Cbr:

[CBR News]

Steve Ditko sounds off? Yup, plus more Miracle Men, Tyrese Gibson moving in to comics, the fake Art Adams reappears, the great comics bailout of 2009 and much more in this week's LYING IN THE GUTTERS.


Full article here.

[Michael P]

Jesus, it's like Steve's thesaurus exploded.

[Sean Whitmore]

Cripes. Repeat after me, Mr. Ditko: "Better to remain silent and be thought a weird old loon than to speak and remove all doubt."


SEAN

[K-DoG7p7]

Regarding JLA.. McDuffie has took the blame for that one.. it was a typo in his script..

[nightw1ng]

that Flash story by Byrne isn't exactly original, as it was already done with Marvel's Captain Marvel, except they pulled a twist at the end and made him a skrull instead who believed he was the real deal but time-lost.

[Michael P]

that Flash story by Byrne isn't exactly original, as it was already done with Marvel's Captain Marvel, except they pulled a twist at the end and made him a skrull instead who believed he was the real deal but time-lost.

One presumes from the timeline that Byrne had the idea well before Marvel pulled that trick.

Don't know if he had it before Marv Wolfman did, though.

[chastmastr]

Wow. I feel sort of awkward about Steve Ditko's piece. On the one hand I wholeheartedly agree about Marvel having serious problems about how it portrays its heroes the last few years. I believe very strongly in good and evil, and I am saddened by the way Marvel's written a lot of their big-name characters since about mid-2004.

But on the other hand I am not an Ayn Randian; I'm a Christian, which -- in my own metaphysics, at least -- means that I see all people (including heroic characters) as fallible and flawed but with the possibility of redemption. This isn't the Randian kind of absolutism Steve seems to favor here, and it means that one can write stories about heroes falling and rising, even quite dark stories which show heroes as subject to the same moral failings, or temptations, as everyone else, but with an arc toward a kind of moral (not necessarily religious at all) repentance and renewal. (Some elements of Tony Stark's current storyline are beginning, I think, to show some of that, but he's done such amazingly horrible things in my view, in ways I find deeply out of character, and it's taken so long to get to this point, that I'm simply going to step back and see if things get back to normal before jumping back in again.) I have a particular fondness, myself, for storylines which develop the humanity, or even the redemption, of some villains -- Magneto between Uncanny X-Men #150 and #200 was absolutely top-notch, for instance, or Rogue's joining the X-Men, or even Emma Frost.

There could have been a much better critique of Marvel's current direction than Steve's, I think, because I think he has some valid points in there, but they're overwhelmed by everything else in his essay. He also seems to wholly miss the point of various storylines in the past dealing with Speedy's and Tony's addictions; the characters' strength of will to overcome them certainly seems to be heroic to me. Steve's dislike of the "humanization" of Superman is perhaps sadly telling as well.

Still, I was wondering how he'd react to things like Civil War, and now I know...

David

[Alexrules]

The bad thing about Civil War (beyond all the other bad things about it) was that it basically promised everything that they couldn't deliver on. It barely had a plot and never went anywhere, not to mention they tried to portray both sides as being right even when they tried to lean to Captain America's side they still won't go all the way, it's a big put on.

Did they have to ruin Spider-man?

As for the Captain Marvel thing. Example of the same problem. It's a big put-on. It's not Captain Marvel it's a Skrull...

Thor shows up, it's not Thor. Some guy dies... who was that and why it worse than another guy we didn't know anything about? I never heard of him. By issue four they were already burnt out on they're big surprises. Civil War was not the level of quality Marvel should of put out.

[Michael P]

The bad thing about Civil War (beyond all the other bad things about it) was that it basically promised everything that they couldn't deliver on. It barely had a plot and never went anywhere, not to mention they tried to portray both sides as being right even when they tried to lean to Captain America's side they still won't go all the way, it's a big put on.

Did they have to ruin Spider-man?

Yes, because then they had an excuse to fix him.

[Sean Whitmore]

Did they have to ruin Spider-man?

Yeah, they ruined him forever with that new costume and by having him reveal his identity...

Oh, no, wait a minute, my memories suddenly came back to me, and that's all gone now.


SEAN

[Drink]

I find it unusual for Ditko to speak out like that. He's supposed to be notoriously reclusive, adamantly refusing interviews or pictures. He prefers to have his work speak for him rather than himself.

[Sean Whitmore]

He prefers to have his work speak for him

Or sometimes Ayn Rand's work.


SEAN

[chastmastr]

Ironically, if he'd done a comic on this subject, even if it was as shrill as Mr. A or the Question, I think a lot of people would have bought it and they might listen more to what he has to say.

[chastmastr]

This week at Comic Critics: Keep your enemies close

By the way... currently working my way through those ... ROTFL!! You do good stuff!!

David
R.I.P. MARVIN WHITE 1973-2008: YOU WERE JUST DREADFUL

[Beacon]

Will someone please give me an English translation of what Ditko said? As much as I’d like to pretend I’m joking (in an “I don’t understand the objectivist crazy-talk” way), the truth is that I genuinely have no idea what thoughts he is trying to express with the words that he’s using. No wonder he needed Stan Lee to write the dialogue in those old stories.