Steve Ditko

Steve Ditko (born 2 November 1927 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania) is a renowned comic book artist and writer best known as the co-creator of Spider-Man.

Ditko studied at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School in New York City under Jerry Robinson and began professionally illustrating comic books in 1953. His early works were for Charlton Comics, producing science fiction, horror and mystery stories. Ditko then began working for what would become Marvel Comics.

He co-created the superhero characters of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange for Marvel with writer and editor Stan Lee. His idiosyncratic art style emphasizing mood and anxiety found favor with the reading public. The character of Spider-Man with his anxiety, angst and troubled social life meshed well with Ditko's personal style and interests which Marvel Comics eventually acknowledged with the artist getting a cowriter credit in the latter part of his run. After a run of four years on the title, Ditko is believed to have had a falling out with Lee and left the company. The exact details of this are uncertain to this day although the last straw is often cited to have been a disagreement as to the secret identity of the Green Goblin. Ditko is said to have wanted it to be wholely unknown character to suggest the random nature of life, while Lee was adament that readers would feel cheated if they didn't get a real surprise. However this version has been challenged by some, who point out that the trick of revealing a villain's secret identity to be a complete unknown had already been undertaken in an earlier story (thus making a repeat of the trick much less likely) and that furthermore that earlier story had also featured the Green Goblin on the last occasion Ditko drew him.

He is said to have shared a studio with bondage artist Eric Stanton in the period 1958 to 1966.

He returned to Charlton where he produced such titles as Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, and The Question. In the pages of The Question Ditko began infusing his own philosophy which stemmed from Ayn Rand's objectivism.

By 1968, Ditko was producing work for DC Comics where he created characters such as The Creeper and The Hawk and the Dove. Ditko used these tales, ostensibly in the superhero genre, to espouse and explore various ethical issues. Either because many readers found the preachiness in some of these stories unpalatable, or perhaps due to disagreement with the artist's philosophy, Ditko's work was not as popularly received as previously. Ditko's more personal projects, such as Mr. A and