Ditko, Rand and Mr. A

[emb021]

All-

Most likely few are familiar with Steve Ditko, a comic book artist who has worked on several comic book characters, most notably, is the co-creator of Spider-Man.

In the 1960s, Ditko got interested in Objectivism, and this has had a major impact on his work over the years, with several of his characters and stories being influenced by Objectivist ideas. He has also done some 'non-fiction' comics that basically exposes the philosophy.

His first, and most well-known, "Objectivist superhero" is Mr. A. (tho one sees elements in The Question, which you will see mentioned in the below series)

Here are links to a 3-part series on Mr. A, with a good deal of his artwork. Enjoy:

http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/296/

http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/297/

http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/298/

Michael Brown

Edited August 23, 2006 by Michael Brown

[Chris Grieb]

Miss Rand always thought that when Objectivist ideas began to appear in comic strips that her philosophy would have reached the general public. Steve Ditko is the first of a great many to follow.

[emb021]

Miss Rand always thought that when Objectivist ideas began to appear in comic strips that her philosophy would have reached the general public. Steve Ditko is the first of a great many to follow.

Actually, Ditko is probably one of the only who has done so. And many comics fans/pros feel that his Objectivism has done him more harm then good. Many feel his Objectivist works as fairly unreadable, and he has had problems getting them published. His attitudes has caused him to miss out on a lot of opportunities.

I'm not aware of any other comic artist/writer who exposes Objectivism in any form, other then Hanther in his independent comic series Tandra. In this series, his heroes expose the philosophy, but very subtly. And the main villians in the series comes from what appears to be a sort of 'Galt's Gulch gone bad'.

[Chris Grieb]

Michael; You are probably right. I hope Ditko didn't have anything with Armagaddon comics which are a horrid combination of the characters engaging in explict sex after declaiming long speechs which are rip-offs of Ayn Rand.

[Fran]

If my memory serves me correctly, a late friend of mine [Chris Tame, for those who may have know him] told me that Steve Ditko was asked to do a comic-book version of Atlas with Ayn Rand's approval. However, Ditko backed out of it because rightly or wrongly he perceived that everybody had their own idea of what Hank, Dagny, Francisco, etc looked like and he was concerned that he'd be unable to meet with their expectations.

[emb021]

Michael; You are probably right. I hope Ditko didn't have anything with Armagaddon comics which are a horrid combination of the characters engaging in explict sex after declaiming long speechs which are rip-offs of Ayn Rand.

Not familiar with that comic. Was that the title or the company name? I came across a 3-issue series with that name from Last Gasp (an underground publisher), but Ditko never worked with any of the undergrounds.

Ditko was the sort of person who would probably want nothing to do with something like that. When DC asked him to work on Captain Atom (a character he had co-created at Charlton and which DC now owned), he turned it down because "superheroes shouldn't replace the government" or something to that affect. (Capt Atom was an Air Force officer and many of his missions were for the government). After the 1970s or so, if there was anything he had a problem with on a title (themes, etc), he wouldn't work on it.

As to an Atlas adaptation. I had never heard of this! I will have to ask around. Frankly, Ditko is probably one of the few artists I would want to work on it. He more cartoonish/abstract style would have been great to illustrate and expand on Galt's speach, etc.

[Chris Grieb]

I'm sorry to say I don't the answer to your question. I do know the Armageddon comics were awful.

[emb021]

Here is something that was posted to a Ditko mailing list:

====begin quote=======

Michael T. Gilbert wrote:

>

> His love of a certain Miss Rand is well known, Mike. ;-)

It was almost cetainly one-sided, though you never know.

When Mort Todd got the green light for an ATLAS SHRUGGED series at

Marvel. the Rand folks said Ditko could draw the characters any way he

wanted. They knew very well who he was. Of course it was mainly

because he was a high profile Objectivist. He presumably kept the

mainline faith after the unpleasant split up, in the 70s.

Apparently, Ditko did meet with Rand and her paramour acolyte, Nathan

Branden. When they broke up, acrimoniously, who knows who she was

entertaining socially.

But I somehow doubt Mr D was seen around, after hours. He was just a

lowly comic book artist, and Rand would have only just tolerated his

company, in a public place. She preferred to hang around with captains

of industry, daring financiers, and the ilk.

Mike Feldman

=====end quote=====

Edited October 2, 2006 by Michael Brown

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ditko, Rand and Mr. A

I just came across this link on another forum (hat tip to Stuart Hayashi). I have only had time to skim it, but it looks like it is much more informative and much better researched than these things tend to be. Steve Ditko is best known for his co-authoring with Stan Lee of Spiderman in its the early days at Marvel Comics.

The article is on a site called "Dial B for Blog" devoted to discussion of comic books. The only date given is "May" so I don't know if that is 2007 or earlier. I guess it is 2007 since it seems to be the most recent entry. Also, it is not signed. That is a shame because it looks like a lot of hard work went into this.

