by Robert Greenberger

Steve Ditko Omnibus Vol. 1

The career of Steve Ditko has been a most colorful one and is only recently being explored by comics’ historians, including Blake Bell’s recommended Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko. His unique style leant itself to some genres better than others and some mythic figures were perfect for his approach. By the 1970s, he had settled back at DC Comics for a stretch and did an eclectic blend of heroic fantasy, mystery, horror, and science fiction. That particular period is being collected in the Steve Ditko Omnibus. Within its 456 pages, you will get some of his better known works such as Shade the Changing Man and lots of his little seen stories culled from Strange Adventures, Plop!, House Of Mystery, House Of Secrets, Weird War Tales, Secrets of Haunted House, Tales of the Unexpected, Time Warp, Ghosts and Mystery in Space.

Many of the anthology stories date from 1966 through 1982 and therefore feature a baseball team’s worth of writers including Otto Binder, Jack Oleck, Coram Nobis, Jack C. Harris, Robert M. Ingersoll, Len Wein, Mike Barr, Robert Kanigher, Steve Utley, George Kashdan, Joey Cavalieri, Stan Timmons, Sheldon Mayer, J.M. DeMatteis, Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn and David Allikas. You can see veterans such as Binder and Oleck, well into their careers while newcomers DeMatteis, Mishkin, and Cohn were just getting started.

The centerpiece to the book has to be Shade the Changing Man, a science fiction series Ditko created and sold to the company. Set predominantly in another realm, Rac Shade was a cop on the world of Meta who wore an M-vest that not only served as a force field generator but also projected a distorted image of himself. His adventures were thin on character and heavier than usual on the moralizing as action. Ditko plotted these stories and he was paired with Michael Fleisher for the dialogue. The bimonthly series ran a mere eight issues before it was cut during the famed DC Implosion. A ninth issue was produced and included in the legendary Canceled Comics Cavalcade and while the published contents doesn’t list the issue, one can but hope that someone at DC remembers this nugget and includes it. The only other place that story ran was in the black and white trade collection that was released in 1980 through former DC staffer Roger Slifer’s Excalibur Enterprises.

Since then Shade has resurfaced here and there and was completely reconceived by Peter Milligan for Vertigo, but these original stories are well worth a look.

Prior to creating Shade and company, Ditko dipped a toe into sword and sorcery with Stalker. The series was created by Paul Levitz when he was Joe Orlando’s assistant editor and the call from publisher Carmine Infantino went out for new titles in that genre to compete with Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian. Levitz created a fantasy land where the hero sold his soul while defeating Lord Dgrth. Now an immortal, Stalker was devoid of feeling and wandered in search of a way of reclaiming his soul. The series lasted a mere four issues and was largely forgotten before the character was used as an antagonist against the Justice Society of America. The Stalker series was just getting established when it was so quickly cut down. These stories merit your attention, not only for Levitz’s world-building but for the marvelous inking by Wally Wood. Together, these two made for a classic pairing that added power to the story.

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Purchase Steve Ditko Omnibus Vol. 1

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