In your opinion, why did Ditko leave Amazing?

[arosenbarger]

To me the departure of Spider-Man's co-creator is one of the most speculated comic book mysteries in the medium. After reading numerous articles, interviews, the book - Untold Tales of Marvel - I can only speculate hubris is the reason.

Ditko wanted compensation and recognition unheard of at the time. These issues were, I believe brought about by his personal beliefs as an artist and personal politics. While I can certainly relate (and do not condemn), his requests were uncommon in mainstream books in the 1960's. I believe Ditko realized his efforts were futile and left the book.

Lee I believe was riding the wave of the Marvel Age, which he spearheaded and did not want to relent any creative recognition or compensation to another.

Both men I admire greatly. Both seem to me victim of the times.

Countless geeks have speculated why these two split up. Just wondering your two cents and if my ideas are far off.

Thank you and take care,
Andrew

[oldschool]

To me the departure of Spider-Man's co-creator is one of the most speculated comic book mysteries in the medium. After reading numerous articles, interviews, the book - Untold Tales of Marvel - I can only speculate hubris is the reason.

Ditko wanted compensation and recognition unheard of at the time. These issues were, I believe brought about by his personal beliefs as an artist and personal politics. While I can certainly relate (and do not condemn), his requests were uncommon in mainstream books in the 1960's. I believe Ditko realized his efforts were futile and left the book.

Lee I believe was riding the wave of the Marvel Age, which he spearheaded and did not want to relent any creative recognition or compensation to another.

Both men I admire greatly. Both seem to me victim of the times.

Countless geeks have speculated why these two split up. Just wondering your two cents and if my ideas are far off.

Thank you and take care,
Andrew

That's pretty much what I always thought from what I could gather through interviews and articles over the years. Ditko was/presumably is a devout supporter of Ayn Rand's Objectivism and, as such, he doesn't believe he owes his fans/customers anything other than his work so, in other words, no interviews and no conversation about him as a person----just his artwork that he is paid for and that's it. My guess is someone with that point of view was going to clash pretty severely with Stan who is not far removed from PT Barnum and the fact that Stan was given so much of the credit for Spidey could not have helped. Let's keep in mind just how quickly Spidey grew in popularity between 1963 and 1965 when Ditko split---it was a meteoric rise in popularity for the character and book and that no doubt added to the stress between them…..Stan did start giving Steve plotting credits, presumably at Steve's insistence but I can only guess that wasn't enough.

In the end, not much is clear----even Stan claims he doesn't know why and describes Ditko as an odd sort of fellow. What is clear is that the rumors that he left over a dispute over The Green Goblin's identity reveal (Ditko wanted him to be an unknown like The Crimemaster was, Stan wanted it to be someone in the supporting cast) were overblown. They may have argued/disagreed over that but that wasn't the reason for his exit. It's been almost 50 years---my guess is we won't ever really know.

[RobertMacQuarrie1]

I don't think it's that much of a mystery, when you think about it. Ditko had very strong beliefs about society, ethics, and morals, and I think they contrasted with the culture at Marvel at the time. I don't think this was a case of him being peeved at not getting enough attention for his work on Spider-Man. This is a guy who has shunned society and just focused on his work. I don't think he cared. But I do think he cared about not getting to tell the stories he wanted to tell.

I think a good example of how Ditko's belief might have clashed with what Marvel wanted from him was how he had Peter deal with protestors at his college. Under Ditko's pen, these protestors were lazy and good for nothing douchebags, caring less on what they were protesting and more on the fact that they could use it to ditch class. Problem was one of the largest growing audience for Marvel comics at the time were those same people Ditko was criticizing. So, it could have been that Ditko was being asked to not insult and demean the biggest portion of people who are buying the book.

In addition, Ditko had very strick beliefs about who heroes should or should not be, and what villains were like. If you were bad, you were born bad and there is no way around that. The conflict over the Goblin could have been less about the character's identity and more that they treated his criminality as merely something that could be forgotten, that he'd go back to being good again. To Ditko, that character was never good in the first place. And heroes were to be strong willed in their convictions. Looking at characters like the Question and Mr. A, they were certain in all their beliefs about the criminals they hunted. This might have conflicted with the more unsure Spider-Man, who often questioned if he was doing the right thing.

So, I think that his departure probably had to do with feelings of being creatively stifled, due to his strong Objectionist beliefs. It was less the fact that he felt he wasn't getting enough credit, and more that he was being told how to write a book that he spent a lot of time developing.

[StoneGold]

You could see those moments late in his run on the book, where the art seemed to want to have Spidey angry at those dirty, dirty hippies, but the text said otherwise.

[Lee]

What is clear is that the rumors that he left over a dispute over The Green Goblin's identity reveal (Ditko wanted him to be an unknown like The Crimemaster was, Stan wanted it to be someone in the supporting cast) were overblown.

Not overblown, but 100% false. Ditko has confirmed that his Green Goblin was Norman Osborn.

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources...ed-400-part-1/

[StoneGold]

Not overblown, but 100% false. Ditko has confirmed that his Green Goblin was Norman Osborn.

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources...ed-400-part-1/

Realizing your proof says "Seems to be false." "Seems" seems less than 100%.

[Alan2099]

I've read interviews from a few different people that have said Ditko's beliefs made him a hard person to work with at times. During times when he was hard up for money, he'd flat out refused assignments that were custom made for him to do simply because some small aspect of it disagreed with his viewpoints.

