BBC 2007 documentary In Search of Steve Ditko

[Ozymandias]

Interesting thread. Reading it I notice that some posters had issues with the execution of the arc. That it was a bit rushed and Norman could maybe have been introduced earlier which I think is fair if it was done now but back in the 60's I can't think of any other story like that so it was truly a first.

Shame those review pages stopped. I would have been interested in a review of the death of the Stacey's both Father and Daughter or Spidey getting the Black Suit or Black Cats introduction issues etc . Hell Kravens Last Hunt would be a must.

It IS a shame, I pleaded with the guy to keep it going, but eventually he stopped posting altogether (not just on his own threads) over a year ago. I haven't seen him in any forum since.

[Scott Taylor]

Green Goblin kills 21 people in the first movie alone, and he beats Spider-Man to a bloody pulp in the finale. That's the highest body count in any Spider-Man movie (TASM, MCU, ITSV, Raimi sequels). So yeah, I can see why Spider-Man's co-creator would think it was too dark. It's far more violent than the original run of Spider-Man was.

Yah I thought the Green Goblin in the first SM film, specifically, was too murdery. But you know I feel the same way about the first Doc Ock scene in the lab with the scientists. Raimi is a horror film guy, recall, so I blame that.

[Mauled]

Yah I thought the Green Goblin in the first SM film, specifically, was too murdery. But you know I feel the same way about the first Doc Ock scene in the lab with the scientists. Raimi is a horror film guy, recall, so I blame that.

But it was done really cartoony with the Goblin bombs turning them into skeletons before they die. It wasn't exactly Death of Jean Dewolff death which was shown really brutal.

Regarding the thread. In the interview its obvious that Stan felt that Steve doesn't deserves as much credit as some give. Like Steve was angry at Stans use of the word "considered" regarding his role which Stan thought was petty. Yet as Jonathan Ross says, Steve was right, Stan doesn't which he admits.
Does Stan have kind of a point. Its not like Spider-Man tanked after Steve left and some of what are considered the best Spidey stories happened after he did.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

But it was done really cartoony with the Goblin bombs turning them into skeletons before they die. It wasn't exactly Death of Jean Dewolff death which was shown really brutal.

Nobody thinks Joker's lacking in brutality simply because he uses cartoon-y means of killing people like Joker gas and so on.

Does Stan have kind of a point. Its not like Spider-Man tanked after Steve left and some of what are considered the best Spidey stories happened after he did.

That argument isn't a proper defense, and there are way too many assumptions baked in.

-- When Lee-Ditko started Spider-Man, it was a totally new thing and they had to build steadily step-by-step, and sure, sales went way up when John Romita Sr. came on, and definitely greater in L-D's run, but for all that we can credit Romita Sr. for that, we can also see him as reaping the benefits of the equity that Ditko had built up until then.
-- The majority of Spider-Man's classic rogues and supporting cast were all designed by Steve Ditko in the original run. If you look at Spider-Man's rogues, you will find that there aren't many big new villains after the originals (the Chameleon, the Vulture, Dr. Octopus, the Scorpion, the Lizard, Mysterio, Kraven the Hunter, Electro, the Sandman, the Green Goblin). That's 10 of them. So Ditko in his short run provided his successors with a full stack of toys to play with.
-- Ditko never wanted sole possession of Spider-Man, nor did he expect that the character and stories were his proprietership to never be engaged in by other writers and artists. Ditko's issues weren't analogous in any way to Alan Moore's distaste for Watchmen being part of a mainline DC continuity. All Ditko wanted was proper credit and acknowledgement, and pay commensurate to his contributions.
-- Stan Lee driving away Ditko and Kirby played a major factor in Marvel's editorial slump during the 70s, until Jim Shooter arrived. So Lee alienating his co-workers did harm Marvel in the short and medium term, until Shooter cleaned house which he did by actually instituting a royalty program for the first time in Marvel's history.

[Mauled]

Nobody thinks Joker's lacking in brutality simply because he uses cartoon-y means of killing people like Joker gas and so on.



That argument isn't a proper defense, and there are way too many assumptions baked in.

