | 11
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I've had reprints of the Space Adventures stories for years, but I only recently acquired the Action Heroes 1 book, which includes some stories I hadn't seen before. Reading through it, I noticed something interesting. In many of the early Captain Atom stories the President appears, and Ditko clearly draws him as Eisenhower. The last appearance by Ike is in issue #38, which would have hit the stands in November of 1959. However, in the following issue (which came out in January 1960) the President appears in a story drawn by Rocke Mastroserio, and he clearly is not Ike or JFK. He kind of resembles Nixon, except for the fact that he has brown hair and a moustache. The President does not appear again in a Captain Atom story until issue #42, in which Mastroserio clearly draws him to be JFK. So my guess is that for that story in issue #39 the art was done before the election, and Mastroserio took a guess and drew Nixon as the winner. Then maybe the election took place before the story was published, and so rather than print a story with Nixon they quickly changed his hair color and added a moustache to make him a generic President.
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