Ditko did say at one point that his black and white views didn't apply to Spider-man yet because Spidey was still a kid and didn't know any better. I think in his mind, as Spidey got older and more experienced, he was supposed to start to see things more clearly (meaning more along the lines that Ditko did.)



To put things in perspective, when left to his own devices and given complete control, this was the ideal hero he came up with.

[Chris S.]

What is that from?

[Alan2099]

That's Ditko's creator owned character Mr. A.

He's appeared a few times in small publications.

[StoneGold]

What is that from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._A

[jgprime]

Reading that Mr. A page...wow. I knew Ditko was hard to work with, but I didn't know his Objectionist beliefs leaked on to his work as a writer and that they played such a big part in which projects he chose to work on. It's very ironic that the most memorable character he ever worked on (and co-created) would deviate so much from his personal beliefs.

[Kevinroc]

Reading that Mr. A page...wow. I knew Ditko was hard to work with, but I didn't know his Objectionist beliefs leaked on to his work as a writer and that they played such a big part in which projects he chose to work on. It's very ironic that the most memorable character he ever worked on (and co-created) would deviate so much from his personal beliefs.

I think that's a big reason why he's never worked on Spider-Man again ever since he left the title. Lee and Romita, Sr. did Spidey work well after they originally left the title but Ditko hasn't done anything Spidey. (And while some of his work was published in a Spider-Man comic, IIRC, Spidey didn't appear in those stories.)

[RobertMacQuarrie1]

Reading that Mr. A page...wow. I knew Ditko was hard to work with, but I didn't know his Objectionist beliefs leaked on to his work as a writer and that they played such a big part in which projects he chose to work on. It's very ironic that the most memorable character he ever worked on (and co-created) would deviate so much from his personal beliefs.

There's an interesting chapter in the book "Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers," which has various authors speaking about comic books and their experiences reading them or in the fandom in general. In the last chapter, Andrew Hulktrans talks about Steve Ditko and Dr. Strange, and how Dr. Strange runs almost completely counter to Ditko's later belief in Objectivism. I don't remember much of the article, I'll have to re-read it. But he does talk about how odd it is that the story of Dr. Strange, a very selfless and caring individual, would be written by the same man who would later write Mr. A. I believe he makes a parallel with when Ditko began to follow Objectivism more closely, to the decline in the quality of his writing and how it became more about promoting a belief than telling a compelling narrative.

[Alan2099]

Reading that Mr. A page...wow. I knew Ditko was hard to work with, but I didn't know his Objectionist beliefs leaked on to his work as a writer and that they played such a big part in which projects he chose to work on. It's very ironic that the most memorable character he ever worked on (and co-created) would deviate so much from his personal beliefs.

Back when Jim Shooter was the big boss man at Marvel. He tried to mend bridges with Ditko and got him working back at Marvel. According to Jim, Ditko refused to even consider doing anything Dr. Strange or Spider-man again. He also didn't want to work on ANYTHING that had "flawed" heroes. Apparently a guy wasn't a hero if he was flawed.

So he wouldn't do Spider-man. He wouldn't do Dr. Strange. He wouldn't do any flawed heroes. He was fine with ROM space Knight though and ... oddly enough... WWF comics.

Oh, and here's Jim Shooter trying to make a character especially for Ditko to do.

I wanted to create, with Steve, a character ideally suited for him.

He wanted a character who wasn’t bitten by a radioactive anything, or from another planet, or injected with chemicals. Whatever the character could do that was special, if anything, he wanted to be the result of his own efforts, his own thinking. If empowered, empowered in some novel, creative way by his own mind. And why does it always have to be a young guy? Why not an older man? Steve also didn’t want another muscular bodybuilder type. No mansions, no Batmobiles, no costumes. And no “official” super hero name. A real, regular person name—though he allowed that others who didn’t know his name might call the guy by some more dramatic appellation.

I started working on ideas.



This is what he came up with...

Fifty-four year-old Michael Alexander spent a lifetime overcoming the fears that limit human senses. Now he is able to see the Quantum Substratum of reality—the landscape of the Id—underlying the "hard"world. To normal eyes, he is a slight, aging eccentric, but to the evil things of the Substratum he is a mighty power to be feared. They call him Glare or Glint. The good call him The Light, or Glimmer, as in “glimmer of hope.” He alone stands between this world and those who would reshape it into a Dark Dominion.


And the reaction?

Halfway through the first issue, Ditko comes back and says he can't draw it. In Ditko's own words... "It's Platonic, and I am a Aristotilian."




...




Yeah, Shooter didn't know what that meant either. Ditko had to explain it to him. "Well, Plato thought there was the real world and then this invisible world and I'm Aristotilian—I believe that what you see is what you get. That's all there is. Reality. This story has a substratum world and I'm not drawing it."


Now try to picture a guy like this working with Stan Lee.

[arosenbarger]

Thank you to every that has posted on this topic. I knew Ditko had different politics than most (again not bashing, everyone is entitled to their beliefs) but I had no idea that such beliefs caused a rift not only with Lee, but future works.

In my honest opinion given the information I had at the time, I thought Lee was wanting center stage (from my main post). Thank you for the advice about reading Ditko's later issues. I will double check the imagery against Lee's written words.

While I believe we'll never get the conclusive, definite answer from the creators - I am satisfied with our collective answers. Thank you for lending your thoughts in a such a civil manner on such a controversial topic of Spider-Man lore.