The article discusses the Objectivist origin of Mr. A and has a lot on Ayn Rand and her influence on Ditko. It also provides a couple of photos of him, and that's a rare treat.

THE SECRET ORIGINS of STEVE DITKO'S MR. A. -- PART ONE (Mr. A is Mr. A)

THE SECRET ORIGINS of STEVE DITKO'S MR. A. -- PART TWO (Meet Mr. A.!)

THE SECRET ORIGINS of STEVE DITKO'S MR. A. -- PART THREE (Violence, The Phoney Issue!)

This does look most interesting and some information is provided that is virtually unavailable anywhere else.

Michael

NOTE: This post was the start of a new thread that got merged here.

[Chris Grieb]

Michael;

A quick look says this is interesting material.

A quick comment about Ditko's writings suggests he seems to make Rand's points in Rand's styles and words. My memories of many Objectivists writings in the 60ths was that many Objectivists did that.

[emb021]

Hey! I had already created an earlier thread on this topic: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...p?showtopic=787

Steve Ditko (probably most well know to people as the artist and co-creator of Spiderman) apparently got into Objectivism back in the NBI days (he lived in New York). Objectivist philosophy started to color many of his creations. Mr. A. is the most well know, but it colored other works. His independent works (in recent years published or reprinted by Robin Snyder) is heavily influenced by this. Sometimes the philisophy got in the way of good story telling.

I sometimes wish that TAS bookstore would carry some of his works.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael,

Dayaamm, I missed this. I am going to merge the threads.

(Later:) I just did. For the record, your original thread was titled: "Steve Ditko's Mr. A., Objectivist superhero." Apparently the merge feature ate your former URL, so your link no longer works. If you have linked to this thread from somewhere else, you will need to fix those links.

Michael

[Greybird]

Has anyone else here seen the comic-strip adaptation of The Fountainhead? It ran in thirty installments during December 1945 and January 1946. Rand worked with the then-Hearst-owned King Features Syndicate and illustrator Frank Godwin to produce the illustrated condensation of the novel.

Illustration panels of about 2-by-10 inches ran above 300-to-400-word pieces of text. Each had the legend, "Based on the great, best-selling novel of a man who dared to pit his genius against the world."

The condensation does better than one might expect, at roughly one-in-thirty words, with the novel. What is utterly fascinating about this is that many incidents and side-events that were presented in the novel, but ended up being omitted from the 1949 movie, are shown here. We actually see the Stoddard Temple, for instance. It almost reads like a polished "previsualization" for what would have been a much longer movie, then done on storyboards, now sketched out with computer graphics tools and rough animation.

A spiral-bound reprinting of this strip was made in 1998. I saw it offered at the C-SPAN American Writers weekend that ARI helped present in Hollywood, in Spring 2002, about The Fountainhead (well, officially and with some events). It was a premium for a $50 donation to ARI.

Since I hadn't seen it being sold in any catalog — admittedly, I don't pore over what they put out — I chose to thus make a donation, the only cash I ever gave ARI. Though I noted strenously, in writing, that this was solely to support the efforts of archivist Jeff Britting. He had struck me, upon meeting him that weekend, as a relatively honest and quite competent man, with professional standards, who tried to uphold his skills' being used properly in an otherwise mendacious organization.

Oh, the other premium that came to me for that $50 was an insulated travel coffee cup marked with Rand's visage and the title of that C-SPAN weekend. I made an amusing moment by turning it over and pointing out that it was "Made in China," the mainland, which horrified the staffers. (Some belief in free trade, eh? ;))

[emb021]

Has anyone else here seen the comic-strip adaptation of The Fountainhead? It ran in thirty installments during December 1945 and January 1946. Rand worked with the then-Hearst-owned King Features Syndicate and illustrator Frank Godwin to produce the illustrated condensation of the novel.

I didn't even know such a thing existed. I am not familiar with Godwin. I found an entry for him on Lambiek's Comicpedia, with some samples of his work, but nothing about Fountainhead: http://lambiek.net/artists/g/godwin_francis.htm

Earlier in this thread, we had a brief discussion on an aborted comic book adaptation of Atlas Shrugged. I had always felt that Ditko would be the best one to do it justice. His more 'abstract' works in illustrating Objectivist principles I thought would do well for Galt's speech.

A good source of info on Ditko is the 'Ditko Looked Up' site: http://www.ditko.comics.org/

His most 'Objectivist' work was his independent work, much of it collected by Robin Snyder and still available from him. (RScomics @ aol.com) Sadly, the bulk of the Mr. A. material was reprinted by Fantagraphics several years back, and is now out of print. Snyder has yet to re-publish this material, and who knows when/if this will happen. I did another posting about their most recent publication, "the Avenging World".

I had been thinking several times of doing an article on Ditko's Objectivist work, but keep putting it off, in small part because my collection of this work is not yet complete (and may never be, due to cost of getting certain back issues).

Edited June 20, 2007 by Michael Brown