Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
When it comes to Marvel Comics, Stan Lee will probably always be known as the public face of the company’s meteoric rise to popularity and cultural prominence, while Jack Kirby will always be known and revered by die-hard comic books fans and scholars as the unfairly-overlooked creative genius. That dynamic, the colorful, charismatic public face and the taciturn, brilliant artist, has played out again and again over the various creative fields, as some artists figure out ways to push their respective mediums forward while others figure out how to actually sell it. Neither Stan nor Jack, while he was alive, seemed at all comfortable with that dynamic, but it’s one that has become enshrined as Marvel has grown and evolved and they became locked into their respective myths as the founding fathers of Marvel.
So where does that leave Steve?
Steve Ditko did not create/co-create nearly as many characters during his tenure as a Marvel as Kirby did, but Ditko is largely responsible for maybe THE Marvel character. Steve Ditko is the man who designed and brought Spider-Man to life, turning Lee’s original notes into the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler we all know and love. Ditko also created Dr. Strange entirely on his own, making him responsible not only for Marvel’s signature character, but also perhaps their most enduring cult success.
Ditko stunned the comics world when he abruptly quit Spider-Man, and Marvel altogether, three years into what was already considered a landmark run. The question of why he left was only one of many that surrounded Ditko, who famously shunned the spotlight and gave few interviews.
It was in the hopes of answering some of these questions that Jonathan Ross went In Search of Steve Ditko. The one-hour doc, produced for BBC4, finds Ross hopping the globe and interviewing everyone he can find (including comic book luminaries Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Mark Millar, as well as past and then-contemporary staff at Marvel) to try and make sense of Ditko’s life and legacy, and maybe even score a sit-down with the man himself.
Steve Ditko passed away three weeks ago, and even though it had been decades since he produced significant work for the major comic companies, he is one of the few artists who can be said to have truly reshaped their industry (and culture at large). Creating (co- or otherwise) would have been enough to earn him a spot in the pantheon, but Ditko’s work beyond the web-slinger was equally bold, bizarre, and influential. It seemed right to honor his passing by going in search of him ourselves, and take a chance to reflect on that legacy.
Next Week’s Pick
The Mission: Impossible film series has now entered its second decade of life, with Mission: Impossible- Fallout promising to be the most insane mission yet, and that’s without even factoring in Henry Cavill’s studio-destroying mustache.
But the Mission: Impossible series as it exists today, as a globetrotting stunt show in which Tom Cruise spends millions of dollars concocting the most elaborate suicides possible, is vastly different from how it all started in 1996, when Tom Cruise enlisted Brian de Palma to help him retool a delightfully silly old spy show into a blockbuster.
So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to watch Brian de Palma’s Mission: Impossible, and join us next week as we break it all down.
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Our Guests
Austin Wilden:
Something that’s always been a question, especially recently, is how much an artist’s politics should affect the ability to enjoy their work. What the readers getting high while staring at the interdimensional layouts of Ditko’s Doctor Strange comics would’ve thought about the artist’s Randian views on life is left unexamined within In Search of Steve Ditko. That anecdote is in the BBC documentary more to make a point about Ditko’s imagination than to thoroughly examine how readers relate to the politics of their creator, but it’s definitely worth some examination. His internalized attitude about his stories, art and life make it difficult to determine if or how he would operate if he was an up and coming comic artist today, where many among the industry openly promote new projects or goof around with fans on social media. His politics permeate his pages, especially in the post-Marvel era of his career. The Question, and by extension Mr. A, under his pen, were the types of characters to scoff at notions like moral nuance, only believing (and in Mr. A’s case existing in) black/white. It’s an element of his work that speaks to an arch-conservatism of the time that end up reading as the Objectivist equivalent of a Chick tract.
None of that changes how future comic creators would choose to carry on from the starting point Ditko provided them. Whether that’s Alan Moore stripping the noble Question/Mr. A of any romanticism to create Rorschach in Watchmen or how writer Al Ewing, several years after this documentary, had Peter Parker express embarrassment at how he acted towards protesters in college. Others would lean into the spirituality and surreal nature of his work on Doctor Strange or Shade, The Changing Man in ways even Ditko couldn’t imagine. These ideas can in turn inspire others to make works that respond to them, like Grant Morrison’s Pax Americana using the actual Charlton Comics characters to comment on where he feels Watchmen fell short as a deconstruction. That’s the wonderful/terrible, twisting nature of the beast that is superhero comic books. Once an idea catches fire, the elements that stick around can be as divergent from the initial spark as a space shuttle is from the Wright Brothers’ plane.
