The Art of Steve Ditko

It’s a good time to be a fan of legendary comic book artist Ditko. Fantagraphics is reprinting his earliest work, starting with Strange Suspense (2009), and now comes this lavish collection of stories drawn for Charlton Comics in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Charlton paid bargain-basement rates but offered scant editorial interference, so it was there that Ditko’s work was most unfettered. The scripts are simplistic tales relying on twist endings. Pretty much the whole show here is Ditko’s jagged, off-kilter artwork. The 1950s stories possess an appealing polish lacking in the later ones, which often seem rushed and unfinished. All, however, display Ditko’s unmistakable style. Scanned directly from the published comics, the images suffer from Charlton’s muddy printing, though that somehow makes them seem more authentic. Rounding out the collection are a handful of pages drawn for other publishers and shot from the original artwork, and tributes written by Ditko’s artistic colleagues, which applaud his work but reveal little personal detail about the notoriously reclusive artist.