-- When Lee-Ditko started Spider-Man, it was a totally new thing and they had to build steadily step-by-step, and sure, sales went way up when John Romita Sr. came on, and definitely greater in L-D's run, but for all that we can credit Romita Sr. for that, we can also see him as reaping the benefits of the equity that Ditko had built up until then.
-- The majority of Spider-Man's classic rogues and supporting cast were all designed by Steve Ditko in the original run. If you look at Spider-Man's rogues, you will find that there aren't many big new villains after the originals (the Chameleon, the Vulture, Dr. Octopus, the Scorpion, the Lizard, Mysterio, Kraven the Hunter, Electro, the Sandman, the Green Goblin). That's 10 of them. So Ditko in his short run provided his successors with a full stack of toys to play with.
-- Ditko never wanted sole possession of Spider-Man, nor did he expect that the character and stories were his proprietership to never be engaged in by other writers and artists. Ditko's issues weren't analogous in any way to Alan Moore's distaste for Watchmen being part of a mainline DC continuity. All Ditko wanted was proper credit and acknowledgement, and pay commensurate to his contributions.
-- Stan Lee driving away Ditko and Kirby played a major factor in Marvel's editorial slump during the 70s, until Jim Shooter arrived. So Lee alienating his co-workers did harm Marvel in the short and medium term, until Shooter cleaned house which he did by actually instituting a royalty program for the first time in Marvel's history.

You make some fair points. I agree

[Scott Taylor]

But it was done really cartoony with the Goblin bombs turning them into skeletons before they die. It wasn't exactly Death of Jean Dewolff death which was shown really brutal.

The skeleton bomb was odd. We only ever see it used once in the whole trilogy and its just sooooo overpowered that it drives me crazy. If you are going to run around killing people anyway, why not use that bomb every single time?

Its like that little goop gun in Ant Man. That thing was sooo incredibly overpowered. But the bad guy just uses it to kill like one super minor character in a bathroom and thats the last you see of it. He basically could have sold those guns for way more than the yellow-jacket suits.

[Mister Mets]

This documentary is dated and gets a bunch of information wrong.

For example, we now know that Ditko always intended Norman to be the Green Goblin. Norman shows up in the background in multiple Spider-Man issues prior to ASM # 37. Also if Norman wasn't intended to be the Goblin, that doesn't explain how he knocks out Spider-Man with a punch in his first credited appearance, or how he kills Stromm from mid-air and dissapearing a few seconds after that.

Ditko's reputation as "The Ayn Rand Guy" is also absurd. Some think Ditko's eventual plan was to turn Spider-Man into something closer to Mr. A. The problem with this theory is that labels like "Objectivist" or "Liberal" or whatever are utterly meaningless out of context. In reality, political definitions of labels vary from person to person. Brad Bird is known as an "Ayn Rand Guy", but when you ask him to get specific it turns out he's not as right-wing as he seems. Downey Jr. identifies as conservative, but you wouldn't think he does based on his stances. Heck, two-thirds of Americans identify as Conservative but over 60% of them agree with Bernie Sanders on most policy issues.

Maybe Ditko was a hardcore Objectivist, or maybe he just took some things Ayn Rand said to heart but not others. The point is we'll never know because he was a total stranger that made no public appearances and practically had little-to-no interviews. The fact we know more about a guy like Brad Bird and still manage to misinterpret his beliefs as very Randian is a sign as to how silly this whole detective game is.

A lot of the misinformation is on Ditko. He has chosen to communicate in a particular and convoluted way, when he could just as easily have given straightforward answers in a Comics Journal interview or something.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

A lot of the misinformation is on Ditko. He has chosen to communicate in a particular and convoluted way, when he could just as easily have given straightforward answers in a Comics Journal interview or something.

It's not Ditko's fault that people in the industry repeat known rumors without following the basic principles of fact-checking, i.e. looking at different sources, weighing the evidence, seeing if information is one-sided, measuring primary source (comics) versus reported views given by others etcetera.

Ditko also wanted his work to speak for itself. Anyone who had read his original run carefully knew well that Norman Osborn was set up to be Green Goblin all along. Anyone who knew anything about the Marvel Method knew that all the visual details and foreshadowing could only ever have been Ditko's work. Everyone who had read and followed the credits knowing that Ditko got plotting credit from ASM#25 onwards, knew that the Crime Master 2-Parter which had the major foreshadowing (and also introduction of Norman) and of course the final two-part issues of Ditko's run, setting up Norman as a villain...all came in the period in which he had most say in the direction of the stories. The evidence for Norman being Goblin was there all along. People just ignored it or didn't care. And when Ditko did address it, he just pointed to his work:
-- "Now digest this: I knew from Day One, from the first GG story, who the GG would be. I absolutely knew because I planted him in J. Jonah Jameson’s businessman's club, it was where JJJ and the GG could be seen together. I planted them together in other stories where the GG would not appear in costume, action. I wanted JJJ’s and the GG’s lives to mix for later story drama involving more than just the two characters. I planted the GG’s son (same distinctive hair style) in the college issues for more dramatic involvement and storyline consequences. So how could there be any doubt, dispute, about who the GG had to turn out to be when unmasked?"