Though one of the people who would probably care least about these cause/effect relationships between creators and their audience would probably be Ditko himself. (@WC_Wit)
The Team
I grew up on comic books in the 80s and 90s, as I suspect quite a few of us thirty-somethings did. I’d never been the type of fan to follow a specific artist too closely as a kid or teenager. As an adult, I’ve found myself gravitating towards Alan Moore and Mark Millar, among others.
Even before seeing both of these great minds discuss their love for Steve Ditko in this documentary, I’d read interviews with both of them crediting Ditko as major influence. I’ve really just begun to explore his work in the past few years and I’m already realizing that it’s hard not to love his work.
After watching this great exploration of Ditko this week, I’m more excited than ever to dig into some of his runs and titles I’ve never even considered. While his beliefs and politics seem to have been starkly different than my own, I’m intrigued and excited to see more.
One of the most amazing things about art is that it’s never too late to experience what an artist has created. While I’m sad that the world has lost such an interesting artist, I’m thankful that he has left us a ton of great work to enjoy and dive into for years to come. (@thepaintedman)
I was a little concerned about this film just from the premise, as there’s always something that rubs me the wrong way about stories concerning ‘fans’ tracking down and demanding audience with artists who have withdrawn from public life. It bums me out when it’s dudes trying to coerce Bill Watterson into being in their movie, bums me out when it’s dudes (and it’s always dudes) trying to get Richard Simmons on their podcast. And given that Jonathan Ross has something of a reputation for being a…let us say ‘energetic’ host, In Search of Steve Ditko seemed like it had a high probability of irritation.
But the doc actually comes together quite nicely. Ross puts together an all-star roster of comic talent to explain just why Ditko’s work was/is so important, and as for the titular Hunt, Ross is respectful of Ditko and never pushes past his welcome. It helps that for these sections, he’s accompanied by a boyishly giddy Neil Gaiman which, I mean, ‘boyishly giddy’ is one of the best possible flavors of Neil Gaiman. Also fascinating is a late-in-the-game interview with Stan Lee, where Ross genuinely puts the pressure to Lee over who got what credit for Spider-Man. Lee doesn’t budge an inch, and the situation quickly defuses with a laugh, but it’s fascinating to watch an entrenched, enshrined man of great power and popularity pushed out of his comfort zone, even for just a moment. Ditko’s work and legacy are much more complicated than a single hour-long doc could hope to totally encompass, but Ross’s investigation is well worth a watch. (@theTrueBrendanF)
As a bit of a contrast to Justin above, I’m probably a bit unusual for someone of our age (which is to say, we weren’t around for Spider-Man’s first couple decades) in that I’m much more familiar with the classic Marvel than of contemporary stories from the 90s-onward. Along with the X-Men, I pored over collected volumes of the classic Spider-Man, and these are what inform my knowledge of the character more than, say, the Todd McFarlane run (which I also enjoy). So Ditko is undoubtedly someone who has both brought me a lot of enjoyment and shaped my understanding of both comics and Spider-Man.
It’s kind of sad to know that Marvel, and perhaps more specifically Stan Lee, have had a lot of disputes with creators regarding proper accreditation and compensation. I actually happen to agree with Lee that that the person who “dreams up the idea” is the creator, or at least the primary one, but on the other hand Ditko, Jack Kirby and many others (Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich comes to mind as a recent example) have seen their creations become successful ongoing characters or even huge multimedia properties, without sharing in their financial successes.
For its part, the documentary certainly goes to great length to express Ditko’s impact and influence, pulling in many comics creators and Marvel personalities to shed light on the subject. (It also makes liberal use of Comic Sans — blah). Nonetheless he remains an enigma, and while the documentary certainly honors the man and his work, and even shares something of his world view, it doesn’t do much to unwrap that mystery. (@VforVashaw)
Watch it on Youtube!
Next week’s pick: