Stunningly Geeky Stuff!

[captain_slinky]

Recently, a lot of Steve Ditko's *original* scripted artwork for early issues of Spider-Man have been released. See, back in The Day, Stan "The Man" would just come up with an idea (like "This issue, we'll havce Spidey battle a guy who calls himself Doctor Octopus"), then leave the actual creation of the comic book (artwork, script, and dialogue) to others. Hey, give the guy some slack... he was writing like 60 different comics every week!

Anyway.

Steve Ditko was (and still is to this very day) a very ODD person. It was dialogue like THIS (CLICK AND READ) from Amazing Spider Man #14, page 7, written and drawn by Mr. Ditko, that made Stan Lee go back, re-write, and personally shape each and every Marvel Character. It unfortunately also cuased a rift between Stan and Steve that remains a sore spot (with Mr. Ditko, at least) to this very day.

Thank goodness Stan intervened! Otherwise, the Spider-Man we've all come to know and love could have ended up being a fecal-centric bit of reading material!

Comments

[wrapper.livejournal.com]

That has to be a joke.

Isn't it?

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

It was a very different time back then... the Super Hero genre of comic books was all but dead or at least self-mocking. But for some unknown reason, Stan Lee was all about salvaging the Super Hero and making it fit in with the types of stories that were popular at the time - Westerns, Romance... basically Soap-Opera stuff. Ditko, however, had always been a bit of an outsider. He wanted to do the stuff that NO ONE would expect from a comic book, as he explored by publishing his own comic book series "WHAT TH-?!?!" (one of the very first "underground" comics). These panels are obviously the artwork of Steve Ditko, and the writing style matches his perfectly.

To tell the truth, I have no idea if these panels are a hoax or not. It certainly fits the Steve Ditko M.O.

[opaleyes.livejournal.com]

::grins:: as hysterical as it is, it's a joke. You can tell by the text clarity and spacing. Compare the text inthe speech bubbles to the text on the yellow box in the first panel. See how the text looks softer? Not quite as crisp? It's aged right alng with the comic strip. The new text though is much more clear. The italic words in particular give it away. Also you can see that much less room is given between lines of text. That much crowding is atypical of comic books and word balloons and is quite poor layout planning. The color difference behind the text and the rest of the inside of the word balloon is also very visible. And Aunt May's naughty little comment in the last box doesn't fit at all text-wise. Finally, Peter's word balloon contains an original dash that the person who redid this strip forgot to erase, and his last words in the last panel run into the edges of the balloon. Wouldn't have happened.
Heh, umm yeah. I just got all technical. Woo.

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Leave it to a Graphic Artist to spoil all the fun and mystery :(

But thank you for the debunking! At least now we all know!

[opaleyes.livejournal.com]

::grins:: I don't spoil all the fun and mystery ~_^. Just some.

[flummoxicated.livejournal.com]

That, and it says in itty bitty letters below the strip, "Words by Kevin Smith". Still, nothing would surprise me!

(I'm glad there's no such light, BTW.)

[opaleyes.livejournal.com]

Ha! I would miss the most obvious bit now wouldn't I?