The comics industry in general, and superhero comics in particular, is rife with rumors, speculation, and oral tradition...where basically editors and writers in multiple areas make wild claims without any counter (as we see in Jonathan Ross' documentary). In some cases it's because the editors are the boss, and you can't challenge them if you want promotion and so on (and this documentary has interviews with Stan Lee and Joe Quesada, then Marvel EIC). Then there's the fact that Marvel and DC don't open their archives to researchers. Like if you want to research Alfred Hitchcock, you can go and visit the archives, and see all the studio notes and telegrams, all the drafts of multiple scripts, and from his later films, you can listen to tape recordings that Hitchcock made where he discussed the story and characterization with his writers and actors and crew. When you do that you realize that Hitchcock lied, a lot. He often claimed that he storyboarded every shot when he didn't, that he treated actors as cattle when he actually let them improvise a fair few times, that he was a master planner when most of his movies went over-budget and over-schedule. I am sure that if you get full access under the hood, you will find a similar story with comics. But In comics you can't get that access, since Marvel has a vested interest in hiding part of the evidence of how it works (owing to copyright issues and legal issues). In other words, whenever someone says so-and-so said this once, try and trace the quote, ask people for a source, and even then measure that with the evidence of the original work. Just because a writer/artist says something different later, doesn't explain everything about the original run.

The fact is that comics critics, fans, and so on need to be vigilant about this. Your favorite creators/writers can, and absolutely will, lie and distort the truth to suit their agenda, or you know in some cases because they signed NDA or as-good-as-signed-NDA since speaking out would get them fired anyway. In other cases, especially in earlier eras, when comics were seen as disposable weekly ephemeral material, and they had a lot of duties, errors happen and people's memories get distorted. So this isn't some vast conspiracy or anything, it's just everyday BS that piles up over time when you are dealing with long-running comics.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

A lot of the misinformation is on Ditko. He has chosen to communicate in a particular and convoluted way, when he could just as easily have given straightforward answers in a Comics Journal interview or something.

Can you list some examples? I am not sure what you are referring to. If anything, the reasons there are so many unknowns is because Ditko didn't communicate enough period (which, at much as I wanted him to, doesn't mean the responsibility for the rumors should fall on him - it still falls on those who spread the rumors).

[Mister Mets]

Can you list some examples? I am not sure what you are referring to. If anything, the reasons there are so many unknowns is because Ditko didn't communicate enough period (which, at much as I wanted him to, doesn't mean the responsibility for the rumors should fall on him - it still falls on those who spread the rumors).

As an example of his chosen methods of communication, Ditko never gave a straightforward explanation about why he left Amazing Spider-Man.

I'll note that I said "a lot of the misinformation is on Ditko" not that all of it is on him.

The people in the industry didn't think they were spreading rumors; they probably thought they were telling the truth. If Stan Lee was saying it was about the Green Goblin, and Ditko wasn't saying anything, pros in the industry were relying on firsthand information. If Ditko had abruptly stopped talking to Lee, it was entirely possible that Lee would draw the wrong conclusion.

Arlen Schumer, the author of The Silver Age of Comic Book Art, described how Ditko's explanations are intentionally missing some stuff.

I've been saying you have to read between the lines with Ditko as much as his lines themselves, and notice what he DOESN'T say as much as he DOES say. And I think he does this on purpose, leaving it up to the reader to deduce things for themselves. Ditko is not one prone to expressing EMOTION, so that's what you also have to "read in."

[Revolutionary_Jack]

As an example of his chosen methods of communication, Ditko never gave a straightforward explanation about why he left Amazing Spider-Man.

IT was about pay and credit as Blake Bell revealed in his biography of Ditko.

I'll note that I said "a lot of the misinformation is on Ditko" not that all of it is on him.

And I am saying that all the misinformation is at the hands of other people and not in the least on Ditko.

Ditko never once gave any hint that he had issues with Norman Osborn being Green Goblin. He never gave leading questions or answers to the effect that anyone would have doubts about that.

