Happy Birthday Steve Ditko! The comic book creator was private and his life and work was explored in the documentary by British chat show host and comics fan, Jonathan Ross, with In Search of Steve Ditko. You can see it on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfxVO0fLHvA. Ditko then worked with Charlton Comics co-creating Captain Atom in Space Adventures #33 (1960). This character was brought into the DC universe and was the inspiration for Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen. Spider-Man first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962) before getting his own title starting with The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (1963) which had Spider-Man surrounded by the Fantastic Four! One of the most stunning pages in comic books was Amazing Spider-Man #33 (1966) which has Spider-Man trapped under tons of iron and just struggling for pages. Still, Ditko left the title with Amazing Spider-Man #38 (1966) apparently over disagreements with Stan Lee.
One of Ditko’s strangest and well known characters was Doctor Strange introduced in Strange Tales #110 (1963). His final arc with Doctor Strange was in Strange Tales #130 (1965) to 146 (1966). He left Marvel and went back to Charlton where he created the Silver Age incarnation of the Blue Beetle, Ted Kord, in Captain Atom #83 (1966). In 1967, he also created The Question in Blue Beetle #1 (1967). Both characters had analogues in Watchmen with Kord becoming Night Owl and The Question turned into the enigmatic Rorschach. At DC Comics, he co-created Hawk and Dove in Showcase #75 (1968) who are going to be featured in The Titans show. He returned to Marvel and one of the strange titles that I first saw his artwork was Rom Spaceknight where the cyborg character finished his war with alien Dire Wraiths using his Neutralizer. In 1992, Ditko did the artwork for Marvel Super-Heroes Winter Special (1992) which was the debut of Squirrel Girl, a character who in Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors voiced by Milana Vayntrub. The comics legend died in 2018, but his work is forever. Happy Birthday Steve Ditko!
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