Sean on Ditko
Steve Ditko. Despite his most famous co-creator credit, the creation of Spider-Man, Ditko never really seemed to really get his due. At Marvel, there was Stan Lee, almost single-handedly writing most of their books, and there was Jack Kirby who was drawing most of the titles. Ditko had always been “the other guy”. When I started reading comics, Spider-Man had already gone through Romita Sr, and Andru on the art chores, and Stan Lee wasn’t even writing the book anymore. I was introduced to John Byrne and Chris Claremont’s run on the team-up Spider-Man book called Marvel Team-Up. Sure I had read Spider-Man’s first appearance a bunch of times in various re-prints, but I had largely been unaware of Ditko or his influence. I was aware of Stan Lee and his larger than life writing ability, as it was often talked about reverently by everyone in the industry. Because I had been groomed on John Byrne’s Spider-Man, I was very receptive to John Buscema and John Romita Sr’s version of the hero. An...