Doing otherwise is victim-blaming.

The people in the industry didn't think they were spreading rumors; they probably thought they were telling the truth. If Stan Lee was saying it was about the Green Goblin, and Ditko wasn't saying anything, pros in the industry were relying on firsthand information.

Anyone who has known friends who parted ways or parted ways with friends ought to know that you can't simply take the word of the guy who speaks louder and automatically assume that the voluble one is the most truthful. You can never accept one side of the story as sacrosanct. So I don't think there was any excuse to start indulging in rumormongering.

Rumors about Ditko leaving, i.e. "Ditko didn't want Norman to be Goblin", he wanted "Peter to be objectivist" are generally Stan Lee propaganda to justify Lee and Marvel stiffing Ditko. The subtext has awalys "Stan was right to screw him over, if he had continued, Spider-Man would have sucked". So it served Lee well to spread these rumors (assuming he started them, my feeling is that this was some theory an intern or someone came up with in Marvel and Lee encouraged it).

Arlen Schumer, the author of The Silver Age of Comic Book Art, described how Ditko's explanations are intentionally missing some stuff.

The same applies to virtually everyone who speaks or gives interviews. In the case of Ditko his stories and views on Spider-Man have remained consistent, back from when he was interviewed before he left Marvel and so on.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

As an example of his chosen methods of communication, Ditko never gave a straightforward explanation about why he left Amazing Spider-Man.

I'll note that I said "a lot of the misinformation is on Ditko" not that all of it is on him.

The people in the industry didn't think they were spreading rumors; they probably thought they were telling the truth. If Stan Lee was saying it was about the Green Goblin, and Ditko wasn't saying anything, pros in the industry were relying on firsthand information. If Ditko had abruptly stopped talking to Lee, it was entirely possible that Lee would draw the wrong conclusion.

Arlen Schumer, the author of The Silver Age of Comic Book Art, described how Ditko's explanations are intentionally missing some stuff.

If people spread rumors without hearing both sides of the story, or if Stan jumps to conclusions based on insufficient information, the blame still lies with them and not with Ditko.

[Mauled]

IT was about pay and credit as Blake Bell revealed in his biography of Ditko.



And I am saying that all the misinformation is at the hands of other people and not in the least on Ditko.

Ditko never once gave any hint that he had issues with Norman Osborn being Green Goblin. He never gave leading questions or answers to the effect that anyone would have doubts about that.

Doing otherwise is victim-blaming.



Anyone who has known friends who parted ways or parted ways with friends ought to know that you can't simply take the word of the guy who speaks louder and automatically assume that the voluble one is the most truthful. You can never accept one side of the story as sacrosanct. So I don't think there was any excuse to start indulging in rumormongering.

Rumors about Ditko leaving, i.e. "Ditko didn't want Norman to be Goblin", he wanted "Peter to be objectivist" are generally Stan Lee propaganda to justify Lee and Marvel stiffing Ditko. The subtext has awalys "Stan was right to screw him over, if he had continued, Spider-Man would have sucked". So it served Lee well to spread these rumors (assuming he started them, my feeling is that this was some theory an intern or someone came up with in Marvel and Lee encouraged it).



The same applies to virtually everyone who speaks or gives interviews. In the case of Ditko his stories and views on Spider-Man have remained consistent, back from when he was interviewed before he left Marvel and so on.

Based on just the Documentary Credit was definitely an issue for both Stan and Steve, if it was just about money Marvel could've written a huge Cheque for Steve and made that back by the next issue. On the Documentary Stan talks about how they fell out over the term "considered"
Which is crazy when you think how many Kids who broought it would simply have not read that anyway and gone straight to the Spider-Man story.

Then you got the fundamental issue that Ross gets Stan to admit. Stan openly says it, he thought up Spider-Man. (From his perspective) He is willing to give Steve some credit but ultimately he was the one who thought Spider-Man up not Steve Ditko.
Whereas Steve from his perspective clearly doesn't think that's good enough.

This is a what if question but if Stan had had a different Artist than Steve would Spider-Man have been as big ?

[Grapeweasel]

Marvel wasn't writing huge checks in the '60's.......

[Mister Mets]

If people spread rumors without hearing both sides of the story, or if Stan jumps to conclusions based on insufficient information, the blame still lies with them and not with Ditko.

People won't know there's another side to the story if one guy is intensely private, and neglects to give straightforward answers.